Art of Germany and the Netherlands of the XV-XVI centuries. Netherlandish painting of the 16th century How architecture becomes commentary

Ethnically, economically and politically heterogeneous, speaking various dialects of Romance and Germanic origin, these provinces and their cities did not create a single national state until the end of the 16th century. Along with the rapid economic growth, the democratic movement of free trade and craft cities and the awakening of national self-awareness in them, a culture blossoms, in many ways similar to the Italian Renaissance. The main centers of new art and culture were the rich cities of the southern provinces of Flanders and Brabant (Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Tournai, and later Antwerp). Urban burgher culture with its cult of sober practicality developed here next to the lush culture of the princely court, which grew on French-Burgundian soil. Therefore, it is not surprising that the dominant place among Northern European art schools The 15th century was occupied by Dutch painting: artists Jan van Eyck, Robert Kampen, Jos van Gent, Rogier van der Weyden, Dirk Bouts, Hieronymus Bosch, Albert Ouwater, Hugo van der Goes, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, Jacques Darais, Geertgen tot Sint- Jans and other painters (see below in the text).

Peculiarities historical development The Netherlands gave rise to a unique coloring of art. Feudal foundations and traditions were preserved here until the end of the 16th century, although the emergence of capitalist relations, which violated class isolation, led to a change in the assessment of the human personality in accordance with the real place that it began to occupy in life. Dutch cities did not gain the political independence that commune cities had in Italy. At the same time, thanks to the constant movement of industry into the countryside, capitalist development penetrated into deeper layers of society in the Netherlands, laying the foundations for further national unity and the strengthening of the corporate spirit that bound certain social groups together. The liberation movement was not limited to cities. The decisive fighting force in it was the peasantry. The fight against feudalism therefore acquired more acute forms. At the end of the 16th century it grew into a powerful Reformation movement and ended with the victory of the bourgeois revolution.

Dutch art acquired a more democratic character than Italian art. It has strong features of folklore, fantasy, grotesque, sharp satire, but its main feature is a deep sense of the national uniqueness of life, folk forms of culture, way of life, customs, types, as well as the display of social contrasts in the life of various strata of society. Social contradictions life of society, the reign of hostility and violence in it, the diversity of opposing forces exacerbated the awareness of its disharmony. Hence the critical tendencies of the Dutch Renaissance, manifested in the flowering of expressive and sometimes tragic grotesque in art and literature, often hiding under the guise of a joke “to speak the truth to kings with a smile” (Erasmus of Rotterdam. “A word of praise for stupidity”). Another feature of the Dutch artistic culture of the Renaissance is sustainability medieval traditions, which largely determined the character of Dutch realism of the 15th and 16th centuries. Everything new that was revealed to people over a long period of time was applied to the old medieval system of views, which limited the possibilities for the independent development of new views, but at the same time forced them to assimilate the valuable elements contained in this system.

Interest in the exact sciences, ancient heritage and the Italian Renaissance appeared in the Netherlands already in the 15th century. In the 16th century, with the help of his “Sayings” (1500), Erasmus of Rotterdam “unraveled the secret of the mysteries” of the erudites and introduced living, free-loving ancient wisdom into everyday use wide circles"uninitiated". However, in art, turning to the achievements of the ancient heritage and the Italians of the Renaissance, Dutch artists followed their own path. Intuition replaced the scientific approach to depicting nature. Development of the main problems of realistic art - mastering proportions human figure, construction of space, volume, etc. - was achieved through acute direct observation of specific individual phenomena. In this, the Dutch masters followed the national Gothic tradition, which, on the one hand, they overcame, and on the other, they rethought and developed towards a conscious, purposeful generalization of the image, and the complication of individual characteristics. The successes achieved by Dutch art in this direction prepared the achievements of realism of the 17th century.

Unlike Italian, Dutch Renaissance art did not come to establish the unlimited dominance of the image of the perfect titanic man. As in the Middle Ages, man seemed to the Dutch to be an integral part of the universe, woven into its complex spiritual whole. The Renaissance essence of man was determined only by the fact that he was recognized as the greatest value among the multiple phenomena of the universe. Dutch art is characterized by a new, realistic vision of the world, an affirmation of the artistic value of reality as it is, an expression organic connection man and his environment, comprehension of the capabilities that nature and life endow man with. In depicting a person, artists are interested in the characteristic and special, the sphere of everyday and spiritual life; Dutch painters of the 15th century enthusiastically captured the diversity of people's individualities, the inexhaustible colorful richness of nature, its material diversity; they subtly felt the poetry of everyday things, unnoticed but close to people, and the coziness of lived-in interiors. These features of the perception of the world manifested themselves in Dutch painting and graphics of the 15th and 16th centuries in the everyday genre, portraits, interiors, and landscapes. They revealed the typical Dutch love for details, the concreteness of their depiction, narration, subtlety in conveying moods, and at the same time an amazing ability to reproduce a holistic picture of the universe with its spatial boundlessness.

New trends manifested themselves unevenly in various types of art. Architecture and sculpture developed within the Gothic style until the 16th century. The turning point that took place in the art of the first third of the 15th century was most fully reflected in painting. Its greatest achievement is associated with the emergence in Western Europe easel painting, which replaced the wall paintings of Romanesque churches and Gothic stained glass windows. Easel paintings on religious themes were originally actually works of icon painting. In the form of painted folding frames with gospel and biblical scenes, they decorated the altars of churches. Gradually, secular subjects began to be included in altar compositions, which later acquired independent significance. Easel painting separated from icon painting and became an integral part of the interiors of wealthy and aristocratic houses.

For Dutch artists, the main means of artistic expression is color, which opens up the possibility of recreating visual images in their colorful richness with extreme tangibility. The Dutch were sensitive to the subtle differences between objects, reproducing the texture of materials, optical effects - the shine of metal, the transparency of glass, the reflection of a mirror, the refraction features of reflected and scattered light, the impression of the airy atmosphere of a landscape receding into the distance. As in Gothic stained glass, the tradition of which played an important role in the development of pictorial perception of the world, color served as the main means of conveying the emotional richness of the image. The development of realism caused a transition in the Netherlands from tempera to oil paint, which made it possible to more illusively reproduce the materiality of the world.

The improvement of the oil painting technique known in the Middle Ages and the development of new compositions are attributed to Jan van Eyck. Application oil paint and resinous substances in easel painting, applying it in a transparent, thin layer on the underpainting and white or red chalk primer accentuated the saturation, depth and purity of bright colors, expanded the possibilities of painting - made it possible to achieve richness and variety in color, the finest tonal transitions. The enduring painting of Jan van Eyck and his method lived on almost unchanged in the 15th and 16th centuries, in the practice of artists in Italy, France, Germany and other countries.

Dutch art of the 16th century
During the first decades of the 16th century, painting in the Netherlands underwent complex changes, as a result of which the principles of 15th century art were completely outlived and the features of the High Renaissance were developed (however, incomparably less fruitful than in Italy). Although the artistic merits of 16th century painting, with the exception of Bruegel, do not reach the level of the 15th century, in historical and evolutionary terms its role turned out to be very significant. First of all, this is determined by the approach of art to a more direct, immediate reflection of reality. Self-sufficient interest in concrete reality equally led to the discovery of new, promising paths and methods and to the narrowing of the painter’s horizons. Thus, concentrating thought on everyday reality, many painters came to solutions devoid of broad generalizing meaning. However, where the artist was closely connected with the main problems of the time, sensitively refracting the main contradictions of the era in his work, this process gave unusually significant artistic results, as exemplified by the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

When getting acquainted with the fine arts of the 16th century, it is necessary to keep in mind the sharp quantitative increase in artistic production and its penetration into a wide market, which reveals the impact of new historical and social conditions. Economically, life in the Netherlands at the beginning of the century was characterized by rapid prosperity. The discovery of America placed the country at the center of international trade. The process of displacement of guild craft by manufacture was actively proceeding. Production developed. Antwerp, eclipsing Bruges, became the largest center of transit trade and monetary transactions. Almost half of the total population of this province lived in the cities of Holland. The management of the economy passed into the hands of the so-called new rich - people influential not by belonging to the city patriciate, the guild elite, but only by their enterprise and wealth. The bourgeois development of the Netherlands stimulated social life. The views of the greatest philosopher and teacher of this time, Erasmus of Rotterdam, are consistently rationalistic and humanistic. Various Protestant creeds, and above all Calvinism with its spirit of practical rationalism, enjoy great success. The role of man in social evolution is being increasingly revealed. National liberation trends are intensifying. The protest and discontent of the popular masses intensified, and the last third of the century was marked by a powerful upsurge - the Dutch revolution. These facts completely changed the worldview of artists.

