DAY 63

ART THROUGH THE AGES

The Northern Renaissance

BEAUTY IS IN THE DETAILS

Richly detailed and symbolically dense, the Northern Renaissance engages the imagination. Born from the Gothic period, the Northern Renaissance maintained a certain naïveté of underlying form yet dedication to surface detail and ornamentation from its parent era. Situated in present-day France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, the “North” became its own entity.

As opposed to the Italian interest in classical values, naturalistic form, and perspective, the Northern Renaissance artists were invested in religious reform, surface realism, and symbolism. Figures and perspective were sometimes askew; however, flowing garments, reflections, patterns, and the like were rendered with exquisite care and particularity, down to individual leaves on trees and hairs on heads. Color was king! Every detailed object had symbolic value, telling several little stories embedded in the larger picture. Many of these paintings are small; one may admire a painting from this era as they would admire a jewel, beautiful in all its minute facets. These paintings demand close observation.

After the Reformation began, another divide between the Northern and Italian Renaissance was the Northern penchant for secular content. True, you will still see many a Biblical scene, but another subdued version of piety emerged in scenes of humble peasant life or in the glory of dramatic landscapes.

Northern Renaissance eventually succumbed to Mannerism. But the realism achieved in the work shows us a living world; it is a beautiful window into the past. —ARR

Selected artists: Hieronymous Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Robert Campin, Albrecht Dürer, Jan van Eyck, Matthais Grunewald, Hans Holbein