Fruit and fly
The artist Jan Van Huysum, the great painter and master of the Dutch still life, lived in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century and was very popular with his contemporaries.
Very little is known about the life and work of Jan van Huysum. He was born in the family of the artist Justus van Huysum Sr., his three brothers were also artists. In 1704 Jan Van Huysum married Marguerite Schouten.
Portrait of Jan van Huysum by Arnold Bonen, circa 1720
The artist very quickly became a well-known artist and a recognized master of the Dutch still life. Crowned persons decorated their chambers and front rooms with paintings by the master. For the rest of the public, the works of Jan Van Huysum were not available. The fact is that the master worked on each painting for a very long time. And his work was very expensive - ten times more expensive than paintings by Rembrandt, Jan Steen and Albert Cuyp.
Each picture is dozens of layers of transparent paint and scrupulously painted details: layer by layer and stroke by stroke. So for several years the still life of this master was born.
The brush of Jan van Huysum owns several rather interesting landscapes, but the main theme of the artist is still lifes. Experts divide Jan Van Huysum's still lifes conditionally into two groups: still lifes on a light background and still lifes on a dark background. "Light still lifes" require a more "mature" skill from the artist - experience and talent are needed for competent light modeling. However, these are details.
Take a look at these works. They are truly wonderful.
Paintings by Jan Van Huysum
Fruits, flowers and insects
Mallows and other flowers in a vase
Flowers and fruits
Vase with Flowers
Flowers and fruits
Vase with Flowers
Flowers and fruits
Flowers in a terracotta vase
Vase with flowers in a niche
fruits and flowers
Basket with flowers and butterflies
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 heightened 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 about 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 Dutch painters, the line between the 15th and 16th centuries was associated with a radical break in the worldview.
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 Esaias 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), the 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.
You can buy reproductions of paintings by Dutch artists in our online store.
Flemish painting is one of the classical schools in the history of fine arts. Everyone who is interested in classical drawing has heard this phrase, but what is behind such a noble name? Could you, without hesitation, identify a few features of this style, name the main names? In order to more confidently navigate the halls of large museums and be a little less shy of the distant 17th century, you need to know this school.
History of the Flemish School
The 17th century began with an internal split in the Netherlands due to a religious and political struggle for the internal freedom of the state. This led to a split in the cultural sphere. The country is divided into two parts, southern and northern, the painting of which begins to develop in different directions. Southerners who remained in the Catholic faith under Spanish rule become representatives Flemish school, while the northern artists are art historians to Dutch school.
Representatives of the Flemish school of painting continued the tradition of older Italian fellow artists of the Renaissance: Raphael Santi, Michelangelo Buonarroti who paid great attention to religious and mythological themes. Moving along a familiar track, complemented by inorganic rough elements of realism, the Dutch artists could not create outstanding works of art. The stagnation continued until he got up at the easel Peter Paul Rubens(1577-1640). What was so amazing that this Dutchman could bring to art?
famous master
Rubens' talent was able to breathe life into the painting of the southerners, which was not very remarkable before him. Closely familiar with the legacy of the Italian masters, the artist continued the tradition of turning to religious themes. But, unlike his colleagues, Rubens was able to harmoniously weave into classical subjects the features of his own style, gravitating towards the saturation of colors, the image of nature filled with life.
From the artist's paintings, as if from an open window, it is as if sunlight is pouring out (The Last Judgment, 1617). Unusual solutions for constructing the composition of classical episodes from scripture or pagan mythology attracted attention to a new talent among his contemporaries, and attract now. Such innovation looked fresh, in comparison with the gloomy, muted shades of the canvases of the Dutch contemporaries.
A characteristic feature was the model of the Flemish artist. Obese fair-haired ladies, painted with interest without inappropriate embellishments, often became the central characters of Rubens' paintings. Examples can be found on the canvases "The Judgment of Paris" (1625), "Susanna and the Elders" (1608), "Venus in front of a mirror"(1615) and others.
In addition, Rubens provided influence on the formation of the landscape genre. He began to develop in the painting of the Flemish artists to the main representative of the school, but it was the work of Rubens that set the main features of national landscape painting, reflecting the local flavor of the Netherlands.
Followers
Quickly famous Rubens soon found himself surrounded by imitators and students. The master taught them to use the folk features of the area, color, to sing, perhaps, unusual human beauty. This attracted spectators and artists. Followers tried themselves in different genres - from portraits ( Gaspare De Caine, Abraham Janssens) to still lifes (Frans Snyders) and landscapes (Jan Wildens). Household painting of the Flemish school originally executed Adrian Brouwer And David Teniers Jr.
One of the most successful and notable students of Rubens was Anthony Van Dyck(1599 - 1641). His author's style developed gradually, at first completely subordinated to the imitation of the mentor, but over time, great accuracy with colors appeared. The student tended toward soft, subdued hues in contrast to the teacher.
Van Dyck's paintings make it clear that he did not have a strong inclination to build complex compositions, voluminous spaces with heavy figures, which distinguished the teacher's paintings. The gallery of the artist's works is filled with portraits single or double, front or chamber, which speaks of the genre priorities of the author, different from Rubens.
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 down 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.