The Ugly Duchess, 1525–1530,
National Gallery, London

Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam,
1517, National Gallery, Rome

Portrait of a notary, 1520s,
National Gallery, Edinburgh

One of the greatest masters of the first third of the century is Quentin Masseys (born around 1466 in Louvep, died in 1530 in Antwerp). The early works of Quentin Massys bear the distinct imprint of old traditions. His first significant work was a triptych dedicated to Saint Anne (1507 - 1509; Brussels, Museum). The scenes on the outer sides of the side doors are distinguished by restrained drama. The images, which are little developed psychologically, are majestic, the figures are enlarged and closely composed, the space seems compacted. The attraction to the life-real principle led Masseys to create one of the first genre, everyday paintings in the art of modern times. We mean the painting “The Money Changer with his Wife” (1514; Paris, Louvre). At the same time, the artist’s constant interest in a generalized interpretation of reality prompted him (perhaps the first in the Netherlands) to turn to the art of Leonardo da Vinci (“Mary with Child”; Poznan, Museum), although here we can talk more about borrowing or imitation .

The largest representative of Romanism in the first third of the century was Jan Gossaert, nicknamed Mabuse (born in 1478 near Utrecht or in Maubeuge, died between 1533 and 1536 in Middelburg). Early works (the altar in Lisbon) are stenciled and archaic, as, indeed, those executed immediately after returning from Italy (the altar in the National Museum in Palermo, “The Adoration of the Magi” in the London National Gallery). A shift in Gossaert's work occurred in the mid-1510s, when he painted many paintings on mythological subjects. The nude appears here and in later works not as a private motif, but as the main content of the work (“Neptune and Amphitrite”, 1516, Berlin; “Hercules and Omphale”, 1517, Richmond, Cook collection; “Venus and Cupid”, Brussels , Museum; “Danae”, 1527, Munich, Pinakothek, as well as numerous images of Adam and Eve).
Another major novelist, Bernard van Orley (circa 1488–1541), expanded Gossaert's system. Already in his early altarpiece (Vienna, Museum, and Brussels, Museum), along with the provincial Dutch template and decoration in the spirit of the Italians, we see elements of a detailed, detailed story. In the so-called Job altar (1521; Brussels, Museum), Orlais strives for the dynamics of the overall solution and for narration. He draws Gossaert's motionless heroes into active action. He also uses a lot of observed details. Exaggerated, naturalistically characteristic figures (the image of the beggar Lazarus) are side by side with direct borrowings from Italian models (the rich man in hell), and only in minor, private episodes does the artist decide to combine them into a real, living scene (a doctor examines the urine of a dying man).

Among Massys's Antwerp contemporaries we find both masters still closely associated with the 15th century (Master from Frankfurt, Master of the Morrison triptych), and artists trying to break the previous canons, introducing dramatic (Master of the "Magdalene" collection of Manzi) or narrative (Master from Hoogstraten) elements. These painters combine indecisiveness in posing new problems with an unconditional interest in them. More noticeable than others are tendencies towards a literal, accurate depiction of nature, experiments in the revival of drama in the form of a convincing everyday story, and attempts to individualize previous lyrical images. The latter, as a rule, characterized the least radical masters, and it is very significant that this very trend became decisive for Bruges, a city that was dying out both economically and culturally. Here the principles of Gerard David reigned almost completely. They were subjected to both masters who were mediocre in their artistic level, as well as more important ones - Jan Provost (about 1465–1529) and Adrian Isenbrandt (? - died in 1551). Isenbrandt's paintings, with their slow, fading rhythm and atmosphere of poetic concentration (Mary against the backdrop of the seven passions, Bruges, Notre Dame Church; portrait of a man, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) are perhaps the most valuable in the Bruges output. In those rare cases when artists tried to violate the narrow limits of the Bruges tradition (the works of Ambrosius Benson, a native of Lombardy, died in 1550), they inevitably found themselves in the grip of eclecticism - be it harshly prosaic solutions or, on the contrary, rehashes of Romanism that were not without impressiveness. With the exception of novelists, and given the everyday decline of their outwardly heroic solutions, then together with them, Dutch art is experiencing a period of active concretization of its creative method, turning to a direct and self-valuable depiction of reality.

A special position is occupied by the group of so-called “Antwerp Mannerists”. (This term is quite conventional and should indicate some pretentiousness in the art of these artists. It should not be confused with mannerism in the usual meaning of the word.). The living reality of the image and the authenticity of the image did not attract them. But the conventional, rhetorical and cold works of novelists were also alien to them. Their favorite theme is “The Adoration of the Magi.” Sophisticated fantastic figures, intricate multi-figure action placed among ruins and complex architectural decorations, finally, an abundance of accessories and an almost morbid predilection for multiplicity (characters, details, spatial plans) are the characteristic differences of their paintings. Behind all this one can discern a craving for large, generalizing solutions, a retained sense of the unlimited nature of the universe. But in this endeavor, the “Mannerists” invariably moved away from concrete life. Unable to saturate their ideals with new content, unable to resist the trends of their time, they created art that intricately combines reality and fantasy, solemnity and fragmentation, eloquence and anecdotism. But this trend is symptomatic - it indicates that everyday concreteness did not attract all Dutch painters. In addition, many masters (especially in Holland) used “mannerist” techniques in a special way - to enliven their narrative compositions and to give them more drama. Cornelis Engelbrechtsen (born in 1468 in Leiden - died in 1535 in the same place; altars with the “Crucifixion” and “Lamentation” in the Leiden Museum), Jacob Cornelis van Oostzanen (about 1470–1533) and others followed this path.
Finally, a certain contact with the principles of “Mannerism” is seen in the work of one of the most important masters of his time, Joachim Patinir (about 1474–1524), an artist who can rightfully be considered among the main founders of European landscape painting of modern times. Most of his works represent extensive views, including rocks, river valleys, etc., without, however, excessive spatiality. Patinir also places small figures of characters from various religious scenes in his paintings. True, unlike the “Mannerists”, his evolution is based on a constant rapprochement with reality, and landscapes are gradually getting rid of the dominance of the religious theme (“Baptism” in Vienna and “Landscape with the Flight to Egypt” in Antwerp).

