The Netherlands is a historical region that occupies part of the vast lowlands on the northern European coast from the Gulf of Finland to the English Channel. Currently, the states of the Netherlands (Holland), Belgium and Luxembourg are located in this territory.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Netherlands became a motley collection of large and small semi-independent states. The most significant among them were the Duchy of Brabant, the counties of Flanders and Holland, and the Bishopric of Utrecht. In the north of the country, the population was mainly German - the Frisians and the Dutch, in the south the descendants of the Gauls and Romans - the Flemings and Walloons - predominated.
The Dutch worked selflessly with their special talent "without boredom to do the most boring things," as the French historian Hippolyte Taine put it about these people, undividedly devoted to everyday life. They did not know lofty poetry, but the more reverently honored the simplest things: a clean, comfortable home, a warm hearth, modest but tasty food. The Dutchman is used to looking at the world as a huge house in which he is called upon to maintain order and comfort.
The main features of the art of the Renaissance of the Netherlands
Common to the art of the Renaissance in Italy and in the countries of Central Europe is the desire for a realistic depiction of man and the world around him. But these tasks were solved differently because of the difference in the nature of cultures.For the Italian artists of the Renaissance, it was important to generalize and create an ideal, from the point of view of humanism, image of a person. For them, science played an important role - the artists developed theories of perspective and teachings about proportions.
The Dutch masters were attracted by the diversity of the individual appearance of people and the richness of nature. They do not seek to create a generalized image, but convey the characteristic and special. Artists do not use the theory of perspective and others, but convey the impression of depth and space, optical effects and the complexity of light and shade relationships through careful observation.
They are characterized by love for their land and amazing attention to all the little things: to their native northern nature, to the peculiarities of life, to the details of the interior, costumes, to the difference in materials and textures ...
Dutch artists reproduce the smallest details with the utmost care and recreate the sparkling richness of colors. These new pictorial tasks could only be solved with the help of the new technique of oil painting.
The discovery of oil painting is attributed to Jan van Eyck. From the middle of the 15th century, this new "Flemish manner" supplanted the old tempera technique in Italy as well. It is no coincidence that on the Dutch altars, which are a reflection of the whole universe, you can see everything that it consists of - every blade of grass and tree in the landscape, architectural details of cathedrals and city houses, stitches of embroidered ornaments on the robes of saints, as well as a host of other, smallest, details.
The art of the 15th century is the golden age of Netherlandish painting.
Its brightest representative Jan Van Eyck. OK. 1400-1441.
The greatest master of European painting:
opened with his work a new era of the Early Renaissance in Dutch art.
He was the court painter of the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good.
He was one of the first to master the plastic and expressive possibilities of oil painting, using thin transparent layers of paint laid one on top of the other (the so-called Flemish manner of multi-layered transparent painting).
Van Eyck's largest work was the Ghent Altarpiece, which he performed with his brother.
The Ghent altar is a grand multi-tiered polyptych. Its height in the central part is 3.5 m, the width when opened is 5 m.
On the outside of the altar (when closed) the daily cycle is depicted:
- Donors are depicted in the bottom row - the city dweller Jodok Veidt and his wife, praying in front of the statues of Saints John the Baptist and John the Theologian, patrons of the church and the chapel.
- above is the scene of the Annunciation, and the figures of the Mother of God and the Archangel Gabriel are separated by the image of a window in which the city landscape looms.
The festive cycle is depicted on the inside of the altar.
When the altar doors open, a truly stunning transformation takes place before the eyes of the viewer:
- the size of the polyptych is doubled,
- the picture of everyday life is instantly replaced by the spectacle of an earthly paradise.
- cramped and gloomy closets disappear, and the world seems to swing open: the spacious landscape lights up with all the colors of the palette, bright and fresh.
The painting of the festive cycle is devoted to the theme of the triumph of the transfigured world, which is rare in Christian art, which should come after the Last Judgment, when evil will be finally defeated and truth and harmony will be established on earth.
Top row:
- in the central part of the altar, God the Father is depicted sitting on a throne,
- the Mother of God and John the Baptist sit to the left and right of the throne,
- further on both sides there are singing and playing angels,
- the nude figures of Adam and Eve close the row.
The bottom row of paintings depicts a scene of worship of the Divine Lamb.
- in the middle of the meadow rises an altar, on it stands a white Lamb, blood flows from his pierced chest into a cup
- closer to the viewer is a well from which living water flows. 
Hieronymus Bosch (1450 - 1516)
The connection of his art with folk traditions, folklore.
In his works, he whimsically combined the features of medieval fantasy, folklore, philosophical parable and satire.
He created multi-figure religious and allegorical compositions, paintings on the themes of folk proverbs, sayings and parables.
Bosch's works are filled with numerous scenes and episodes, lifelike and bizarrely fantastic images and details, full of irony and allegory.
Bosch's work had a huge impact on the development of realistic trends in the Netherlandish painting of the 16th century.
Composition "The Temptation of St. Anthony" - one of the most famous and mysterious works of the artist. The masterpiece of the master was the triptych "The Garden of Delights", an intricate allegory that has received many different interpretations. In the same period, the triptychs "The Last Judgment", "The Adoration of the Magi", the compositions "St. John on Patmos, John the Baptist in the Wilderness.
The late period of Bosch's work includes the triptych "Heaven and Hell", the compositions "The Tramp", "Carrying the Cross".
Most of Bosch's paintings of the mature and late period are bizarre grotesques containing deep philosophical overtones.
The large triptych "Hay Carriage", highly appreciated by Philip II of Spain, belongs to the mature period of the artist's work. The altar composition is probably based on an old Dutch proverb: "The world is a haystack, and everyone tries to grab as much as he can from it."
Temptation of St. Anthony. Triptych. Central part Wood, oil. 131.5 x 119 cm (centre), 131.5 x 53 cm (leaves) National Museum of Ancient Art, Lisbon 
Garden of Delights. Triptych. Around 1485. Central part
Wood, oil. 220 x 195 cm (centre), 220 x 97 cm (doors) Prado Museum, Madrid
Dutch art of the 16th century. marked by the emergence of interest in antiquity and the activities of the masters of the Italian Renaissance. At the beginning of the century, a movement based on imitation of Italian models was formed, called "romanism" (from Roma, the Latin name for Rome).
