This course focuses on the major artistic centers in Flanders, France, Germany and Holland in the 15th and 16th centuries. Special emphasis is given to the works of Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, and Campin in the 15th century, and to those of Dürer, Bosch, Grünewald, and Bruegel in the 16th. Particular attention is paid to the impact of the growing exchange of artistic ideas between Northern Europe and Italy.

Satisfies "the Early Modern World" core course requirement for Art History majors

On the face of it, the term “Northern Renaissance Art” denotes a secondary, mere “Northern” version of the “actual”—that is, Italian—Renaissance art. But the opposite is true. As this course will establish, even in its profound connection to its Italian counterpart, the flourishing of the arts in countries north of the Alps from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century was a cultural phenomenon in its own right. Northern Renaissance art had its roots not in the ancient past, but in the Gothic tradition native to medieval Northern Europe. It reflected not the identity of individual city-states, but the taste and commitment shared across courtly and ecclesiastical spheres. An art of artisanal know-how, it engaged in constant negotiation with the rise of classical and scientific learning central to the agenda of the Italian Renaissance. Known for its extreme realism and jewel-like exquisiteness on the one hand, and profound spirituality and self-awareness on the other hand, Northern Renaissance art was an arena in which rivaling epochal currents—of, for example, artistic agency and iconoclastic impulse, religious ideals and societal fissures, and native traditions and international influences—carried out their mutual challenge.

This course focuses on works of some of the most influential Northern artists, including the Limbourg Brothers, Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald, Hans Holbein, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Thematically, it addresses a broad range of topics, including “Ars nova” in visual arts and other media; realism, symbolism, and “disguised symbolism;” depiction and enactment of visual piety; iconography and material iconography; the exchange between Netherlandish and Italian art; the rise of secular art and new genres; the rise of the print medium; visual articulation of Humanist thoughts; the crisis of the image in the Reformation era. While it stresses that painting was this period’s most enduring form of visual expression, this course also examines prints, drawings, sculpture, and architecture, which, like painting, readily participated in the lived experience of the original audience. No less important, it foregrounds Northern culture’s distinct distrust of imagery and the unique challenge such distrust posed for the arts—visualizing the very removal of imagination. 

This course emphasizes both foundational knowledge and familiarity with scholarly investigations that advance the field. To that end, it includes classic texts and more recent research as reading assignments. In addition, it encourages students to relive the early modern visual experience by acquiring a slow, scrupulous, and mindful approach to the visual material of their study.

Upon completion of this course, students are expected to:

·       Identify key monuments of Northern Renaissance art, their subject matter and iconography

·       Recognize the style of major Northern artists

·       Acquire a familiarity with key historical events and the general ideological climate to which visual arts responded

·       Acquire a familiarity with some contemporary writings on Northern Renaissance art

·       Understand major methodologies and subsequent scholarly responses to them

·       Develop research questions informed by examinations of visual properties, original creative and spectatorial contexts, and interpretive discourses

·       Hone research and writing skills, including finding pertinent sources, formulating persuasive arguments, maintaining suitable interdisciplinarity, and communicating original ideas

Attendance in classes:

Attendance is mandatory. Notification must be sent by email before—or, in the case of unexpected events, at your earliest convenience after—the absence.

Attendance at exams:

A major exam (midterm or final) cannot be made up without the permission of the Dean’s Office. Contact the Dean’s Office prior to the exam to be missed. Absences due to the observance of a religious holiday will normally be excused. Notify me by the end of the Add/Drop period so that arrangements may be made for missed work.

T Sept 2 Art in the Autumn of the Middle Ages

Th Sept 4 Life at the Valois-Burgundian Court

 T Sept 9 The Limbourg Brothers and Pre-Eyckian Art

 Th Sept 11 Robert Campin and the Flowering of Netherlandish Art

T Sept 16 The Revolution of Jan van Eyck

 Th Sept 18 Visual Piety and Imagelessness

T Sept 23 Iconography, “Disguised Symbolism,” and Iconology

Th Sept 25 Rogier van der Weyden and the Gothic Emotion

F Sept 26 Oil Painting and Material Iconography

T Sept 30 Heritage of the Flemish Primitives

Th Oct 2 Hans Memling and Narrative Painting in the North

 T Oct 7 Midterm review

 Th Oct 9 Midterm exam

 T Oct 14 Hieronymus Bosch: A World of Unlikeness

 Th Oct 16 Late Fifteenth-Century Graphic Arts

T Oct 21 Jan Gossaert and the Dialogue between North and South

Th Oct 23 Sculpture and Ornaments at the Turn of the Century

T Oct 28 Lucas van Leyden and the Form of Suspense

Th Oct 30 In Pursuit of Knowledge: Albrecht Dürer

T Nov 4 Picturing Death and Salvation: Matthias Grünewald and Hans Baldung Grien

Th Nov 6 Conjuring a Worldly Art: Netherlandish Art of the Early Sixteenth Century

T Nov 11 The Self-Aware Image: From Jan Sanders van Hemessen to Pieter Aertsen

Th Nov 13 Pieter Bruegel the Elder and the Worldly Theater

T Nov 18 The Advent of the Printing Medium

Th Nov 20 Martin Luther and Lucas Cranach the Elder: Inventing the Art of the Reformation

T Nov 25 Research Project Presentation

T Dec 2 Research Project Presentation

Th Dec 4 Final Review

OVERVIEW OF KEY BIBLIOGRAPHIC WORKS FOR THE COURSE

Acres, Alfred. Jan van Eyck within His Art (Reaktion Books, 2023).

