Week Two Art 236

The Northern Renaissance

Whether the medium was oil paint or sculpture, religious themes were the most prevalent in all Renaissance art- Northern and Southern.  Merchants were able to make great material gains during this time and the Catholic Church and the ruling classes also still had great power.  The Church used art to illustrate Bible stories for the edification of the faithful and the ruling classes wanted to be seen as charitable, Christian benefactors.  They could not only commission decoration for churches but had monks and nuns essentially hired to pray for their families to ensure them good fortune and a place in heaven. 

In the Late Medieval and Early Renaissance times, sculpture was much more highly valued than painting.  Painted pictures were on the outside doors of the altarpieces to cover the real treasure of the golden reliquary or the detailed, sculptured treasure within. The “real”, skilled, most admired painters illuminated manuscripts and other artisans worked in precious metals such as gold or wove intricate tapestries.  As the Renaissance continued, Classical Roman and Greek ideals were revived and supplanted the Gothic, more linear, less representational style.  The artists of the Northern Renaissance seemed to adopt a version of the Roman style of verism since they preferred highly realistic, individualistic depictions of human faces and figures with little idealism.  The artistic mastery of Jan van Eyck brought oil painting to the fore when it came to the way painted works were regarded.  Merchants, clerics, and royals as well as the common people and fellow artists marveled at the realism, the atmospheric perspective and the luminous colors.  The effect was of looking at a painting as a window into another, more holy world.   The faithful of the era were encouraged to imagine themselves as being able to go back to the times told about in the Bible and live the stories of the Bible as if they had been there.  In a portrait they could actually be pictured as being close enough to touch a Saint or other holy figure or could be placed under the protection of their Saintly namesake.  Commissioning an oil painting was also a way of displaying the wealth of the emerging merchant.  Paintings were luxury items, true, but the cost was not as far out of reach as a similar sculpture might be and a painting could be finished much more quickly.

The general acclaim that Van Eyck earned allowed him to work outside the traditional guild system where works were often completed by a shop full of craftsmen who each specialized in one area of art.  Van Eyck raised the way those who worked in oils were regarded from painter/craftsman to artist; a learned, well-traveled, famous individual who was his own man in the sense that he ranked himself above the guild workers.  The artistry of van Eyck was such that he was credited with inventing oil paints and though this was not true he was able to paint difficult details such as the gleam of gold, the sparkle of gemstones and the clarity of water.  He used glazing techniques- built up thin washes of pigment- to give his details that luminous quality that was thought of as magical at the time.