Saint Anthony, 1520s,
Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels

Playing cards, 1508–1510,
National Gallery, Washington

Saint Jerome, 1515–1516,
Art gallery, Berlin

The art of Luke of Leiden (circa 1489–1533) completes and exhausts the painting of the first third of the century. In his early engravings (he was celebrated as a master of engraving, and the first great successes of engraving in the Netherlands are associated with his work), he was not only accurate in conveying reality, but also sought to create a holistic and expressive scene. At the same time, unlike his Dutch contemporaries (for example, the Master from Alkmaar), Luke achieves acute psychological expression. Such are his sheets “Mohammed with the Murdered Monk” (1508) and especially “David and Saul” (circa 1509). The image of Saul (in the second of these works) is distinguished by its exceptional complexity for that time: here is madness - still lasting, but also beginning to let go of the king’s tormented soul, loneliness, and tragic doom. Luke of Leyden, conveying the reality around him with rare acuity, avoids genre solutions and tries to monumentalize reality. In “The Cowshed” he achieves a certain harmony - the generalization of reality gives it the features of monumentality, but does not lead it into conventionality. The next ten years of his work were deprived of this harmony. He more organically introduces private observations, strengthens the genre-narrative element, but immediately neutralizes it by persistently highlighting any one character - immersed in himself and, as it were, turned off from the everyday environment. The latest works of Luke of Leiden speak of a spiritual crisis: “Mary and Child” (Oslo, Museum) is a purely formal idealization, “The Healing of the Blind” (1531; Hermitage) is a combination of manneristic exaggerations and naturalistic everyday details.
The work of Luke of Leiden closes the art of the first third of the century. Already at the beginning of the 1530s, Netherlandish painting embarked on new paths. This period is characterized by the rapid development of realistic principles, the parallel activation of Romanism and their frequent combination. The 1530s–1540s were years of further success in the bourgeois development of the country. In science, this is a time of expansion and systematization of knowledge. In civil history - the reform of religion in the spirit of rationalism and practicalism (Calvinism) and the slow, still latent maturation of the revolutionary activity of the masses, the first conflicts between the growing national consciousness and the dominance of the foreign feudal-absolutist power of the Habsburgs.

In art, the most noticeable is the widespread use of the everyday genre. Everyday trends take the form of either a large-figure genre, or a small-figure painting, or appear indirectly, determining the special character of portraiture and religious painting. The large-figure genre was common in Antwerp. Its main representatives - Jan Sanders van Hemessen (c. 1500-1575) and Marinus van Roemerswaele (c. 1493 - possibly 1567) - relied on the tradition of Quentin Massys ( various options“The Moneychanger” by Reumerswahl and “The Gay Society” from Karlsruhe by Hemessen). They, in essence, completely destroyed the boundary between everyday and religious pictures. Both are characterized by grotesqueness and exaggeration of real observations. But Hemessen’s principles are more complex - highlighting two or three large static figures in the foreground, in the background he places small genre scenes that play the role of commentary. Here one can see an attempt to involve an everyday incident in the general sequence of life, an attempt to give a specific fact a more general meaning. These paintings are narrow in subject matter (money changers, girls from brothels) and reflect a complete lack of understanding of human community. Jan Scorel (1495–1562) was also a multifaceted personality - a clergyman, engineer, musician, rhetorician, keeper of the collections of Pope Adrian VI, etc., but, in addition, a very important painter. Already in his early works he gravitated towards the impressiveness of the image (altar from Oberwellach, 1520) and towards strong, contrasting comparisons of man and landscape (van Lokhorst altar; Utrecht, Museum). The idea contained here is revealed in “The Crucifixion” (Detroit, Institute of Arts). In the dramatic nature of the Crucifixion, Scorel seeks connections with life, concentrates the image and gives it bold, defiant expressiveness.
The next two or three decades are characterized by the intensification of Romanism and the strengthening of features in it that are opposite to the art of realist artists. In turn, realistic tendencies acquire a national character, the features of which were only guessed in the works of masters of the first third of the 16th century. At the same time, if in the 1530s Romanism was strongly influenced by realistic principles, now we should rather talk about the opposite process. This process reaches its highest scale in the art of Lombard’s student, Antwerpian Frans Floris (de Vrindt, 1516/20–1570). The artist’s trip to Italy determined many features of his painting – both positive and negative. The first should include a more organic (than, for example, Lombard) mastery of generalized forms, a well-known artistry. The latter primarily include naive attempts to compete with Michelangelo and adherence to mannerist canons. In many of Floris’s works, manneristic features appear clearly (“The Deposition of the Angels”, 1554, Antwerp, Museum; “The Last Judgment”, 1566, Brussels, Museum). He strives for compositions with intense, intense movement, full of pervasive, almost surreal excitement. Essentially, Floris was one of the first in the 16th century to try to return ideological content to art. However, the lack of deep thought and a strong connection with life usually deprives his work of true significance. Refusing a concrete representation of reality, he achieves neither heroic monumentality nor figurative concentration. A typical example is his “Downthrow of Angels”: eloquent, built on the most complex angles, woven from ideal and naive fantastic figures, this composition is distinguished by fragmentation, inexpressive dryness of color and inappropriate elaboration of individual details (on the thigh of one of the apostate angels sits a huge fly ). Still, it must be admitted that Floris’s place in Dutch art is not determined by these works. Rather, he should be defined as a master who clearly expressed the crisis phenomena in the art of the 1540–1560s.

We find a peculiar reflection of the specifics of Dutch painting of those years in the portrait. It is distinguished by the mixture and half-heartedness of various trends. On the one hand, it is determined by the development of the Dutch group portrait. However, although the compositional arrangement of the figures has become freer, and the images of the models have become more lively, these works do not reach the genre and vital spontaneity characteristic of works of this kind performed later, in the 1580s. At the same time, they are already losing the simple-minded pathos of burgher citizenship, characteristic of the 30s of the 16th century. (late portraits of D. Jacobs - for example, 1561, Hermitage, and early Dirk Barents - 1564 and 1566, Amsterdam). It is significant that the most talented portrait painter of that time - Antonis More (van Dashhorst, 1517/19 -1575/76) - turns out to be associated primarily with aristocratic circles. Another thing is indicative - the very essence of More's art is dual: he is a master of sharp psychological solutions, but they contain elements of mannerism (portrait of William of Orange, 1556, portrait of I. Gallus; Kassel), he is the largest representative of the ceremonial, court portrait, but gives a sharp socially charged characterization of his models (portraits of the viceroy of Philip II in the Netherlands, Margaret of Parma, her adviser Cardinal Granvella, 1549, Vienna, and others).
The activation of crisis, late-romanistic and mannerist tendencies quantitatively narrowed the circle of realist masters, but at the same time revealed the social principle in the works of those who stood in the position of an objective reflection of reality. Realistic genre painting 1550–1560s turned to a direct reflection of the life of the masses and, in essence, for the first time created the image of a man from the people. These achievements are most closely associated with the work of Pieter Aertsen (1508/09–1575). The formation of his art took place in the Southern Netherlands - in Antwerp. There he became acquainted with the principles of the Antwerp novelists and there in 1535 he received the title of master. His works of the 1540s are contradictory: works close to the Antwerp novelists are interspersed with copper-figure and everyday ones in nature, in which van Amstel’s concept is clearly visible. And perhaps only “The Peasant Woman” (1543; Lille, Museum) contains attempts to monumentalize the folk type. Artsen's art was an important milestone in the development of the realistic stream of Dutch art. And yet it can be argued that these were not the most promising paths. In any case, the work of Aartsen's student and nephew, Joachim Beukelar (about 1530 - about 1574), having lost the limited features of Aertsen's painting, at the same time lost its content. The monumentalization of individual real facts has already proven to be insufficient. A great task arose before art - to reflect the folk, historical beginning in reality, not limiting itself to the depiction of its manifestations, presented as a kind of isolated exhibits, but to give a powerful generalized interpretation. life. The complexity of this task was aggravated by the characteristic late Renaissance features of a crisis of old ideas. A keen sense of new forms of life merged with a tragic awareness of its imperfection, and dramatic conflicts of rapidly and spontaneously developing historical processes led to the idea of ​​​​the insignificance of the individual, changing previous ideas about the relationship between the individual and the surrounding social environment, the world. At the same time, it was at this time that art realized the significance and aesthetic expressiveness of the human mass, the crowd. This one of the most meaningful periods in Dutch art is associated with the work of the great Flemish artist Bruegel.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, nicknamed Peasant (between 1525 and 1530–1569), developed as an artist in Antwerp (he studied with P. Cook van Aelst), visited Italy (1551–1552), and was close to the radical thinkers of the Netherlands. Taking a mental look at Bruegel's creative path, it should be recognized that he concentrated in his art all the achievements of Dutch painting of the previous era. The unsuccessful attempts of late Romanism to reflect life in generalized forms, and Aertsen's more successful but limited experiments in exalting the image of the people, entered into a powerful synthesis in Bruegel. Actually, the desire for a realistic concretization of the creative method, which emerged at the beginning of the century, merging with the deep ideological insights of the master, brought great fruits to Dutch art.
The next generation of Dutch painters differs sharply from Bruegel. Although the main events of the Dutch revolution fall on this period, we will not find revolutionary pathos in the art of the last third of the 16th century. Its influence was felt indirectly - in the formation of a worldview reflecting the bourgeois development of society. Artistic methods of painting are characterized by sharp concretization and closeness to nature, which prepares the principles of the 17th century. At the same time, the decomposition of Renaissance universality, universality in the interpretation and reflection of life phenomena gives these new methods traits of pettiness and spiritual narrowness. The limited perception of the world influenced the novelistic and realistic movements in painting in various ways. Romanism, despite its very wide distribution, bears all the signs of degeneration. Most often, he appears in a manneristic, courtly-aristocratic aspect and appears internally empty. Another symptomatic thing is the increasing penetration into novelistic schemes of genre, most often naturalistically understood elements (C. Cornelissen, 1562–1638, Karel van Mander, 1548–1606). Of certain importance here was the close communication between Dutch and Flemish painters, many of whom emigrated from the Southern Netherlands in the 1580s due to the separation of the northern provinces. Only in rare cases, by combining field observations with acute subjectivity of their interpretation, novelists manage to achieve an impressive effect (Abraham Bloemaert, 1564–1651). Realistic tendencies first of all find expression in a more concrete reflection of reality. In this sense, the narrow specialization of individual genres should be considered a very indicative phenomenon. There is also a significant interest in creating diverse plot situations (they are beginning to play an increasingly important role in the artistic fabric of the work).