The pinnacle of Dutch painting in the second half of the century was the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder. 1525/30-1569. Nicknamed Muzhitsky.
He created a deeply national art based on Dutch traditions and local folklore.
He played a huge role in the formation of the peasant genre and the national landscape. In Brueghel's work, coarse folk humor, lyricism and tragedy, realistic details and fantastic grotesque, interest in detailed narrative and the desire for broad generalization were intricately intertwined.
In the works of Brueghel - proximity to the moralizing performances of the medieval folk theater.
The clownish duel between Maslenitsa and Lent is a common scene of fair performances held in the Netherlands on the days of seeing off winter.
Life is in full swing everywhere: there is a round dance, windows are washed here, some play dice, others trade, someone begs for alms, someone is taken to be buried ...
Proverbs. 1559. The painting is a kind of encyclopedia of Dutch folklore.
Brueghel's characters lead each other by the nose, sit between two chairs, beat their heads against the wall, hang between heaven and earth... The Dutch proverb "And there are cracks in the roof" is close in meaning to the Russian one "And the walls have ears." The Dutch “throw money into the water” means the same as the Russian “to waste money”, “to waste money”. The whole picture is dedicated to the waste of money, strength, all life - here they cover the roof with pancakes, shoot arrows into the void, shear pigs, warm themselves with the flames of a burning house and confess to the devil.
The whole earth had one language and one dialect. Moving from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to each other: "Let's make bricks and burn them with fire." And they became bricks instead of stones, and earthen tar instead of lime. And they said, “Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of the earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building. And the Lord said: “This is one people, and all have one language, and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they planned to do. Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other.” And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city and the tower. Therefore, a name was given to it: Babylon, for there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth (Genesis, ch. 11). Unlike the motley bustle of Brueghel's early works, this painting strikes the viewer with its calmness. The tower depicted in the picture resembles the Roman amphitheater Colosseum, which the artist saw in Italy, and at the same time - an anthill. Tireless work is in full swing on all floors of the huge structure: blocks rotate, ladders are thrown, figures of workers scurry about. It is noticeable that the connection between the builders has already been lost, probably due to the “mixing of languages” that has begun: somewhere construction is in full swing, and somewhere the tower has already turned into ruins.
After Jesus was handed over for crucifixion, the soldiers put a heavy cross on Him and led Him to the place of the skull called Golgotha. On the way, they seized Simon of Cyrene, who was returning home from the field, and forced him to carry the cross for Jesus. Many people followed Jesus, among them were women weeping and weeping for Him. “Carrying the Cross” is a religious, Christian picture, but it is no longer a church picture. Brueghel correlated the truths of Holy Scripture with personal experience, reflected on biblical texts, gave them his own interpretation, i.e. openly violated the imperial decree of 1550, which was in force at that time, which, under pain of death, forbade independent study of the Bible.
Brueghel creates a series of landscapes "Months". "Hunters in the Snow" is December-January.
Each season for the master is, first of all, a unique state of the earth and sky.
A crowd of peasants, captured by the rapid rhythm of the dance.
Early Netherlandish painting(rarely old Dutch painting) - one of the stages of the Northern Renaissance, an era in Dutch and, in particular, Flemish painting, spanning about a century in the history of European art, starting from the second quarter of the 15th century. Late Gothic art is replaced at this time by the early Renaissance. If the late Gothic, having appeared in France, created a universal language of art form, to which many Dutch masters of painting also contributed, then in the period described in the territory of the Netherlands a clearly recognizable independent painting school was formed, which was characterized by a realistic manner of writing, which found expression primarily in the portrait genre.
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Since the 14th century, cultural and sociological changes have taken place in these territories: secular patrons have come to replace the church as the main customer of works of art. The Netherlands as a center of art began to push back the art of the late Gothic at the French court.
The Netherlands was also connected with France by the common Burgundian dynasty, so Flemish, Walloon and Dutch artists easily found work in France at the courts of Anjou, Orleans, Berry and the French king himself. Outstanding masters of international gothic, the Limburg brothers from Geldern were essentially French artists. With a rare exception in the person of Melchior Bruderlam, only painters of a lower rank remained in their homeland, in the Netherlands.
At the origins of early Netherlandish painting, understood in a narrow sense, is Jan van Eyck, who in 1432 completed work on his main masterpiece - the Ghent Altarpiece. Even contemporaries considered the work of Jan van Eyck and other Flemish artists "new art", something completely new. Chronologically, Old Netherlandish painting developed at about the same time as the Italian Renaissance.
With the advent of the portrait, the secular, individualized theme became for the first time the main motif of painting. Genre paintings and still lifes made their breakthrough in art only during the Netherlandish baroque period of the 17th century. The bourgeois character of early Netherlandish painting speaks of the advent of the New Age. Increasingly, in addition to the nobility and clergy, rich nobility and merchants acted as customers. The person in the paintings was no longer idealized. Before the viewer appear real people with all their human flaws. Wrinkles, bags under the eyes - everything without embellishment was naturally depicted in the picture. The saints no longer lived exclusively in churches, they also entered the houses of the townspeople.
Artists
One of the very first representatives of the new artistic views, along with Jan van Eyck, is considered the Flemalsky master, who is currently identified as Robert Campin. His main work is the Altarpiece (or Triptych) of the Annunciation (other name: Merode Family Altarpiece; circa 1425), now in the Cloisters Museum in New York.
For a long time, the very existence of Jan van Eyck's brother Hubert has been questioned. The latest research has shown that Hubert van Eyck, mentioned in only a few sources, was just a mediocre artist of the Ghent school, who had neither a family relationship nor any other relation to Jan van Eyck.
Rogier van der Weyden, who probably took part in the work on the Merode triptych, is considered to be Kampen's student. In turn, he influenced Dirk Boats and Hans Memling. Memling's contemporary was Hugo van der Gus, first mentioned in 1465.
