Northern European Renaissance Art Notes

Focus on secular themes:
- Still life: Depictions of household objects and/or food.
- Landscape: Representations of the countryside.
- Genre scenes: Images of everyday life.
- Portraits: Representations of personal likeness, either individual or group.

The Arnolfini Portrait (1434):
- Celebrates individual identity, a key aspect of Renaissance art in both Northern and Southern Europe.
- Commissioned by Giovanni Arnolfini, an Italian merchant representing Medici interests in Bruges, and his future wife, Giovanna Cenami.
- Symbolic elements:
  - Dog: Represents home and fidelity.
  - Removed shoes: Signify the couple standing on sacred ground.
  - Woman's dress: The style of Dutch dresses at the time made women appear pregnant.
- Oil on panel, dimensions: $32 \frac{1}{4}$ ” x $23 \frac{1}{2}$ ”
Hallmark of Northern European Renaissance painting:
- Love of detail achieved through a smooth surface that conceals brushstrokes.
- Incredible detail, includes 2 witnesses in the background, one may be van Eyck himself.
- Mirror measures $2.25 x 2.25$ inches.
Each of the ten small circles around the mirror depicts a scene from the Passion of Christ (Christ’s sacrifices and death).

Garden of Earthly Delights (ca. 1505-10):
- Bosch’s most ambitious painting, a triptych with closing doors.
- Not intended for a religious setting; hung in a palace in Brussels.
- A conversation piece designed to invite discussion of its meaning.
- Enigmatic version of the world if the fall of Adam and Eve had never happened.
- Oil on panel, closed, each wing measures: 7’ $2 \frac{1}{2}$ ” x 38”
Exterior View:
- When closed, the triptych reveals the world at the moment of creation.
- God depicted floating on a cloud, looking down at the earth.
- Latin inscription from Psalm 33:9: “He spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.”
Interior View:
- Garden of Eden populated with strange creatures.
- Even in the Garden of Eden, death is imminent (e.g., a cat walks off with a mouse in its teeth).
- Symbols and examples of the seven deadly sins are present in the middle panel.

Johannes Gutenberg (ca. 1390-1468):
- Between 1435 and 1455, in Mainz, Germany, he discovered a process for casting individual letterforms using an alloy of lead and antimony.
- In 1455, Gutenberg produced his first major work, the Forty-Two Line Bible (each column contains 42 lines).
- By the end of the century, printing presses were widespread.
- The Reformation might not have occurred without the printing press.
Albrecht Dürer (May 21, 1471 – April 6, 1528):
- German artist recognized as a great painter and the greatest printmaker in Europe.
- Master of both woodcutting and engraving.

Woodcut:
- A wood block with the design raised by cutting away the non-printing areas.
- The printed impression made with such a block.
Engraving:
- The process of incising a design in hard material (often a metal plate, usually copper).
- The plate is inked and pressed to reveal the design.
Albrecht Dürer's Adam and Eve Engraving, 1504: $9 \frac{7}{8}$ ” x $7 \frac{5}{8}$ ”

Isenheim Altarpiece (1512–16):
- Oil and tempera on limewood panels, dimensions: $376 x 668$ cm
- St. Anthony’s bones/relics had recently been brought to the area
- Said to have performed curative miracles for those with ergotism.
- A hospital was set up for ergotism with St. Anthony as the Patron Saint.

Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on wood.
Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559, oil on wood:
- Examples of proverbs depicted:
  - Barely reach from one loaf to the other (living paycheck to paycheck).
  - Banging one’s head against a brick wall.
  - To fall through the basket (having one’s deception revealed).