Genre painting experienced a flourishing in the last third of the century (which is also expressed in the mentioned penetration of it into Romanism). But her works are devoid of internal significance. Bruegel's traditions are deprived of their deep essence (at least in his son Pieter Bruegel the Younger, called the Infernal, 1564–1638). The genre scene is usually either subordinated to the landscape, as, for example, in Lucas (before 1535–1597) and Martin (1535–1612) Walkenborch, or appears in the guise of an insignificant everyday episode of city life, reproduced accurately, but with some cold arrogance, in Martin van Cleve (1527–1581; “The Feast of St. Martin”, 1579, Hermitage). The portrait is also dominated by petty genre beginning, which, however, contributed to the development of group compositions in the 1580s. The most significant among these latter are “The Shooting Association of Captain Rosencrans” (1588; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) by Cornelis Ketel and “The Shooting Company” (1583; Haarlem, Museum) by Cornelis Cornelissen. In both cases, the artists strive to break the dry arithmeticism of previous group structures (Ketel - with the solemn pomp of the group, Cornelissen - with its everyday ease). Finally, in the very last years of the 16th century, new types of corporate group portraits emerged, such as the “regents” and “anatomies” of Peter and Art Peters.
Landscape painting represents a more intricate whole - there was a strong fragmentation into separate types of paintings. But the petty, incredibly overloaded works of Ruland Saverey (1576/78–1679), and the more powerful Gilissa van Koninksloo (1544–1606), and the romantic-spatial works of Jos de Momper (1564–1635), and imbued with the subjective emotion of Abraham Bloemaert - all they, although to varying degrees and in different ways, reflect the growth of the personal principle in the perception of nature. The artistic features of genre, landscape and portrait solutions do not allow us to talk about their internal significance. They do not belong to the major phenomena of fine art. If we evaluate them in relation to the work of the great Dutch painters of the 15th and 16th centuries, they seem to be obvious evidence of the complete withering away of the very principles of the Renaissance. However, the painting of the last third of the 16th century is of largely indirect interest to us - as a transitional stage and as the common root from which the national schools of Flanders and Holland of the 17th century grew.

Gershenzon-Chegodaeva N. Dutch portrait of the 15th century. Its origins and destinies. Series: From the history of world art. M. Art 1972 198 p. ill. Hardcover, encyclopedic format.
Gershenzon-Chegodaeva N. M. Dutch portrait of the 15th century. Its origins and destinies.
The Dutch Renaissance is perhaps an even more vibrant phenomenon than the Italian one, at least from the point of view of painting. Van Eyck, Bruegel, Bosch, later Rembrandt... Names that certainly left a deep imprint in the hearts of people who saw their canvases, regardless of whether you feel admiration for them, as before “Hunters in the Snow,” or rejection, as before "The Garden of Earthly Delights." The harsh, dark tones of the Dutch masters differ from the light and joyful creations of Giotto, Raphael and Michelangelo. One can only guess how the specifics of this school were formed, why it was there, to the north of prosperous Flanders and Brabant, that a powerful center of culture arose. Let's keep quiet about this. Let's look at the specifics, at what we have. Our source is the paintings and altars of famous creators of the Northern Renaissance, and this material requires a special approach. In principle, this needs to be done at the intersection of cultural studies, art history and history.
A similar attempt was implemented by Natalia Gershenzon-Chegodaeva (1907-1977), the daughter of the most famous literary critic in our country. In principle, she is quite a famous person, in her circles, first of all, with her excellent biography of Pieter Bruegel (1983), the above-mentioned work also belongs to her. To be honest, this is a clear attempt to go beyond the boundaries of classical art criticism - not just to talk about artistic styles and aesthetics, but to try to trace the evolution of human thought through them...
What features do images of humans have in earlier times? There were few secular artists; monks were not always talented in the art of drawing. Therefore, often, images of people in miniatures and paintings are very conventional. Paintings and any other images had to be painted as it should be, in all respects obeying the rules of the century of emerging symbolism. By the way, this is why tombstones (also a kind of portraits) did not always reflect the true appearance of a person, but rather showed him as he needed to be remembered.
Dutch portrait art breaks through such canons. Who are we talking about? The author examines the works of such masters as Robert Compen, Jan Van Eyck, Rogier Van der Weyden, Hugo Van der Goes. These were true masters of their craft, living by their talent, performing work to order. Very often the customer was the church - in conditions of illiteracy of the population, painting is considered the most important art; the city dweller and peasant, not trained in theological wisdom, had to explain the simplest truths on their fingers, and artistic representation filled this role. This is how such masterpieces as the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan Van Eyck arose.
The customers were also rich townspeople - merchants, bankers, guild members, and nobility. Portraits appeared, single and group. And here - a breakthrough for that time - an interesting feature of the masters was discovered, and one of the first to notice it was the famous agnostic philosopher Nikolas of Cusa. Not only did artists, when creating their images, paint a person not conventionally, but as he is, they also managed to convey his inner appearance. A turn of the head, a glance, a hairstyle, clothes, a curve of the mouth, a gesture - all this in an amazing and accurate way showed the character of a person.
Of course, this was an innovation, no doubt. The aforementioned Nikola also wrote about this. The author connects the painters with the innovative ideas of the philosopher - respect for the human person, the knowability of the surrounding world, the possibility of its philosophical knowledge.
But here a completely reasonable question arises: is it possible to compare the work of artists with the thought of an individual philosopher? In spite of everything, Nicholas of Cusa in any case remained in the bosom of medieval philosophy; in any case, he relied on the fabrications of the same scholastics. What about master artists? We know practically nothing about their intellectual life; did they have such developed connections with each other, and with church leaders? That's the question. Without a doubt, they had continuity with each other, but the origins of this skill still remain a mystery. The author does not specialize in philosophy, but rather fragmentarily talks about the connection between the traditions of Dutch painting and scholasticism. If Dutch art is original, and has no connection with Italian humanities, where did the artistic traditions come from and their characteristics? Vague reference to “national traditions”? Which? This is a question...
In general, the author perfectly, as befits an art critic, talks about the specifics of each artist’s work, and quite convincingly interprets the aesthetic perception of the individual. But as for the philosophical origins, the place of painting in the thought of the Middle Ages, it is very sketchy; the author did not find an answer to the question about the origins.
Bottom line: the book has a very good selection of portraits and other works of the early Dutch Renaissance. It’s quite interesting to read about how art historians work with such fragile and ambiguous material as painting, as noted the smallest features and specific features of the style, how they connect the aesthetics of the painting with time... However, the context of the era is visible, so to speak, from a very, very long perspective.
Personally, I was more interested in the question of the ideological and artistic origins of this specific movement. This is where the author failed to convincingly answer the question posed. The art critic defeated the historian; before us is, first of all, a work of art history, that is, rather, for great lovers of painting.