The most mysterious artist of this time, Hieronymus Bosch, stands out from this series, whose work has not yet received an unambiguous interpretation.
Next to these great masters, such early Netherlandish artists as Petrus Christus, Jan Provost, Colin de Koeter, Albert Bouts, Gosvin van der Weyden and Quentin Masseys deserve mention.
A striking phenomenon was the work of artists from Leiden: Cornelis Engelbrechtsen and his students Artgen van Leiden and Lucas van Leiden.
Only a small fraction of the work of the early Netherlandish artists has survived to this day. Countless paintings and drawings fell victim to iconoclasm during the Reformation and wars. In addition, many works were seriously damaged and in need of costly restoration. Some works have survived only in copies, while most have been lost forever.
The work of the early Netherlanders and Flemings is represented in the largest art museums in the world. But some altars and paintings are still in their old places - in churches, cathedrals and castles, such as the Ghent altar in the Cathedral of St. Bavo in Ghent. However, you can now look at it only through thick armored glass.
Influence
Italy
In the birthplace of the Renaissance, in Italy, Jan van Eyck enjoyed great respect. A few years after the death of the artist, the humanist Bartolomeo Fazio even called van Eyck "the prince among the painters of the century".
While the Italian masters used complex mathematical and geometric tools, in particular, the perspective system, the Flemings managed to correctly display "reality" without much, as it seems, difficulty. The action in the paintings no longer took place as in the Gothic at the same time on the same stage. The premises are depicted in accordance with the laws of perspective, and landscapes have ceased to be a schematic background. A wide, detailed background leads the eye to infinity. And clothes, and furniture, and furnishings were displayed with photographic accuracy.
Spain
The first evidence of the spread of northern painting techniques in Spain is found in the kingdom of Aragon, which included Valencia, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. As early as 1431, King Alphonse V sent his court painter Louis Dalmau to Flanders. In 1439, the artist from Bruges, Louis Alimbrot, moved to Valencia from his studio ( Luis Alimbrot, Lodewijk Allyncbrood). Jan van Eyck probably visited Valencia as early as 1427 as part of a Burgundian delegation.
Valencia, at that time one of the most significant centers of the Mediterranean, attracted artists from all over Europe. In addition to the traditional art schools of the "international style", there were workshops working in both the Flemish and Italian styles. Here the so-called "Spanish-Flemish" direction of art developed, the main representatives of which are considered to be Bartolome Bermejo,.
The Castilian kings owned several famous works by Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and Jan van Eyck. In addition, the visiting artist Juan de Flandes ("Jan of Flanders", surname unknown), became the court portrait painter of Queen Isabella, who laid the foundations of the realistic school of Spanish court portraiture.
Portugal
An independent school of painting arose in Portugal in the second half of the 15th century in the Lisbon workshop of the court painter Nuño Gonçalves. The work of this artist is in complete isolation: he seems to have had neither predecessors nor followers. The Flemish influence is felt in particular in his polyptych "Saint Vincent" Jan van Eyck und seine Zeit. Flamische Meister und der Süden 1430-1530. Ausstellungskatalog Brügge, Stuttgart 2002. Darmstadt 2002.
- Bodo Brinkmann: Die flämische Buchmalerei am Ende des Burgunderreichs. Der Meister des Dresdner Gebetbuchs und die Miniaturisten seiner Zeit. Turnhout 1997. ISBN 2-503-50565-1
- Birgit Franke, Barbara Welzel (Hg.): Die Kunst der burgundischen Niederlande. Eine Einführung. Berlin 1997. ISBN 3-496-01170-X
- Max Jakob Friedländer: Altniederländische Malerei. 14 Bde. Berlin 1924-1937.
- Erwin Panofsky: Die altniederländische Malerei. Ihr Ursprung und Wesen.Übersetzt und hrsg. von Jochen Sander and Stephan Kemperdick. Koln 2001. ISBN 3-7701-3857-0 (Original: Early Netherlandish Painting. 2 bde. Cambridge (Mass.) 1953)
- Otto Pacht: Van Eyck, die Begründer der altniederländischen Malerei. Munich 1989. ISBN 3-7913-1389-4
- Otto Pacht: Altniederländische Malerei. Von Rogier van der Weyden bis Gerard David. Hrsg. von Monika Rosenauer. Munich 1994. ISBN 3-7913-1389-4
- Jochen Sander, Stephan Kemperdick: Der Meister von Flémalle und Rogier van der Weyden: Die Geburt der neuzeitlichen Malerei: Eine Ausstellung des Städel Museums, Frankfurt am Main und der Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008
- norbert wolf: Trecento und Altniederländische Malerei. Kunst-Epochen, Bd. 5 (Reclams Universal Bibliothek 18172).
Note. The list includes, in addition to the artists of the Netherlands, also the painters of Flanders.
15th century Dutch art
The first manifestations of Renaissance art in the Netherlands date back to the beginning of the 15th century. The first paintings that can already be classified as early Renaissance monuments were created by the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Both of them - Hubert (died in 1426) and Jan (circa 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 person, studied geometry, chemistry, cartography, carried out some diplomatic missions of the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Good, in whose service, by the way, he traveled to Portugal. The first steps of the Renaissance in the Netherlands can be judged by the pictorial works of the brothers, made in the 20s of the 15th century, and among them such as “Myrrh-bearing women at the tomb” (possibly part of a polyptych; Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans-van Beiningen), “ Madonna in the Church" (Berlin), "Saint Jerome" (Detroit, Art Institute).
The van Eyck brothers occupy an exceptional place in contemporary art. But they were not alone. At the same time, other painters worked with them, stylistically and in a problematic way related to them. Among them, the first place undoubtedly belongs to the so-called Flemal master. Many ingenious attempts have been made to determine his true name and origin. Of these, the most convincing version, according to which this artist receives the name Robert Campin and a fairly developed biography. Formerly called Master of the Altar (or "Annunciation") Merode. There is also an unconvincing point of view attributing the works attributed to him to the young Rogier van der Weyden.
