Chapter 14: Renaissance in Northern Europe

Reformation

a division in western Christianity in which reformers broke away from the Catholic Church and formed a series of Protestant movements.

Protestant

Germany, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands, the shortest-lived Christian nations, turned \_____.

Catholic

Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Poland remained \_____.

anti-Catholicism

An iconoclastic campaign against paintings and sculptures of holy figures, formerly hallowed, accompanied a Protestant surge of \_____.

human intercession

Protestants believed God could be contacted immediately via \_____, therefore Jesus paintings were direct and strong when allowed.

Johann Gutenberg

He invented a moveable type printing press, one of the most significant innovations in history.

moveable type printing press

This gadget could mass-produce books and distribute them widely.

Engraving

a printmaking process in which a tool called a burin is used to carve into a metal plate, causing impressions to be made in the surface.

Etching

a printmaking process in which a metal plate is covered with a ground made of wax.

Woodcut

a printmaking process by which a wooden tablet is carved into with a tool, leaving the design raised and the background cut away.

Altarpiece

a painted or sculpted panel set on an altar of a church

International Gothic Painting

a courtly exquisite painting style started by Italian painters like Simone Martini in the fourteenth century, impacted Northern European artists.

Polyptych

a many-paneled altarpiece

Predella

The base of an altarpiece that is filled with small paintings, often narrative scenes

Triptych

a three-paneled painting or sculpture

Donor

a patron of a work of art, who is often seen in that work

Annunciation

in Christianity, an episode in the Book of Luke 1:26–38 in which Angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she would be the Virgin Mother of Jesus

Annunciation Triptych

* By Robert Campin workshop (1427–1432)


* also called Merode Altarpiece
* Wings were commissioned when the main panel was purchased; the donor portrait was added at this time.

Arnolfini Portrait

* Painted by Jan van Eyck (1434)
* An oil on wood
* It had the purpose of showing the prosperity and wealth of the couple depicted.
* It may be a memorial to a dead wife, who could have died in childbirth.

Adam and Eve

* Engraved by Albrecht Dürer


* Influenced by classical sculpture
* Italian massing of forms, which he learned from his Italian trips.
* Ideal image of humans before the Fall of Man (Genesis 3).
* Contrapposto of figures from the Italian Renaissance

Isenheim altarpiece

* Painted by Matthias Grünewald (1512–1516)
* Placed in a monastery hospital where people were treated for Saint Anthony’s fire, or ergotism
* Theme: healing through salvation and faith

ergotism

a disease caused by ingesting a fungus that grows on rye flour.

Isenheim altarpiece (1st View)

* A scene of the crucifixion is in the center


* A lamb holds a cross
* A chalice catching the lamb’s blood parallels the chalice used to hold wine

Eucharist

The crucified body of Christ would have paralleled the raising of the sacramental bread _______.

Isenheim altarpiece (2nd View)

* Marian symbols: the enclosed garden, closed gate, rosebush, rosary.


* Christ rises from the dead, on the right; his rags changed to glorious robes; he shows his wounds, which do not harm him now.
* Message to patients: earthly diseases and trials will vanish in the next world.

Isenheim altarpiece (3rd View)

Saint Anthony in the right panel has oozing boils, a withered arm, and a distended stomach: symbols of ergotism

Allegory of Law and Grace

* Made by Lucas Cranach the Elder (c. 1530)
* Designed using the woodcut technique to make the image available to the masses.
* Meant to reflect the Lutheran ideas about salvation; Protestantism

Hunters in the Snow

* Painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1565)
* One of a series of six paintings representing the labors of the months
* Placed in a wealthy Antwerp merchant’s home.
* Hunters have had little success in the winter hunt; dogs are skinny and hang their heads.