It is difficult to look at a picture by Jan van Eyck, and not to exclaim: “It’s so Real!” Even one of the most sophisticated (and engaging) books on his art, Craig Harbison’s, is subtitled “The Play of Realism.” But while we are seduced into delighted admiration of the fine-brushed details, light effects, and depicted particularities of Flemish people, interiors, and landscape, we also need to seek out the motives of this very attachment to the look of material things, and to explore van Eyck’s ambience and society, its economics and spirituality. Flemish art of this period of the Renaissance is both persuasive in its illusion, and deliberately constructed in its artifice. 

            For the hospital-monastery of Isenheim, near Colmar in the Alsace, the German artist Gruenewald (Matthias Gothart Neithart) created one of the most remarkable altarpieces in the entire Renaissance, for its embodiment of bodily suffering and sheer joy, at once. Here is a distortion of normal appearance, in variant directions of horror and glory. The Isenheim Altarpiece, representative of another current of Northern European Renaissance art, addresses the real-life atrophy of the body through disease, and confirms the hope of redemption in Christ, for the victims and healers who prayed before it. Through exaggeration of form, imaginative color, shocking conjunctions of fantasy and observation, Grunewald sweeps us into an experience that plunges into life’s depths and elevates us to its possibilities, with a sensual madness and keen realization of how art can work wonders.

            These contrasting currents of “realism” and “expressionism” – neither quite adequate as definitions – is only one example of the kind of issues we will explore. We will approach the works and contexts of other artists such as Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Duerer, Hans Holbein, Hieronymus Bosch, and Pieter Bruegel, to examine several crucial art-historical controversies. 

The richness and variety of devotional and secular visual production in the Netherlands, Germany, France and England demands consideration of such topics as, for example: “disguised symbolism” vs. socio-historical interpretation; the shift of patronage from the courts to the wealthy middle class; the intersection of Northern art and Italy; forms of portraiture and the presentation of the individual; artistic response to the “devotio moderno” and new modes of prayer and meditation; the rise of landscape painting; movement and viewer engagement; the art market, trade and dissemination; iconoclasm, dispersal and destruction; art and the Reformation. In our investigation, we will look closely at selected works, and also read scholarly interpretations, to enter into study of an art conceived for an audience quite different from the modern viewer.

While the emphasis will be on painting, other media such as sculpture, metalwork, and manuscripts will be examined. Printmaking, born as a vital means of communication in the 15C, and its development, technique, diffusion, reception, and role in society and religious reform will be of special interest. The course will investigate not only individual masters, but particularly the modulations and ruptures at play in this complex culture within which the artists and their patrons lived, on the cusp between the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods.

Required Textbook:

-      James Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575, NY: Abrams (1985), 2^nded. 2005 (purchase for the course; first edition is OK)

Frequent Required Readings (purchase optional):

I will be checking to see if we can add these as eBooks to the JCU library, for accessibility – TBA

-      Jeffrey Chipps Smith, The Northern Renaissance, London and NY: Phaidon, 2004. RES: N6370.S565

-      Craig Harbison, The Art of the Northern Renaissance, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995. RES: N6370.H950

-      Craig Harbison, The Mirror of the Artist; Northern Renaissance Art in its Historical Context, London: Laurence King/ Prentice Hall, 1995.  REF: N6370.H26

-      Susie Nash, Northern Renaissance Art(Oxford History of Art): Oxford UP, 2008 (order eBook)

See “Schedule of Classes” for a Select Bibliography

            Students will be expected to develop, in the course of the semester, the following:

-       A familiarity with period and individual styles of Northern Renaissance art through a study of major works. Ready recognition of selected works, and knowledge of relevant factual information. 

 -      Command of problems of interpretation in relation to the study of selected works; basic familiarity with subject matter and iconography,

function, patronage and purpose.

-       An understanding of different art historical methodologies and views of the period through selected readings by major scholars in the field 

-       A familiarity with some contemporary sources and writings on Northern Renaissance art. 

-       A basic understanding of the historical, political and social context in which this art was produced and in which artists were formed.

-       Development of critical thinking about art and art history through course readings, assignments and class discussion.

-      Improved research skills through use of not simply the JCU library (and ideally, others in Rome), Jstor, and use of bibliographical sources, published and electronic.

-      Furthering of writing skills: declaration and development of a clearly stated theme, organization, discussion of distinctive views and approaches, written expression and structure.

-      Furthering of oral communication skills, through class discussion.

The Schedule for the course is forthcoming. Please see the Course description for several topics and issues; exact lessons and readings, as well as due-dates for assignments, will arrive soon!

Selected Bibliography

Due to restrictions on the use of Reserve Readings (for handling in the Covid-Virus ambience), parts of some of these texts will be scanned to the Moodle site for the course.

Selected Bibliography:

-       Charles Cuttler, Northern Painting from Pucelle to Breugel, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. RES: ND454. C8

-       Susan Jones, Van Eyck to Gossaert; Towards a Northern Renaissance, (National Gallery, London), London and New Haven, Yale UP, 2011

-       Marina Belozerskaya, Rethinking the Renaisssance; Burgundian Arts across Europe, Cambridge, 2002 (order)

-       Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting; Its Origins and Character, Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1953. eBook

-       Susan Foister, Sue Jones and Delphine Cool, eds., Investigating Jan van Eyck(Jan van Eyck Symposium, National Gallery London, 1998), Turnhout: Brepols, 2000 (order)

-       Craig Harbison, Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism, London: Reaktion Books, 1991. eBook 2015 and RES: NC673.E9H37 

-       Lotte B. Phillips, The Ghent Altarpiece and the Art of Jan van Eyck, Princeton UP, 1971. ND673. E87 P5

-       Linda Seidel, Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait. Stories of an Icon, Cambridge UP, 1993. RES: ND1329.E93 W44

-       Felix Thürlemann, Robert Campin, Munich and NU: Prestel, 2002. RES: ND673.C274. T48

-       Alfred Acres, Compositions of Time in the Art of Rogier van der Weyden, Ph.D., UPenn, 1992. RES: ND73.W4 A25

-       Alfred Acres, Renaissance Invention and the Haunted Infancy, London and Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2013.  RES: N7862. A37 2013

-       Till Holger Bonchert, et al., Hans Memling and the Art of Portraiture(exh. cat., Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Groeningenmuseum, Bruges; Frick Collection, NY), London: Thames and Hudson, 2005 RES: ND673.M5 B67

-       Andrée Hayum, The Isenheim Altarpiece: God’s Medicine and the Painter’s Vision, Princeton UP, 1993.  eBook and N6888.G75 A65

-       Ruth Mellinkoff, The Devil at Isenheim, Berkeley, U of Ca Press. RES: ND588.G7 A645

-       Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, Princeton UP, 1955. RES: ND588.D9 P46

-       David Price. Albrecht Dürer’s Renaissance: Humanism, Reformation, and the Art of Faith, Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 2003. REF: N6888.D8 P75

-       Jeffrey Chipps Smith and Larry Silver, eds., The Essential Dürer, Philadelphia: U of Penn Press, 2010 eBook

-       Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Nuremburg, a Renaissance City 1500-1618

-       Joseph Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art, Chicago UP, 1993. REF: ND588.D9 K82

-       Larry Silver, Hieronymous Bosch, NY: Abbeville Press, 2006.  REF: ND653.B65 S55 2006

-       Hieronymous Bosch, The 5^thCentenary Exhibition, (exh. cat., Prado, Madrid), NY and London: Thames and Hudson, 2017.  RES: ND653.B65 M37 2017