Ainsworth, Maryan, ed. Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads. A Critical Look at Current Methodologies (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia, 2001).

Bass, Marissa. Jan Gossaert and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016).

Baxandall, Michael. The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (Yale University Press, 1980).

Belting, Hans. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994).

Bol, Marjolijn, and Ann-Sophie Lehmann, “Painting Skin and Water.” In Rogier van der Weyden in Context, edited by L. Campbell et al. (Peeters, 2012).

Büttner, Nils. Hieronymus Bosch: Visions and Nightmares (London: Reaktion Books, 2016).

Campbell, Lorne, and Jan van der Stock, eds. Rogier van der Weyden, 1400–1464: Masters of Passion (Waanders, 2009).

Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of the Nature, 1150–1750 (Zone Books, 1998).

Decker, John. The Technology of Salvation and the Art of Geertgen tot Sint Jans (Ashgate, 2009).

Dückers, Rob, and Pieter Roelofs, eds. The Limbourg Brothers: Reflections on the Origins and the Legacy of Three Illuminators from Nijmegen (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Emery, Anthony. Seats of Power in Europe during the Hundred Years War: An Architectural Study from 1330 to 1480 (Oxford and Philadelphia: Oxford Books, 2015).

Falkenburg, Reindert. “Hans Memling’s Van Nieuwenhove Diptych: The Place of Prayer in Early Netherlandish Devotional Painting,” in Essays in Context: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, eds. J.O. Hand and R. Spronk, 92–109 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

________. The Land of Unlikeness (W Books, 2011).

Gibson, Walter. Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter (University of California Press, 2006).

Harbison, Craig. Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism (Reaktion Books, 1991).

Honig, Elizabeth. Painting & the Market in Early Modern Antwerp (Yale University Press, 1998).

Huizinga, Johan. The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Penguin, 1924).

Husband, Timothy. The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008).

Ilsink, Matthijs. Hieronymus Bosch: Painter and Draughtsman (Mercatorfonds, 2016).

Jones, Susan. Van Eyck to Gossaert: Towards a Northern Renaissance (Yale University Press, 2011).

Kaminska, Barbara. Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Religious Art for the Urban Community (Brill, 2019).

Kavaler, Ethan Matt. Renaissance Gothic (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012).

Koerner, Joseph Leo. Bosch & Bruegel. From enemy painting to everyday life (Princeton University Press, 2016).

________. The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993).

Koster, Margaret. “The Arnolfini Double Portrait: A Simple Solution,” Apollo 158, no. 499 (2003): 3–14.

Landau, David, and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1470–1550 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994).

Lehmann, Ann-Sophie. “Small Hairs: Meaning and Material of a Multiple Detail in the Ghent Altarpiece’s Adam and Eve Panels.” In Van Eyck Studies: Papers presented at the Eighteenth Symposium for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting, Brussels, 19-21 September 2012, edited by B. Fransen et al. (Peeters, 2016).

 Linfert, Carl. Hieronymus Bosch (New York: Abrams, 2003).

Meiss, Millard. French painting in the time of Jean de Berry: the Limbourgs and their contemporaries (Phaidon, 1973).

Noble, Bonnie. “The Wittenberg Altarpiece and the Image of Identity.” Reformation 11, no. 1 (2006): 79–129.

Normore, Christina. A Feast for the Eyes: Art, Performance, and the Late Medieval Banquet (University of Chicago Press, 2015).

Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origin and Character (Harvard University Press, 1964)

________. “Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 64, no. 372 (1934): 117–27.

________, and Jeffrey Chipps Smith. The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (Princeton University Press, 2005).

________. Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955).

Parshall, Peter. Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2005).

________. “Penitence and Pentimenti: Hieronymous Bosch’s Mocking of Christ in London.” In Tributes in Honor of James H. Marrow: Studies in Painting and Manuscript Illumination of the Late Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance, edited by J. Hamburger and A. Korteweg (Brepols, 2006).

Philip, Lotte Brand. The Ghent Altarpiece and the Art of Jan van Eyck (Princeton University Press, 1971).

Rothstein, Bret. Sight and Spirituality in Early Netherlandish Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Rublack, Ulinka. Reformation Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Thürlemann, Felix. Robert Campin: A Monographic Study with Critical Catalogue (Prestel, 2002).

Turel, Noa. Living Pictures: Jan van Eyck and Painting’s First Century (Yale University Press, 2020).

 Silver, Larry. Hieronymus Bosch (Abbeville Press Publishers, 2006).

Simson, Otto von. “Compassio and Co-Redemptio in Roger Van Der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross,” The Art Bulletin 35, no. 1 (1953): 9–16.

Smith, Pamela. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2004).

Wied, Alexander. Bruegel (Studio Vista, 1980).