R. Klimov

The first manifestations of Renaissance art in the Netherlands date back to the early 15th century.

Dutch (actually Flemish) masters back in the 14th century. enjoyed great fame in Western Europe, and many of them played an important role in the development of art in other countries (especially France). However, almost all of them do not leave the mainstream of medieval art. Moreover, the approach of a new era in painting is least noticeable. Artists (for example, Melchior Bruderlam, ca. 1360-after 1409) at best multiply the number of details observed in nature in their works, but their mechanical stringing in no way contributes to the realism of the whole.

The sculpture reflected glimpses of the new consciousness much more clearly. At the end of the 14th century. Klaus Sluter (d. c. 1406) made the first attempts to break the traditional canons. The statues of Duke Philip the Bold and his wife on the portal of the tomb of the Burgundian dukes in the Dijon monastery of Chanmol (1391-1397) are distinguished by their unconditional portrait credibility. Their placement on the sides of the portal, in front of the statue of the Mother of God, located in the center, testifies to the sculptor’s desire to unite all the figures and create from them some semblance of a scene of anticipation. In the courtyard of the same monastery, Sluter, together with his nephew and student Claus de Verve (c. 1380-1439), created the composition “Golgotha” (1395-1406), the pedestal of which has come down to us, decorated with statues (the so-called Well of the Prophets), is distinguished by the power of its forms and the drama of the idea. The statue of Moses, which is part of this work, can be considered one of the most significant achievements European sculpture of his time. Among the works of Sluyter and de Verves, the figures of mourners for the tomb of Philip the Bold (1384-1411; Dijon. Museum, and Paris, Cluny Museum) should also be noted, which are characterized by sharp, increased expressiveness in the conveyance of emotions.

And yet neither Klaus Sluger nor Klaus de Verve can be considered the founders of the Dutch Renaissance. Some exaggeration of expression, excessive literalness of portrait decisions and very weak individualization of the image make us see them as predecessors rather than pioneers of a new art. In any case, the development of Renaissance trends in the Netherlands proceeded in other ways. These paths were outlined in Dutch miniature paintings from the early 15th century.

Dutch miniaturists back in the 13th-14th centuries. enjoyed the widest popularity; many of them traveled outside the country and had a very strong influence on the masters, for example, in France. And it was precisely in the field of miniatures that a monument of crucial significance was created - the so-called Turin-Milan Book of Hours.

It is known that its customer was Jean, Duke of Berry, and that work on it began shortly after 1400. But not yet completed, this Book of Hours changed its owner, and work on it dragged on until the second half of the 15th century. In 1904, during the fire of the Turin National Library, most of it burned down.

In terms of artistic perfection and its significance for the art of the Netherlands, a group of sheets, created, apparently, in the 20s, stands out among the miniatures of the Book of Hours. 15th century Their author was called Hubert and Jan van Eyck or conventionally called the Chief Master of the Book of Hours.

These miniatures are unexpectedly real. The master depicts green hills with walking girls, a seashore with white capped waves, distant cities and a cavalcade of elegant horsemen. Clouds float across the sky in flocks; the castles are reflected in the quiet waters of the river, a service is going on under the bright arches of the church, people are busy in the room around the newborn. The artist's goal is to convey the endless, living, all-pervading beauty of the Earth. But at the same time, he does not try to subordinate the image of the world to a strict ideological concept, as his Italian contemporaries did. It is not limited to recreating a plot-specific scene. People in his compositions do not receive a dominant role and are not separated from the landscape environment, which is always presented with keen observation. In Baptism, for example, the characters are depicted in the foreground, and yet the viewer perceives the scene in its landscape unity: a river valley with a castle, trees and small figures of Christ and John. All color shades are marked by a rare fidelity to nature for their time, and due to their airiness, these miniatures can be considered an exceptional phenomenon.

It is very typical for the miniatures of the Turin-Milan Book of Hours (and more broadly for painting of the 20s of the 15th century) that the artist pays attention not so much to the harmonious and reasonable organization of the world, but to its natural spatial extent. Essentially, the features of an artistic worldview that are quite specific and have no analogues in modern European art are manifested here.

For the Italian painter of the early 15th century, the gigantic human figure seemed to cast its shadow on everything, subjugating everything. In turn, space was treated with emphatic rationalism: it had clearly defined boundaries, all three dimensions were clearly expressed in it, and it served as an ideal environment for human figures. The Dutchman is not inclined to see people as the center of the universe. For him, a person is only a part of the universe, perhaps the most valuable, but does not exist outside the whole. The landscape in his works never turns into a background, and the space is devoid of calculated orderliness.

These principles indicated the formation of a new type of worldview. And it is no coincidence that their development went beyond the narrow confines of miniatures and led to the renewal of all Dutch painting and the flourishing of a special version of Renaissance art.

The first paintings, which, like the miniatures of the Turin Book of Hours, can already be classified as early Renaissance monuments, were created by the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck.

Both of them - Hubert (d. 1426) and Jan (c. 1390-1441) - played a decisive role in the formation of the Dutch Renaissance. Almost nothing is known about Hubert. Jan was apparently a very educated man, he studied geometry, chemistry, cartography, and carried out some diplomatic assignments for the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, in whose service, by the way, his trip to Portugal took place. The first steps of the Renaissance in the Netherlands can be judged by the brothers’ paintings made in the 20s, and among them such as “Myrrh-Bearing Women at the Tomb” (possibly part of a polyptych; Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen), “Madonna in the church" (Berlin), "St. Jerome" (Detroit, Art Institute).

In Jan van Eyck's painting “Madonna in the Church,” specific field observations take up an extremely large amount of space. Previous european art did not know such vitally natural images of the real world. The artist carefully draws the sculptural details, does not forget to light candles near the statue of the Madonna in the altar barrier, notes a crack in the wall, and shows the faint outlines of a flying buttress outside the window. The interior is filled with light golden light. The light glides along the church vaults, falls like sunbeams on the floor slabs, and flows freely into the doors that are open to it.

However, in this vitally convincing interior the master places the figure of Mary, with her head reaching the windows of the second tier. II, however, such a small-scale combination of figure and architecture does not give the impression of implausibility, because in van Eyck’s painting the relationships and connections that do not dominate are exactly the same as in life. The light that penetrates it is real, but it also gives the picture features of sublime enlightenment and imparts to the colors a supernatural intensity of sound. It is no coincidence that from Mary’s blue cloak and her red dress, a color echo sweeps across the entire church - these two colors flash in Mary’s crown, are intertwined in the attire of angels visible in the depths of the church, light up under the arches and on the crucifix crowning the altar barrier, and then crumble into small ones sparkles in the farthest stained glass window of the cathedral.

