Early Netherlandish Art

The term “early Netherlandish art” here refers to objects produced, and to a considerable extent consumed, between roughly 1380 and 1520 in the Low Countries, an area that encompasses modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands. This region underwent a number of seismic cultural shifts during the “long 15th century,” including the birth of modern banking, the rise of regional and linguistic identity, the growth of a middle class, and fundamental changes in vernacular religious practice. Part and parcel of these changes was a remarkable efflorescence of visual expression motivated by shifts in economic and political identity and fueled by the readily available capital, both owned and loaned. The historical result is a visual culture that demonstrates remarkable complexity. Visual piety, for instance, betrays significant evidence of vernacular literacy (propelled by the printing press), its objects requiring responses that are both emotionally charged and thoughtful, at times even erudite. Far from simply a mechanism to extract tears from a credulous populace, religious imagery became an ever more refined and idiosyncratic tool for self-reform. Political expression seems to have become similarly complex, with civic identity becoming ever more important as conflicts between cities and their noble rulers became increasingly common. Thus, while in some ways visual expression represented a continuation of earlier practices, this efflorescence in the visual arts presented opportunities for the enterprising artist to transform how people conceived of art in the first place. It should come as no surprise, then, that artists who commanded high prices and enjoyed a large body of quite competitive patrons—including Jan van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes, the Limbourg brothers, Gerard Loyet, Claus Sluter, and Rogier van der Weyden—were both able and willing to pursue quite striking and, at times, boldly self-conscious sorts of innovation. Indeed, it is hardly surprising that such innovation should occur, given both the expansion of the market for art and the kinds of discernment that governed it.

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