It is known about Campin that he was born in 1378 or 1379 in Valenciennes, received the title of master in Tournai in 1406, lived there, performed many decorative works in addition to paintings, was a teacher of a number of painters (including Rogier van der Weyden, which will be discussed below, from 1426, and Jacques Dare from 1427) and died in 1444. The art of Kampin retained everyday features in the general "pantheistic" scheme and thus turned out to be very close to the next generation of Netherlandish painters. The early works of Rogier van der Weyden and Jacques Dare, an author who was extremely dependent on Campin (for example, his Adoration of the Magi and Meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, 1434-1435; Berlin), clearly reveal an interest in the art of this master, which certainly time trend appears.
Rogier van der Weyden was born in 1399 or 1400; and died in 1464. Some of the largest artists of the Dutch Renaissance (for example, Memling) studied with him, and he was widely known not only in his homeland, but also in Italy (the famous scientist and philosopher Nicholas of Cusa called him the greatest artist; later Dürer noted his work ). The work of Rogier van der Weyden served as a nourishing basis for a variety of painters of the next generation. Suffice it to say that his workshop - the first such a widely organized workshop in the Netherlands - had a strong influence on the spread of the style of one master, unprecedented for the 15th century, ultimately relegated this style to the sum of stencil techniques and even played the role of a brake on painting at the end of the century. And yet the art of the middle of the 15th century cannot be reduced to the Rogier tradition, although it is closely connected with it. The other way is embodied primarily in the work of Dirik Bouts and Albert Ouwater. They, like Rogier, are somewhat alien to the pantheistic admiration for life, and for them the image of a person is increasingly losing touch with the questions of the universe - philosophical, theological and artistic questions, acquiring ever greater concreteness and psychological certainty. But Rogier van der Weyden, a master of elevated dramatic sound, an artist who strove for individual and at the same time sublime images, was mainly interested in the sphere of human spiritual properties. The achievements of Bouts and Ouwater lie in the field of enhancing the everyday authenticity of the image. Among the formal problems, they were more interested in issues related to solving not so much expressive as visual problems (not the sharpness of the picture and the expression of color, but the spatial organization of the picture and the naturalness, naturalness of the light and air environment).
Portrait of a Young Woman, 1445, Art Gallery, Berlin
Saint Ivo, 1450, National Gallery, London
Saint Luke Painting the Image of the Madonna, 1450, Groningen Museum, Bruges
But before moving on to consider the work of these two painters, it is necessary to dwell on a phenomenon of a smaller scale, which shows that the discoveries of the art of the middle of the century, being at the same time a continuation of the van Eyck-Kampen traditions and apostasy from them, were in both these qualities deeply justified. The more conservative painter Petrus Christus vividly demonstrates the historical inevitability of this apostasy, even for artists who are not inclined to radical discoveries. From 1444, Christus became a citizen of Bruges (he died there in 1472/1473) - that is, he saw the best works of van Eyck and was formed under the influence of his tradition. Without resorting to the sharp aphorism of Rogier van der Weyden, Christus achieved a more individualized and differentiated characterization than van Eyck did. However, his portraits (E. Grimston - 1446, London, National Gallery; Carthusian monk - 1446, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) at the same time testify to a certain decrease in imagery in his work. In art, the craving for the concrete, the individual, and the particular was more and more pronounced. Perhaps these trends were most clearly manifested in the work of Bouts. Younger than Rogier van der Weyden (born between 1400 and 1410), he was far from the dramatic and analytical nature of this master. And yet, early Bouts in many ways comes from Rogier. The altarpiece with the "Descent from the Cross" (Granada, Cathedral) and a number of other paintings, such as "The Entombment" (London, National Gallery), testify to a deep study of the work of this artist. But the originality is already noticeable here - Bouts gives his characters more space, he is interested not so much in the emotional environment as in the action, in the very process of it, his characters are more active. The same is true for portraits. In a superb portrait of a man (1462; London, National Gallery), prayerfully raised - although without any exaltation - eyes, a special mouth line and neatly folded hands have such an individual coloring that van Eyck did not know. Even in the details you can feel this personal touch. A somewhat prosaic, but ingenuously real reflection lies on all the works of the master. He is most noticeable in his multi-figured compositions. And especially in his most famous work - the altar of the Louvain church of St. Peter (between 1464 and 1467). If the viewer always perceives the work of van Eyck as a miracle of creativity, creation, then other feelings arise before the works of Bouts. Bouts' compositional work speaks of him more as a director. Mindful of the successes of such a “director’s” method (that is, a method in which the artist’s task is to arrange characteristic characters, as it were, taken from nature, to organize the scene) in subsequent centuries, one should pay attention to this phenomenon in the work of Dirk Bouts.
The next step in the art of the Netherlands captures the last three or four decades of the 15th century - an extremely difficult time for the life of the country and its culture. This period opens with the work of Jos van Wassenhove (or Joos van Gent; between 1435-1440 - after 1476), an artist who played a significant role in the development of new painting, but who left in 1472 for Italy, acclimatized there and organically included in Italian art. His altarpiece with the "Crucifixion" (Ghent, St. Bavo's Church) testifies to the attraction to the narrative, but at the same time about the desire to deprive the story of cold dispassion. The latter he wants to achieve with the help of grace and decorativeness. His altarpiece is secular in nature, with a light color scheme built on exquisite iridescent tones.