In Dutch art of the 20s. 15th century the greatest accuracy in conveying nature and human objects is combined with a heightened sense of beauty, and above all the color, colorful sonority of a real thing. The luminosity of color, its deep inner emotion and a kind of solemn purity deprive the work of the 20s. of any kind of everyday routine - even in those cases when a person is depicted in an everyday setting.

If the activity of the real beginning in the works of the 1420s. is common feature their Renaissance nature, then the indispensable emphasis on the miraculous enlightenment of everything earthly testifies to the perfect originality of the Renaissance in the Netherlands. This quality of Dutch painting received a powerful synthetic expression in the central work of the northern Renaissance - in the famous Ghent Altarpiece of the van Eyck brothers.

The Ghent Altarpiece (Ghent, Church of St. Bavo) is a grandiose, multi-part structure (3.435 X 4.435). When closed, it is a two-tier composition, the lower tier of which is occupied by images of statues of two Johns - the Baptist and the Evangelist, on either side of which there are kneeling customers - Iodocus Wade and Elizabeth Burlyut; the upper tier is dedicated to the scene of the Annunciation, which is crowned with the figures of sibyls and prophets, completing the composition.

Lower tier thanks to the image real people and the naturalness and tangibility of the statues, more than the top one, is connected with the environment in which the viewer is located. The color scheme of this tier seems dense and heavy. On the contrary, “The Annunciation” seems more detached, its color is light, and the space is not enclosed. The artist moves the heroes - the angel of the gospel and Mary offering thanksgiving - to the edges of the stage. And it frees up the entire space of the room and fills it with light. This light, to an even greater extent than in “Madonna in the Church,” has a dual nature - it introduces the sublime, but it also poetizes the pure comfort of ordinary everyday surroundings. And as if to prove the unity of these two aspects of life - the universal, sublime and the real, everyday - the central panels of the Annunciation are given a view of the distant perspective of the city and an image of a touching detail of household use - a washbasin with a towel hanging next to it. The artist diligently avoids the limitations of space. Light, even luminous, it continues outside the room, behind the windows, and where there is no window, there is a recess or niche, and where there is no niche, light falls sunbeam, repeating thin window sashes on the wall.

Northern Renaissance painting. A generally accepted but conditional concept " Northern Renaissance"(c.1500 - between 1540 and 1580) is applied by analogy with the Italian Renaissance to the culture and art of Germany, the Netherlands, France; one of the main features of the artistic culture of these countries is its genetic connection with the art of late Gothic.

In the 15th century Dutch painting took the leading place among the Northern European art schools: the works of R. Kampen, Jan van Eyck, D. Bouts, Hugo van der Goes, Rogier van der Weyden, H. Memling are marked by a pantheistic worldview, close attention to every detail and every phenomenon of life; the deep symbolic meaning hidden behind them underlies the broadly generalized paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch.

Portrait (A. Mohr, J. van Scorel), landscape (I. Patinir), and everyday genre (Luke of Leyden) received independent development in the Dutch art of the Renaissance. Romanism became a unique phenomenon, whose masters tried to combine the artistic techniques of Italian art with the Dutch tradition.

In Germany, the first features of the new art appeared in the 1430s. (L. Moser, H. Mulcher, K. Witz), and the Renaissance itself, the art of which was greatly influenced by the ideas of the Reformation and the events of the Peasants' War of 1524-1526, began at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. and ended already in the 1530-1540s. (paintings and graphics by Albrecht Durer, M. Grunewald, Lucas Cranach the Elder, A. Altdorfer, H. Holbein the Younger).

The cheerful and graceful style of the French Renaissance was most clearly manifested in the paintings and pencil portraits of J. Fouquet (also known as an outstanding master of miniatures).

The features of the Renaissance received a peculiar refraction in the art of England, where, under the influence of H. Holbein the Younger, who worked in London, a national school of portraiture was formed (N. Hilliard), and Spain, whose artists (A. Berruguete, D. de Siloe, L. de Morales) used experience Italian painting to create your own, harsh and expressive style. Certain features, individual elements or techniques of Renaissance art are found in artistic culture Croatia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania and other European countries.

Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder personify with their work the early, middle and late stages of Dutch Renaissance painting. A. Dürer, Grunewald (M. Niethardt), L. Cranach the Elder, H. Holbein the Younger established the principles of the new art in Germany.

Individual, authorial creativity is now replacing medieval anonymity. The theory of linear and aerial perspective, proportions, problems of anatomy and light and shadow modeling. The center of Renaissance innovations, the artistic “mirror of the era” was the illusory life-like painting; in religious art it replaces the icon, and in secular art it gives rise to independent genres of landscape, everyday painting, and portrait (the latter played a primary role in the visual affirmation of the ideals of the humanistic virtu).

Danube school, a movement in painting and graphics in Southern Germany and Austria in the 1st half of the 16th century. The Danube school includes early paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, works by A. Altdorfer (see first slide “The Battle of Alexander the Great at Issus” 1529), W. Huber and other artists, distinguished by freedom of artistic imagination, vivid emotionality, and pantheistic perception nature, forest or river landscape, interest in the fabulous and legendary coloring of the plot; They also stand out for their dynamic, impetuous manner of writing, sharp expressiveness of the drawing, and intensity of color schemes. The trends of Renaissance art are intertwined in the Danube school with the traditions of late Gothic. Dürer's work determined the leading direction of the art of the German Renaissance. His influence contemporary artists, including the artists of the Danube School, was great; it even penetrated into Italy and France. Simultaneously with Dürer and after him, a galaxy of major artists appeared. Among them were Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), who deeply felt the harmony of nature and man, and Matthias Gotthardt Neithardt, known as Matthias Grunewald (c. 1475-1528), endowed with enormous power of imagination, associated with mystical folk teachings and the Gothic tradition. His work is imbued with the spirit of rebellion, desperate frenzy or exultation, high intensity of feelings and painful expression of color and light that flares up, then fades, then goes out, then flaming.

The art of wood and metal engraving, which became truly widespread during the Reformation, gains its final intrinsic value. Drawing from a working sketch turns into a separate type of creativity; the individual style of stroke, stroke, as well as texture and the effect of incompleteness (non-finito) are beginning to be valued as independent artistic effects.

Monumental painting also becomes picturesque, illusory and three-dimensional, gaining greater visual independence from the mass of the wall.

All types of fine art now in one way or another violate the monolithic medieval synthesis (where architecture dominated), gaining comparative independence. Types of absolutely round statues, equestrian monuments, and portrait busts (in many ways reviving the ancient tradition) are being formed; new type solemn sculptural and architectural tombstone.

The ancient order system predetermines new architecture, the main types of which are the harmoniously clear in proportions and at the same time plastically eloquent palace and temple (architects are especially fascinated by the idea of ​​a temple building centric in plan). The utopian dreams characteristic of the Renaissance do not find full-scale embodiment in urban planning, but latently inspire new architectural ensembles, whose scope emphasizes “earthly,” centrically-perspectively organized horizontals, rather than Gothic vertical aspirations upward. Various types decorative arts, as well as fashions acquire a special, in their own way, “pictorial” picturesqueness. Among ornaments, the grotesque plays a particularly important semantic role.

