The Art of the Northern Renaissance

Vocabulary flashcards defining major artists, patrons, architectural works, and stylistic movements of the Northern Renaissance.

Jan van Eyck

Flemish painter (1395–1441) who produced courtly and aristocratic work as the court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy; painted The Virgin and Chancellor Rolin (1435) and Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife (1434).

Rogier van der Weyden

Flemish painter (1399–1564) known for creating The Deposition (1435).

Quentin Massys

Artist (1465–1530) belonging to the humanist circle in Antwerp with Erasmus, influenced by da Vinci, and referred to by Thomas More as 'the renovator of the old art'.

Francis I

French king and important royal patron who encouraged humanistic learning, invited Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto to France, and collected works by Titian, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

School of Fontainebleau

A group of artists who decorated Francis I's Palace at Fontainebleau between the 1530s and 1560s; an offshoot of Italian Mannerism characterized by refined elegance, crowded figural compositions, integrated stucco work, and allegory.

Lucas Cranach the Elder

German artist (1472–1553) who served as court painter at Wittenberg from 1505 to 1553 and was best known for his portraits of Martin Luther.

Matthias Grünewald

German artist (1470–1528) who converted to Lutheranism, was possibly involved in the Peasants' Revolt on the peasants' side, and specialized in depictions of intense, painful emotion.

Albrecht Dürer

German scholar, artist, and scientist (1471–1528) patronized by Emperor Maximilian I who wrote books on geometry, fortifications, and human proportions, embodying self-conscious individualism.

Hans Holbein, the Younger

German artist (1497–1543) who befriended Erasmus in Basel and worked extensively in England, serving as court painter to Henry VIII from 1536 and noted for objective, detached portraiture.

Hardwick Hall

An English house designed in more of a medieval style by Robert Smythson in the 1590s for the Duchess of Shrewsbury.

Burghley House

An English house built for William Cecil, recognized as the largest and grandest house of the early Elizabethan era.

Hieronymus Bosch

Dutch painter (1450–1516) admired by Philip II of Spain, known for a pessimistic view of human nature, flat figures, ignored mathematical perspective, and lurid depictions of fanciful monsters.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Artistic genius (1525–1569) connected with Erasmian humanists in Antwerp and Brussels who created landscape-focused works featuring round, expressionless figure types to convey messages about human vice and folly.

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos)

Greek-born artist (1541–1614) working in Spain whose elongated figures, agitated light, ignored perspective, and brilliant colors reflected the Spanish Counter-Reformation.

Northern Mannerist Phase

The concluding phase of the Northern Renaissance, which persisted a generation longer in Northern Europe than in Italy, where it had become outmoded by 1600.