This period continues with the work of the master of exceptional talent - Hugo van der Goes. He was born around 1435, became a master at Ghent in 1467 and died in 1482. The earliest works of Hus include several images of the Madonna and Child, which differ in the lyrical aspect of the image (Philadelphia, Museum of Art, and Brussels, Museum), and the painting "Saint Anna, Mary with Child and a Donor" (Brussels, Museum). Developing the findings of Rogier van der Weyden, Hus sees in the composition not so much a way of harmonic organization of the depicted as a means of concentration and revealing the emotional content of the scene. A person is remarkable for Gus only by the strength of his personal feelings. At the same time, Gus is attracted by tragic feelings. However, the image of Saint Genevieve (on the back of Lamentation) testifies that, in search of naked emotion, Hugo van der Goes began to pay attention to its ethical significance as well. In the Portinari altar, Hus tries to express his faith in the spiritual capabilities of man. But his art becomes nervous and tense. Gus's artistic techniques are varied - especially when he needs to recreate the spiritual world of a person. Sometimes, as in conveying the reaction of the shepherds, he juxtaposes close feelings in a certain sequence. Sometimes, as in the image of Mary, the artist outlines the general features of the experience, according to which the viewer completes the feeling as a whole. Sometimes - in the images of a narrow-eyed angel or Margarita - he resorts to deciphering the image to compositional or rhythmic techniques. Sometimes the very elusiveness of psychological expression turns into a means of characterization for him - just like a reflection of a smile plays on the dry, colorless face of Maria Baroncelli. And a huge role is played by pauses - in the spatial solution and in action. They make it possible to mentally develop, to complete the feeling that the artist has outlined in the image. The nature of the images of Hugo van der Goes always depends on the role they should play as a whole. The third shepherd is really natural, Joseph is fully psychological, the angel to his right is almost surreal, and the images of Margaret and Magdalene are complex, synthetic and built on exceptionally subtle psychological gradations.
Hugo van der Goes always wanted to express, embody in his images the spiritual softness of a person, his inner warmth. But in essence, the last portraits of the artist testify to the growing crisis in Hus's work, because his spiritual structure is generated not so much by the awareness of the individual qualities of the individual, but by the tragic loss of the unity of man and the world for the artist. In the last work - "The Death of Mary" (Bruges, Museum) - this crisis results in the collapse of all the creative aspirations of the artist. The despair of the apostles is hopeless. Their gestures are meaningless. Floating in the radiance of Christ, with his suffering, it seems to justify their suffering, and his pierced palms are turned out to the viewer, and a figure of indefinite size violates the large-scale structure and sense of reality. It is also impossible to understand the measure of the reality of the experience of the apostles, for they all have the same feeling. And it is not so much theirs as the artist's. But its bearers are still physically real and psychologically convincing. Similar images will be revived later, when at the end of the 15th century in the Dutch culture the century-old tradition (with Bosch) comes to its end. A strange zigzag forms the basis of the composition of the picture and organizes it: the seated apostle, only motionless, looking at the viewer, is tilted from left to right, the prostrate Mary is from right to left, Christ, floating, is from left to right. And the same zigzag in colors: the figure of the seated color is associated with Mary, the one lying on a dull blue fabric, in a robe also blue, but the blue is the ultimate, extreme, then the ethereal, immaterial blueness of Christ. And around the colors of the robes of the apostles: yellow, green, blue - infinitely cold, clear, unnatural. The feeling in "Assumption" is naked. It leaves no room for hope or humanity. At the end of his life, Hugo van der Goes went to a monastery, his very last years were overshadowed by mental illness. Apparently, in these biographical facts one can see the reflection of the tragic contradictions that determined the art of the master. Hus's work was known and appreciated, and it attracted attention even outside the Netherlands. Jean Clouet the Elder (Master of Moulin) was strongly influenced by his art, Domenico Ghirlandaio knew and studied the Portinari altarpiece. However, his contemporaries did not understand him. Netherlandish art was steadily leaning towards a different path, and a few traces of the impact of Hus's work only set off the strength and prevalence of these other trends. They manifested themselves with the greatest completeness and consistency in the works of Hans Memling.
Earthly vanity, triptych, central panel,
Hell, left panel of the triptych "Earthly Vanity",
1485, Museum of Fine Arts, Strastbourg
Hans Memling, apparently born in Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt am Main, in 1433 (died 1494), the artist received excellent training from Rogier and, having moved to Bruges, gained wide popularity there. Already relatively early works reveal the direction of his search. The beginnings of light and sublime received from him a much more secular and earthly meaning, and everything earthly - some ideal elation. An example is the altar with the Madonna, saints and donors (London, National Gallery). Memling seeks to preserve the everyday appearance of his real heroes and bring ideal heroes closer to them. The exalted beginning ceases to be an expression of certain pantheistically understood general world forces and turns into a natural spiritual property of a person. The principles of Memling's work come through more clearly in the so-called Floreins-Altar (1479; Bruges, Memling Museum), the main stage and the right wing of which are, in essence, free copies of the corresponding parts of Rogier's Munich altarpiece. He drastically reduces the size of the altar, cuts off the top and sides of Rogier's composition, reduces the number of figures and, as it were, brings the action closer to the viewer. The event loses its majestic scope. The images of the participants are deprived of representativeness and acquire private features, the composition is a shade of soft harmony, and the color, while maintaining purity and transparency, completely loses Rogier's cold, sharp sonority. It seems to tremble with light, clear shades. Even more characteristic is the Annunciation (circa 1482; New York, Leman collection), where Rogier's scheme is used; the image of Mary is given the features of soft idealization, the angel is significantly genreized, and the interior items are written out with van Eyckian love. At the same time, the motifs of the Italian Renaissance - garlands, putti, etc. - are increasingly penetrating into Memling's work, and the compositional structure is becoming more and more measured and clear (triptych with Madonna and Child, Angel and Donor, Vienna). The artist tries to blur the line between the concrete, burgher-like beginning and the idealizing, harmonious one.