Netherlands. Genre motifs gradually penetrated into the religious subjects of Dutch painting; within the framework of the decorative and refined style of late Gothic art, specific details accumulated and emotional accents intensified. The leading role in this process was played by miniature painting, which became widespread in the 13th-15th centuries at the courts of the French and Burgundian aristocracy, which gathered around itself talented craftsmen from city guilds. Among them, the Dutch were widely known (the Limburg brothers, the master of Marshal Boucicault). Books of hours (more precisely, books of hours - a kind of prayer books, where prayers dedicated to a certain hour are arranged by month) began to be decorated with scenes of work and entertainment in different seasons and the corresponding landscapes. With loving care, the masters captured the beauty of the world around them, creating highly artistic works, colorful, full of grace (Turin-Milan Book of Hours 1400-1450). Miniatures depicting historical events and portraits appeared in historical chronicles. In the 15th century, portraiture spread. Throughout the 16th century, everyday painting, landscape, still life, and paintings on mythological and allegorical subjects emerged as independent genres.

Since the 40s of the 15th century, in Dutch painting, on the one hand, elements of narrative have intensified, on the other - dramatic action and moods. With the destruction of patriarchal ties that cemented the life of medieval society, the sense of harmony, order and unity of the world and man disappears. A person realizes his independent life significance, he begins to believe in his mind and will. His image in art becomes more and more individually unique, in-depth, his innermost feelings and thoughts and their complexity are revealed. At the same time, a person discovers his loneliness, the tragedy of his life, his destiny. Anxiety and pessimism begin to appear in his appearance.

This new concept of the world and a person who does not believe in the strength of earthly happiness is reflected in tragic art Rogier van der Weyden(about 1400-1464), in his compositional paintings on religious subjects ("The Descent from the Cross", Madrid, Prado) and remarkable psychological portraits, of which he was the greatest master.

In the first quarter of the 15th century, a radical revolution took place in the development of Western European painting - easel painting appeared. Historical tradition connects this coup with the activities of the brothers van Eyck- founders Dutch school painting, the founders of realism in the Netherlands, who summarized in their work the searches of the masters of late Gothic sculpture and miniatures of the late 14th - early 15th centuries.

The Ghent Altarpiece is a large two-tiered multi-part fold - rows of paintings and hundreds of figures are united in it by idea and architectonics. The content of the compositions is drawn from the Apocalypse, the Bible and gospel texts. However, medieval plots seem to be rethought and interpreted in specific living images. The theme of glorifying the deity, his creation, reflections on the destinies of humanity, the idea of ​​the unity of humanity and nature, a feeling of enlightenment, admiration for the diversity of forms of the world found perfect pictorial expression here for the first time in Dutch art. In the lower tier of the fold there is “Adoration of the Lamb”. The composition is designed as a majestic crowd scene in a landscape, the space of which here has increased perspective - the gaze is directed into the depths of the landscape.

The upper tier of the fold depicts the celestial spheres inhabited by celestial beings: in the center, on golden thrones exceeding human height, the God the Father in the royal tiara, Mary and John the Baptist. Illuminated in the side doors sunlight singing and playing music angels.

The artist also solves the problem of depicting the naked human body in a new way. In the image of Adam there are no traces of the influence of ancient classics, on the basis of which the Italians painted a nude figure that was ideal in its proportions. Van Eyck's construction of the human figure corresponds only to this specific individuality. This new, more direct vision of man is an important discovery in Western European art.

In his mature years, Jan van Eyck creates works in which the emotionality and detailed narrative characteristic of the Ghent Altarpiece are replaced by the laconicism of solid monumental works. altar compositions. They consist of two or three figures surrounded by a “multiple” environment, beautiful and expensive objects, subordinated to the harmony of the whole. The characters and their environment are united not by plot action, but by a common contemplative mood and internal concentration. “Madonna of Chancellor Rolin”, “Madonna of Canon van der Paele” Van Eyck abandons the type of heroic profile portrait characteristic of miniaturists of the late 14th century and Italian painters of the 15th century. Overcoming the alienation and isolation of portrait images of Italians, Jan van Eyck turns the face of the person being portrayed in three-quarters, emphasizing the depth of the image, brings it closer to the viewer, usually places his hands at an angle, and enlivens the background with a play of chiaroscuro. "Portrait of Cardinal Albergati", "Timothy", "Man in a Red Turban".

A special place not only in the work of Jan van Eyck, but also in all Dutch art of the 15th and 16th centuries belongs to the “Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife.” The artist pushes the boundaries of a purely portrait image, turning it into a wedding scene, into a kind of apotheosis of marital fidelity, the symbol of which is the dog depicted at the feet of the couple.

Robert Campin. Flemal master. Being associated with the traditions of Dutch miniatures and sculpture of the 14th century, Kampen was the first among his compatriots to take steps towards artistic principles Early Renaissance. Kampen's works (triptych "Annunciation", "Wehrl Altar") are more archaic than the works of his contemporary Jan van Eyck, but they stand out for the democratic simplicity of their images and their penchant for everyday interpretation of plots. The images of saints in his paintings are usually placed in cozy city interiors with lovingly reproduced details of the setting. The lyricism of images and elegant coloring based on contrasts of soft local tones are combined in Kampen with a sophisticated play of folds of clothing, as if carved in wood. One of the first portrait painters in European painting ("Portrait of a Man", paired portraits of spouses).

"Madonna and Child". she is depicted in a homely setting - it seems that she has just put down a book to feed the baby. All details are depicted in great detail; The cityscape seen through the window is as clear and precise as the figures in the foreground, and the pages of the book, the decoration on the hem of the Madonna's dress and the reed fireplace screen are painstakingly rendered.

Rogier van der Weyden(around 1400-1464). Emphasis on feelings and emotions of faces. The work of Rogier van der Weyden is characterized by a peculiar reworking of the artistic techniques of Jan van Eyck. In his religious compositions, the characters of which are located in interiors with distant views, or against conventional backgrounds, Rogier van der Weyden focuses on the images of the foreground, without attaching much importance to the accurate rendering of the depth of space and everyday details of the setting. Rejecting the artistic universalism of Jan van Eyck, the master in his works concentrates on the inner world of a person, his experiences and spiritual mood. The paintings of the artist Rogier van der Weyden, which in many ways still retain the spiritualistic expression of late Gothic art, are characterized by a balanced composition, soft linear rhythms, emotional richness of a refined and bright local color (“Crucifixion”, “Nativity”, the middle part of the “Bladelin Altar”, “Adoration” Magi", Old Pinakothek, "Descent from the Cross").

The Gothic stream in Roger's work is especially clear in two small triptychs - the so-called "Altar of Mary" ("Lamentation", on the left - "Holy Family", on the right - "Appearance of Christ to Mary") and the later - "Altar of St. John" ("Baptism", on the left - "The Birth of John the Baptist" on the right - "The Execution of John the Baptist", Berlin). The work of Roger, to a much greater extent than the work of Jan van Eyck, is associated with the traditions of medieval art and is imbued with the spirit of strict church teaching.

Painting by artist Rogier van der Weyden "The Descent from the Cross". The behavior of the characters, full of grief and sorrow, makes this picture one of the most exciting in the history of art and one of the masterpieces of 15th century painting. Details such as the tears streaming down Mary Magdalene's face and the way the fabric of her robe falls away as she mournfully clasps her hands show that Van der Weyden was an astute observer of life. And yet the composition as a whole, with the figures huddled in the foreground, near the frame, as if they were placed in a shallow box, resembles a living picture from a Christmas procession rather than an accurate depiction of a real event. By making individual participants in a dramatic event bearers of various shades of feelings of grief, the artist refrains from individualizing the images, just as he refuses to transfer the scene to a real, concrete setting.