Memling's art attracted the close attention of the masters of the northern provinces. But they were also interested in other features - those that were associated with the influence of Hus. The northern provinces, including Holland, lagged behind the southern ones in that period both economically and spiritually. Early Dutch painting generally did not go beyond the late medieval yet provincial mold, and its craft never rose to the level of the artistry of the Flemish painters. Only from the last quarter of the 15th century did the situation change thanks to the art of Hertgen tot sint Jans. He lived in Harlem, with the monks of St. John (to which he owes his nickname - Sint Jans in translation means St. John) and died young - twenty-eight years old (born in Leiden (?) around 1460/65, died in Harlem in 1490-1495 ). Gertgen vaguely felt the anxiety that worried Hus. But without rising to his tragic insights, he discovered the soft charm of simple human feeling. He is close to Gus with his interest in the inner, spiritual world of man. Among the major works of Gertgen is an altarpiece written for the Harlem Johnites. From it, the right, now sawn double-sided sash, has been preserved. Its inner side is a large multi-figure mourning scene. Gertgen achieves both goals set by the time: conveying warmth, humanity of feeling and creating a vitally convincing narrative. The latter is especially noticeable on the outer side of the leaf, which depicts the burning of the remains of John the Baptist by Julian the Apostate. The participants in the action are endowed with an exaggerated characteristic, and the action is divided into a number of independent scenes, each of which is presented with lively observation. Along the way, the master creates, perhaps, one of the first group portraits in European art of the new time: built on the principle of a simple combination of portrait characteristics, he anticipates the work of the 16th century. To understand the work of Gertgen, his "Family of Christ" (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), presented in a church interior, interpreted as a real spatial environment, gives a lot. The foreground figures remain significant, without showing any feelings, maintaining their everyday appearance with calm dignity. The artist creates images, perhaps the most burgher in character in the art of the Netherlands. At the same time, it is significant that Hertgen understands tenderness, good looks and a certain naivety not as outwardly characteristic signs, but as certain properties of the human spiritual world. And this fusion of the burgher feeling of life with deep emotionality is an important feature of Hertgen's work. It is no coincidence that he did not give the spiritual movements of his heroes an exalted universal character. He deliberately prevents his characters from becoming exceptional. Because of this, they seem not individual. They have tenderness and no other feelings or extraneous thoughts, the very clarity and purity of their experiences makes them far from everyday routine. However, the ideality of the image resulting from this never seems abstract or artificial. These features also distinguish one of the best works of the artist, "Nativity" (London, National Gallery), a small picture, fraught with feelings of excitement and surprise.
Gertgen died early, but the principles of his art did not remain in obscurity. However, the Master of the Braunschweig diptych standing closer to him (“Saint Bavo”, Braunschweig, Museum; “Christmas”, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) and some other anonymous masters not so much developed Hertgen's principles as gave them the character of a widespread standard. Perhaps the most significant among them is the Master Virgo inter virgines (named after the painting of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, depicting Mary among the holy virgins), who gravitated not so much to the psychological justification of emotion, but to the sharpness of its expression in small, rather everyday and sometimes almost deliberately ugly figures ( Entombment, St. Louis, Museum; Lamentation, Liverpool; Annunciation, Rotterdam). But also. his work is rather evidence of the exhaustion of an age-old tradition than an expression of its development.
A sharp decline in the artistic level is also noticeable in the art of the southern provinces, whose masters were more and more inclined to be carried away by minor everyday details. More interesting than others is the very narrative Master of the legend of St. Ursula, who worked in Bruges in the 80s-90s of the 15th century (“The Legend of St. Ursula”; Bruges, the Monastery of the Black Sisters), an unknown author of portraits of the Baroncelli spouses (Florence, Uffizi), who were not devoid of skill, but also the very traditional Bruges Master of the legend of St. Lucia ("Altar of St. Lucia", 1480, Bruges, St. James Church, and also a polyptych, Tallinn, Museum). The formation of empty, petty art at the end of the 15th century is the inevitable antithesis of the quests of Huss and Hertgen. Man has lost the main pillar of his worldview - faith in a harmonious and favorable order of the universe. But if the widespread consequence of this was only the impoverishment of the former concept, then a closer look revealed threatening and mysterious features in the world. To answer the insoluble questions of the time, late medieval allegories, demonology, and gloomy predictions of Holy Scripture were involved. In the context of growing acute social contradictions and severe conflicts, Bosch's art arose.
Hieronymus van Aken, nicknamed Bosch, was born in Hertogenbosch (he died there in 1516), that is, away from the main art centers of the Netherlands. His early works are not devoid of a touch of some primitiveness. But already they strangely combine a sharp and disturbing sense of the life of nature with a cold grotesqueness in the depiction of people. Bosch responds to the trend of modern art - with its craving for the real, with its concretization of the image of a person, and then - the decrease in its role and significance. He takes this trend to a certain limit. In the art of Bosch, satirical or, better, sarcastic images of the human race appear. This is his "Operation to extract the stones of stupidity" (Madrid, Prado). The operation is performed by a monk - and here one sees an evil grin at the clergy. But the one to whom it is made looks intently at the viewer, this look makes us involved in the action. Sarcasm grows in Bosch's work, he presents people as passengers on a ship of fools (a painting and a drawing for it in the Louvre). He turns to folk humor - and it takes on a gloomy and bitter shade under his hand.
Bosch comes to the affirmation of the gloomy, irrational and base nature of life. He not only expresses his worldview, his sense of life, but gives it a moral and ethical assessment. Haystack is one of Bosch's most significant works. In this altar, a naked sense of reality is fused with allegoricalness. The haystack alludes to the old Flemish proverb: "The world is a haystack: and everyone takes from it what he can grab"; people in plain sight kiss and play music between an angel and some diabolical creature; fantastic creatures pull the wagon, and the pope, the emperor, ordinary people follow it joyfully and obediently: some run ahead, rush between the wheels and die, crushed. The landscape in the distance is neither fantastic nor fabulous. And above everything - on a cloud - a little Christ with raised hands. However, it would be wrong to think that Bosch gravitates towards the method of allegorical similes. On the contrary, he strives to ensure that his idea is embodied in the very essence of artistic decisions, so that it appears before the viewer not as an encrypted proverb or parable, but as a generalizing unconditional way of life. With a sophistication of fantasy unfamiliar to the Middle Ages, Bosch populates his paintings with creatures that whimsically combine different animal forms, or animal forms with objects of the inanimate world, puts them in obviously improbable relationships. The sky turns red, birds with sails fly through the air, monstrous creatures crawl across the face of the earth. Horse-legged fish open their mouths, and rats are adjacent to them, carrying on their backs reviving wooden snags from which people hatch. The horse's croup turns into a giant jug, and a tailed head sneaks somewhere on thin bare legs. Everything crawls and everything is endowed with sharp, scratching forms. And everything is infected with energy: every creature - small, deceitful, tenacious - is seized with an evil and hasty movement. Bosch gives these phantasmagoric scenes the greatest persuasiveness. He abandons the image of the action unfolding in the foreground and spreads it to the whole world. He imparts to his multi-figured dramatic extravaganzas an eerie tinge in its generality. Sometimes he introduces a dramatization of a proverb into the picture - but there is no humor left in it. And in the center he places a small defenseless figure of St. Anthony. Such, for example, is the altar with the "Temptation of St. Anthony" on the central sash from the Lisbon Museum. But here Bosch shows an unprecedentedly sharp, naked sense of reality (especially in the scenes on the outer doors of the mentioned altar). In the mature works of Bosch, the world is limitless, but its spatiality is different - less impetuous. The air seems clearer and damper. This is how "John on Patmos" is written. On the reverse side of this picture, where scenes of the martyrdom of Christ are depicted in a circle, amazing landscapes are presented: transparent, clean, with wide open spaces of the river, a high sky, and others - tragic and intense ("Crucifixion"). But the more insistently Bosch thinks about people. He tries to find an adequate expression of their life. He resorts to the form of a large altar and creates a strange, phantasmagoric grandiose spectacle of the sinful life of people - the "Garden of Delights".
The artist's latest works strangely combine the fantasy and reality of his previous works, but at the same time they have a sense of sad reconciliation. Clusters of evil creatures are scattered, previously triumphantly spreading across the entire field of the picture. Separate, small, they still hide under a tree, appear from quiet river jets or run through deserted hillocks overgrown with grass. But they decreased in size, lost activity. They no longer attack humans. And he (still this is St. Anthony) sits between them - reads, thinks ("St. Anthony", Prado). Bosch was not interested in the position of one person in the world. Saint Anthony in his previous works is defenseless, pitiful, but not alone - in fact, he is deprived of that share of independence that would allow him to feel lonely. Now the landscape is associated with just one person, and the theme of human loneliness in the world arises in Bosch's work. With Bosch, the art of the 15th century ends. Bosch's work completes this stage of pure insights, then intense searches and tragic disappointments.
But the trend personified by his art was not the only one. No less symptomatic is another trend associated with the work of a master of an immeasurably smaller scale - Gerard David. He died late - in 1523 (born around 1460). But, like Bosch, he closed the 15th century. Already his early works (The Annunciation; Detroit) are of a prosaic-real warehouse; works of the very end of the 1480s (two paintings on the plot of the Court of Cambyses; Bruges, Museum) reveal a close relationship with Bouts; better than other compositions of a lyrical nature with a developed, active landscape environment (“Rest on the Flight into Egypt”; Washington, National Gallery). But most prominently, the impossibility for the master to go beyond the century is visible in his triptych with the Baptism of Christ (early 16th century; Bruges, Museum). The closeness, miniaturization of painting seems to be in direct conflict with the large scale of the picture. Reality in his vision is devoid of life, emasculated. Behind the intensity of color there is neither spiritual tension nor a sense of the preciousness of the universe. The enamel of the painting style is cold, self-contained and devoid of emotional focus.
The 15th century in the Netherlands was a time of great art. By the end of the century, it had exhausted itself. New historical conditions, the transition of society to another stage of development caused a new stage in the evolution of art. It originated at the beginning of the 16th century. But in the Netherlands, with the primordial combination of the secular principle, which comes from the van Eycks, which is characteristic of their art, with religious criteria in assessing life phenomena, with the inability to perceive a person in his self-sufficient greatness, beyond questions of spiritual communion with the world or with God, there is a new era in the Netherlands inevitably had to come only after the strongest and most severe crisis of the entire previous worldview. If in Italy the High Renaissance was a logical consequence of Quattrocento art, then in the Netherlands there was no such connection. The transition to a new era turned out to be especially painful, since in many respects it entailed the denial of previous art. In Italy, a break with medieval traditions occurred as early as the 14th century, and the art of the Italian Renaissance retained the integrity of its development throughout the Renaissance. In the Netherlands, the situation is different. The use of medieval heritage in the 15th century made it difficult to apply established traditions in the 16th century. For Netherlandish painters, the line between the 15th and 16th centuries turned out to be associated with a radical break in the worldview.
Dutch artists have made a great contribution to the work of masters who began their work in the 17th century and have not stopped until now. However, they had influence not only on their colleagues, but also on professionals in literature (Valentin Proust, Donna Tartt) and photography (Ellen Cooy, Bill Gekas and others).
Start of development
In 1648, Holland gained independence, but for the formation of a new state, the Netherlands had to endure an act of revenge from Spain, which destroyed about 10 thousand people in the Flemish city of Antwerp at that time. As a result of the massacre, the inhabitants of Flanders emigrated from the territories controlled by the Spanish authorities.
Based on this, it would be logical to admit that the impetus for independent Dutch artists came precisely from Flemish creativity.
Since the 17th century, both state and artistic branches have taken place, which leads to the formation of two schools of arts, delimited by nationality. They had a common origin, but in signs they differed quite a lot. While Flanders remained under the wings of Catholicism, Holland experienced a completely new flowering from the 17th century onwards.
Dutch culture
In the 17th century, the new state only embarked on the path of its development, completely breaking the connection with the art of a bygone era.
The struggle with Spain gradually subsided. The national mood began to be traced in popular circles when departing from the Catholic religion imposed earlier by the authorities.
The Protestant domination had a controversial view of decoration, which led to the reduction of work on religious subjects, and later only played into the hands of secular art.
Never before has the real surrounding reality been so often depicted in the pictures. In their works, Dutch artists wanted to show ordinary everyday life without embellishment, refined tastes and nobility.
The secular artistic explosion gave rise to such numerous trends as landscape, portrait, everyday genre and still life (which even the most developed centers of Italy and France did not know existed).
The Dutch artists' own vision of realism, expressed in portraits, landscapes, interior works and still life paintings, gave rise to the interest of all sectors of society in this skill.
Thus, the Dutch art of the 17th century was called the "Golden Age of Dutch Painting", securing its status as the most outstanding era in the painting of the Netherlands.