Hugo van der Goes(around 1435-1482). The work of Hus, who continued the traditions of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden in Dutch art, is characterized by a tendency towards courageous truthfulness of images and intense drama of action. In his compositions, somewhat conventional in spatial structure and large-scale relationships of figures, full of subtle, lovingly interpreted details (fragments of architecture, patterned robes, vases with flowers, etc.), the artist Hugo van der Goes introduced many brightly individual characters, united by a common experience, often giving preference to sharp-characterized common people. The background for Hus's altar images is often a poetic landscape, subtle in its colorful gradations ("The Fall"). Hus's painting is characterized by careful plastic modeling, flexibility of linear rhythms, cold, refined coloring based on the harmonies of gray-blue, white and black tones (the triptych "Adoration of the Magi" or the so-called Portinari altar, "Adoration of the Magi" and "Adoration of the Shepherds", Picture Gallery , Berlin-Dahlem). Features characteristic of late Gothic painting (the dramatic ecstasy of images, the sharp, broken rhythm of the folds of clothing, the intensity of contrasting, sonorous colors) appeared in the “Assumption of Our Lady” (Municipal Art Gallery, Bruges).

"The Fall." The half-lizard, half-man, serpent in this depiction of the Fall of Adam and Eve anxiously watches as Eve, bashfully covered by a thoughtfully planted iris, reaches out to the Tree of Knowledge for the second apple, having tasted a piece of the first. The care with which every leaf, blade of grass, and curl of hair is drawn is amazing. (The unusual braid on the back of the serpent’s head is noteworthy.)

Memling Hans(around 1440-1494). In the works of Memling, who combined in his work the features of late Gothic and Renaissance art, everyday, lyrical interpretation of religious subjects, soft contemplation, harmonious composition, is combined with the desire to idealize images, canonize the techniques of Old Netherlandish painting (triptych "Our Lady with Saints", an altar with " The Last Judgment"; triptych of the mystical betrothal of St. Catherine of Alexandria,). Memling's works, including Bathsheba, a rare nude in Dutch art female body life-size, and portraits that accurately recreate the model’s appearance (portrait of a man, Mauritshuis, The Hague; portraits of Willem Morel and Barbara van Vlanderberg), are distinguished by their elongated proportions and graceful linear rhythms.

Painting by Hans Memling "The Descent from the Cross", Granada diptych, left wing. A moving moment in Christian history is reduced to a painfully simple image of three people supporting the body of Christ and a fragment of a ladder resting on a cross. The figures are twisted in the space of the foreground, while the landscape in the distance represents a visible, but not volumetrically perceived part of the composition.

Bosch Hieronymus. Painting is entertaining(circa 1450/60-1516), Hieronymus Bosch in his multi-figure compositions, paintings on themes folk sayings, proverbs and parables ("The Temptation of Saint Anthony", triptychs "The Garden of Delights", "Adoration of the Magi", "Ship of Fools") combined sophisticated medieval fantasy, grotesque demonic images generated by boundless imagination with folklore, satirical and moralizing tendencies, with unusual for art his era with realistic innovations. Poetic landscape backgrounds, bold life observations, aptly captured by the artist Hieronymus Bosch, folk types and everyday scenes, prepared the ground for the formation of the Dutch everyday genre and landscape; the desire for irony and allegory, for the embodiment in a grotesque-satirical form of a broad picture of folk life contributed to the formation of the creative style of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and other artists.

Bosch's style is unique and has no analogues in the Dutch painting tradition. The painting of Hieronymus Bosch is not at all similar to the work of other artists of the time, such as Jan van Eyck or Rogier van der Weyden. Most of the subjects of Bosch's paintings are associated with episodes from the life of Christ or saints opposing vice, or are gleaned from allegories and proverbs about human greed and nonsense.

The vivid authenticity of Bosch's works, the ability to depict the movements of the human soul, the amazing ability to draw a rich man and a beggar, a merchant and a cripple - all this gives him a very important place in the development of genre painting.

Bosch's art reflected the crisis that gripped Dutch society during the growing social conflicts of the late 15th century. At this time, the old Dutch cities (Bruges, Tent), bound by narrow local economic regulations, lost their former power, their culture faded away. In the work of some artists there was a noticeable decline in the artistic level; archaizing tendencies or a tendency to get carried away with insignificant everyday details appeared, which hampered the further development of realism.

Durer(Durer) Albrecht (1471-1528), German painter, draftsman, engraver, art theorist. The founder of the art of the German Renaissance, Dürer studied jewelry making from his father, a native of Hungary, painting - in the workshop of the Nuremberg artist M. Wolgemut (1486-1489), from whom he adopted the principles of Dutch and German late Gothic art, became familiar with the drawings and engravings of early masters Italian Renaissance(including A. Mantegna). During these same years, Dürer was strongly influenced by M. Schongauer. In 1490-1494, during the obligatory journeys along the Rhine for a guild apprentice, Dürer made several easel engravings in the spirit of late Gothic, illustrations for the “Ship of Fools” by S. Brant, etc. The influence on Dürer of humanistic teachings, which intensified as a result of his first trip to Italy (1494-1495), manifested itself in the artist’s desire to master scientific methods of understanding the world, to in-depth study of nature, in which his attention was attracted by the most seemingly insignificant phenomena ("Bush of Grass", 1503, Albertina Collection, Vienna), and complex problems of connection in nature with color and the light-air environment ("House by the Pond", watercolor, circa 1495-1497, British Museum, London). Dürer asserted a new Renaissance understanding of personality in portraits of this period (self-portrait, 1498, Prado).

Dürer expressed the mood of the pre-Reformation era, the eve of powerful social and religious battles, in a series of woodcuts “Apocalypse” (1498), in the artistic language of which the techniques of German late Gothic and Italian Renaissance art organically merged. The second trip to Italy further strengthened Dürer's desire for clarity of images, orderliness of compositional structures ("Feast of the Rosary", 1506, careful study of the proportions of the naked human body ("Adam and Eve", 1507, Prado, Madrid). At the same time, Dürer did not lose ( especially in graphics) vigilance of observation, subject expressiveness, vitality and expressiveness of images characteristic of the art of late Gothic (cycles of woodcuts "Great Passion", circa 1497-1511, "Life of Mary", circa 1502-1511, "Little Passion", 1509 -1511). The amazing precision of the graphic language, the finest development of light-air relationships, the clarity of line and volume, the most complex philosophical underlying content are distinguished by three “masterful engravings” on copper: “Horseman, Death and the Devil” (1513) - an image of unwavering adherence to duty, steadfastness before trials of fate; “Melancholy” (1514) as the embodiment of the inner conflict of the restless creative spirit of man; “Saint Jerome” (1514) - the glorification of humanistic inquisitive research thought. By this time, Dürer had won an honorable position in his native Nuremberg and gained fame abroad, especially in Italy and the Netherlands (where he traveled in 1520-1521). Dürer was friends with the most prominent humanists in Europe. Among his customers were rich burghers, German princes and Emperor Maximilian I himself, for whom he, among other major German artists made pen drawings for the prayer book (1515).

In a series of portraits of the 1520s (J. Muffel, 1526, J. Holzschuer, 1526, both in the art gallery, Berlin-Dahlem, etc.), Dürer recreated the type of man of the Renaissance era, imbued with a proud consciousness of the self-worth of his own personality, charged with intense spiritual energy and practical purposefulness. An interesting self-portrait of Albrecht Durer at the age of 26 wearing gloves. The model's hands lying on a pedestal are a well-known technique for creating the illusion of intimacy between the subject and the viewer. Dürer could have learned this visual trick from works such as Leonard's Mona Lisa, which he saw during a trip to Italy. The landscape seen through an open window is a feature common to northern artists such as Jan Van Eyck and Robert Campin. Dürer revolutionized Northern European art by combining the experience of Dutch and Italian painting. The versatility of his aspirations was also evident in Dürer’s theoretical works (“Guide to Measuring...”, 1525; “Four Books on Human Proportions,” 1528). Dürer’s artistic quest was completed by the painting “The Four Apostles” (1526, Alte Pinakothek, Munich), which embodies four character-temperaments of people bound by a common humanistic ideal of independent thought, willpower, and perseverance in the struggle for justice and truth.