It is important to know: there is an erroneous opinion that the Dutch school depicted only the mediocrity of human existence, but the masters of those times brazenly destroyed the framework with the help of their fantastic works (for example, "Landscape with John the Baptist" by Blumart).
Dutch artists of the 17th century. Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn is considered to be one of the largest artistic figures in Holland. In addition to the activities of the artist, he was also engaged in engraving and was rightfully considered a master of chiaroscuro.
His legacy is rich in individual diversity: portraits, genre scenes, still lifes, landscapes, as well as paintings on subjects of history, religion and mythology.
His ability to master chiaroscuro made it possible to enhance the emotional expressiveness and spirituality of a person.
While working on portraits, he worked on human facial expressions.
In connection with the heartbreaking tragic events, his later works were filled with a dim light that reveals the deep feelings of people, as a result of which brilliant works became of no interest to anyone.
At that time, external beauty was in fashion without any attempts to dive into depth, as well as naturalism, which was at odds with outright realism.
Every Russian art lover can see the painting "The Return of the Prodigal Son" with his own eyes, since this work is in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
Frans Hals
Frans Hals is a great Dutch artist and a major portrait painter who helped introduce the genre of free writing into Russian art.
The work that brought him fame was a painting called "The Banquet of the Officers of the Rifle Company of St. George", painted in 1616.
His portrait work for that time was too natural, which was out of step with the present day. Due to the fact that the artist remained misunderstood, he, like the great Rembrandt, ended his life in poverty. The Gypsy Woman (1625-1630) is one of his most famous works.
Jan Steen
Jan Steen is one of the most witty and hilarious Dutch artists at first sight. Ridiculing social vices, he liked to resort to the skill of social satire. He, entertaining the viewer with harmless, funny images of revelers and ladies of easy virtue, actually warned against such a lifestyle.
The artist also had calmer paintings, for example, the work "Morning Toilet", which at first glance seemed to be an absolutely innocent action. But if you look closely at the details, you can be quite surprised by their revelations: these are traces of stockings that previously squeezed your legs, and a pot filled with something indecent at night, as well as a dog that allows itself to be right on the hostess's pillow.
In the best of his own works, the artist was ahead of his colleagues in the elegantly skillful combination of color palettes and mastery of shadows.
Other Dutch artists
In this article, only three bright people out of dozens worthy of standing on a par with them on the same list were listed:
So, in this article, you got acquainted with the Dutch artists of the 17th century and their work.
Dutch painting until the end of the 16th century was inseparably linked with the Flemish and had the common name of the “Dutch school”. Both of them, being an offshoot of German painting, consider the van Eyck brothers to be their ancestors and go in the same direction for a long time, developing the same technique, so that the artists of Holland are no different from their Flanders and Brabant counterparts.
When the Dutch people got rid of the oppression of Spain, Dutch painting takes on a national character. Dutch artists are distinguished by the reproduction of nature with special love in all its simplicity and truth and a subtle sense of color.
The Dutch were the first to realize that even in inanimate nature everything breathes life, everything is attractive, everything is capable of evoking thought and exciting the movement of the heart.
Among landscape painters who interpret their native nature, Jan van Goyen (1595-1656) is especially respected, who, together with Ezaias van de Velde (c. 1590-1630) and Pieter Moleyn the Elder (1595-1661), is considered the founder of the Dutch landscape.
But the artists of Holland cannot be divided into schools. The expression "Dutch school of painting" is very conditional. In Holland, organized societies of artists took place, which were free corporations that protected the rights of their members and did not influence creative activity.
The name of Rembrandt (1606-1669) shines especially brightly in history, in whose personality all the best qualities of Dutch painting were concentrated and his influence was reflected in all its genres - in portraits, historical paintings, everyday scenes and landscapes.
In the 17th century, domestic painting successfully developed, the first experiments of which are noted even in the old Netherlandish school. In this genre, the names of Cornelis Beg (1620-64), Richard Brackenbürg (1650-1702), Cornelis Dusart (1660-1704), Henryk Rokes, nicknamed Sorg (1621-82),
Artists who painted scenes of military life can be classified as genre painters. The main representative of this branch of painting is the famous and extraordinarily prolific Philips Wowerman (1619-68)
In a special category, one can single out the masters who in their paintings combined the landscape with the image of animals. The most famous among such painters of the rural idyll is Paulus Potter (1625-54); Albert Cuyp (1620-91).
With the greatest attention, the artists of Holland treated the sea.
In the work of Willem van de Velde the Elder (1611 or 1612-93), his famous son Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633-1707), Ludolf Bakhuizen (1631-1708), painting of marine species constituted their specialty.
In the field of still life, Jan-Davids de Gem (1606-83), his son Cornelis (1631-95), Abraham Mignon (1640-79), Melchior de Gondekuter (1636-95), Maria Osterwijk (1630-93) gained the greatest fame .
The brilliant period of Dutch painting did not last long - only one century.
With the beginning of the XVIII century. its decline begins, the reason for this is the tastes and views of the pompous era of Louis XIV. Instead of a direct relationship to nature, love for the native and sincerity, the dominance of preconceived theories, conventionality, imitation of the luminaries of the French school is established. The main distributor of this unfortunate direction was the Fleming Gerard de Leresse (1641-1711), who settled in Amsterdam,
The famous Adrian van de Werff (1659-1722) also contributed to the decline of the school, the dull color of his paintings once seemed the height of perfection.
Foreign influence weighed heavily on Dutch painting until the twenties of the 19th century.
Subsequently, Dutch artists turned to their antiquity - to the strict observation of nature.
The latest Dutch painting is especially rich in landscape painters. Among them are Andreas Schelfhout (1787-1870), Barent Kukkoek (1803-62), Anton Mauve (1838-88), Jacob Maris (b. 1837), Johannes Weissenbruch (1822-1880) and others.
Among the newest marine painters in Holland, the palm belongs to Johannes Schotel (1787-1838).
In painting animals, Wouters Verschoor (1812-74) showed great skill.
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