Lesson 1 IHUM 202
triptych
A triptych is a painting composed of three panels,
diptych
A two-paneled, hinged painting.
woodcut
A type of relief print created by drawing a design with a gouge on the surface of a woodblock and cutting away the parts that are to print white, leaving elevated the areas to be printed black.
cycle
A series of paintings on a secular theme.
A single impression of a multiple edition of impressions made on paper from the same master image carved, etched, engraved, or otherwise drawn on a block or plate.
movable type
A technology, invented in China in 1045 CE, in which individual letterforms are composed into pages and then printed on a press.
Reformation
A religious movement of the 16th century that began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the creation of Protestant churches.
Albrecht Dürer, Four Apostles (1526)
A Christian would no more be led to superstition by a picture or effigy than an honest man to commit murder because he carries a sword by his side. He must indeed be an unthinking man who would worship picture, wood, or stone. A picture therefore brings more good than harm, when it is honestly, artistically, and well made." So Dürer's Four Holy Men, with John standing in front of Peter at the left, and Mark the Evangelist in front of Matthew at the right, carries an admonition to all viewers across the bottom. It says, do not worship "false prophets," and pay particular heed to the words of the New Testament. This warning accompanies excerpts from Luther's new German translation of the gospels.
humanism
A belief that emphasizes faith and optimism in human potential and creativity
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Harvesters (1565)
Another popular type of painting for Northern homes was the cycle, a series of paintings on a secular theme such as the Five Senses, the Months of the Year, or the Four Seasons. These often took the form of landscape as well. Harvesters (Fig. 17.13) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525-69) is one of a cycle of six paintings that each represent two months of the year—in this case August and September—commissioned by a wealthy Antwerp merchant for his suburban home. Bruegel's theme is the harmonious relation between the natural world and the people who inhabit it. Harvesters depicts a peasantry blessed with a bountiful harvest, unencumbered by authority, and enjoying the good life. Some viewers detect in Bruegel's depictions of Flemish peasants a moralizing attitude—seeing, for instance, the man who is sleeping under the tree as an image of sloth. But if Bruegel is moralizing here, then he does it with a sense of good humor, and he tempers that judgment by portraying the industry of the other peasants still working in the fields even as the larger group relaxes under the pear tree, a traditional symbol of the life force.
Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, (ca. 1505-10)
Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights is full of strange hybrid organisms, part animal or bird, part human, part plant, sometimes part mechanical contraption In the left panel of the triptych we see the Garden of Eden, populated with such strange creatures as albino giraffes and elephants, unicorns, and flying fish. In the right panel we see Bosch's deeply disturbing vision of Hell, in which fire spits from the skyline and tortured souls are impaled on musical instruments or eaten alive by monsters. The central panel presents an image of life on earth, with hundreds of naked young men and women frolicking in a garden full of giant berries and other fruits. Lovers are variously contained in transparent columns or globes of glass—a reference to the proverb "Happiness and glass, how soon they pass." This landscape is like a parody of the central meadow in Hubert and Jan van Eyck's depiction of the Adoration of the Lamb in the Ghent Altarpiece. The world here has gone awry. Illicit lust replaces love of God, wanton seduction replaces beauty, and Bosch's own wild imagination replaces reason.
Albrecht Altdorfer, The Battle of Issus (1529)
His lance extended before him, Alexander, dressed in medieval armor, can be seen charging Darius in the very middle of the painting, above the two red-striped umbrellas that point toward him. Darius retreats in a chariot drawn by three white horses. The middle third of the painting is a representation of the eastern Mediterranean. The island in the middle of the sea is Crete. Just above the pinnacle of the mainland mountain is the Red Sea, and to the right of it, the delta of the Nile. The tumultuous sky mirrors the battle below, but with a sense of apocalyptic doom, for even as the sun sets in the west, the crescent moon of Islam rises in the east. Darkness is about to settle upon the world.
Hieronymus Bosch, Carrying of the Cross (ca. 1490)
In Carrying of the Cross (Fig. 16.10), Bosch presents Christ in the middle of the painting, the crown of thorns on his head, bent under the weight of the cross, his eyes closed, and several days' growth of beard on his face. It is difficult to say whether he closes his eyes from exhaustion or from sorrow and pity for the grotesque menagerie of humanity that surrounds him. From their faces, these participants in Christ's pain and humiliation seem morally bankrupt, hideously evil, almost sublimely stupid, if not criminally insane. Such pessimism derives at least partly from a sense of doom that was characteristic of the North. It continues from the medieval sermon tradition stressing the wretchedness and worthlessness of human existence, exemplified by Pope Innocent III's On the Misery of the Human Condition (see Reading 10.5 in Chapter 10) through the devastation of the bubonic plague. From the 1340s well into the sixteenth century, the plague periodically ravaged northern cities due to the colder climate and harsher conditions that defined day-to-day life in the North.
intaglio printing
In this process, the area to be printed is below the surface of the plate.
Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia I (1514)
It is a fully humanist image, a complex depiction of failed inspiration and genius, informed by a wealth of Classical allusion. Dürer himself suffered from melancholy, or depression, and this can be understood as an image of his own muse. She is at once divinely inspired (note her wings) and incapable of action. Note the way she carelessly holds the compass. With head resting on hand, she strikes the traditional pose of a melancholic personality.
Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait, (1500)
Like other Northern artists, Dürer was a master of oil painting. Self-Portrait of 1500 (Fig. 16.18) takes full advantage of its oil medium to create a highly textured surface that glows with a light that seems to emanate from within the artist himself. Acknowledging his own skill with oil colors, Dürer inscribed the painting as follows: "Thus I, Albrecht Dürer from Nuremburg, painted myself with undying colors at the age of 28 years." The intimation of artistic immortality embodied in the word "undying" is underscored in the way that Dürer self-consciously paints himself as a sort of icon. His frontal pose, bearded face, and intense gaze recall traditional images of Christ. At the very least, he means for us to see in his face evidence of divine inspiration. "Art," he would write, "derives from God; it is God who has created all art; it is not easy to paint artistically. Therefore, those without aptitude should not attempt it, for it is an inspiration from above." For Dürer, creating art was a sacred act; it made manifest God's work, from the Creation to Christ's Passion.
31 October 1517
Martin Luther (1483-1546), a rogue priest from Wittenberg, Germany, far to the north on the Elbe River (Map 17.1), who on October 31, 1517, had posted Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the town's All Saints Church. The door served as a sort of kiosk for university-related announcements, and since Luther was a professor of theology at the university, it seemed the proper forum to announce the terms of his protest against the practices of the Catholic Church. His aim was to reform the Church, and by 1529, his movement had become known as the Protestant Reformation.
Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, (ca. 1510-15)
Multitalented Grünewald served as architect, engineer, and painter to the court of the archbishops of Mainz. His most famous work is the so-called Isenheim Altarpiece, a monumentally large polyptych painted around 1510 to 1515 for the hospital of the Abbey of Saint Anthony, a facility in Isenheim, near Strasbourg, dedicated to the treatment of people with skin diseases. These included syphilis, leprosy, and ergotism, a gangrenous condition caused by eating grain contaminated with the ergot fungus. Physical illness was viewed as a function of spiritual illness, and so Grünewald's altarpiece, like Pope Innocent III's sermon On the Misery of the Human Condition of nearly 300 years earlier, was designed to move these sinners to repentance. But more important it offered hope to the hopelessly afflicted, reminding them that they were not alone in their suffering, that Christ had suffered like them. The Crucifixion in the Isenheim Altarpiece is among the grimmest ever painted (Fig. 16.13), Christ's flesh ripped and torn by thorns, more startlingly realistic in its detail than any Crucifixion ever painted in the South. His body seems emaciated, his ashen skin drawn tightly across his abdomen and rib cage. He hangs limply from the cross, which seems to bend under his weight, his hands splayed open, contorted by pain. His lips are blue, and, as if to emphasize Christ's morbidity, Grünewald's palette of purple-green and yellow-brown almost reeks of rotten flesh. All is darkness, echoing the account of the Crucifixion in the Gospel of Mark (15:33): "And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour." Below, in the predella, or supporting base, of the altarpiece, a Lamentation shows Christ's body, stiff in rigor mortis, as it is settled into the tomb.
Albrecht Dürer, Draftsman Drawing a Reclining Nude (ca. 1525)
One of 138 woodcuts and diagrams in Teaching of Measurement with Compass and Ruler. The artist looks at his foreshortened model through a grid from a fixed point and then transfers what he sees to a similarly gridded paper. This gives him an accurate representation of the figure in foreshortened perspective. The Draftsman Drawing a Reclining Nude (Fig. 16.17), from one of these treatises, is an example of Dürer's attempt to marry the detailed textural vision of the Northern tradition with the scientific humanism of the South. The artist's model here is frankly, even shockingly, nude—especially given the artist's point of view—and yet he subjects her to an intensely mathematical and rational regime. Functioning as a metaphor for the ability of the artist to subject nature to the discipline of his gaze is a series of tensions: between the grid of the screen and the paper; between the curvilinear folds of the model's body and the drapery; and between "measuring" the world and submitting to the feelings that the world might provoke. Dürer presents the artist as a disinterested observer. His imagination is moved by the objective recording of reality, not by the subjective feelings the model might inspire in him. And, like Johannes Stradanus's vision of Jan van Eyck's Studio (see Figure 16.2), this print is a look into the artist's private world, a revelation of his technical means. These feelings—his love for his craft and his passion for his art—may actually be the real subject of the illustration.
patronage
One of the greatest differences between the Renaissance cultures of the North and South is the nature of patronage that developed in each. In the south of Europe, the most important patrons were the politically powerful families. The Medici, the Gonzagas, and the Montefeltros—and the papacy (often members of these same families)—all used their patronage to further their political prestige. In the North, trade had created a wealthy and relatively large class of merchants, who gradually came to rival the French and Burgundian courts as the most important patrons of the day. Wealthy nobles, like Philip the Good of Burgundy, certainly influenced artistic developments, but gradually, the taste of the new business class came to dominate the production and distribution of works of art. This new business class represented a new audience for artists, in both the North and South. Motivated by the marketplace, artists sought to please this new class.
iconoclasm
Opposing or even destroying images, especially those set up for religious veneration in the belief that such images represent idol worship.
Albrecht Altdorfer, Danube Landscape (c.1528)
Painted about 1525, some four years before The Battle of Issus, this is no pastoral or garden scene, no pleasantly cultivated landscape in which humans and nature appear in harmony. Rather, its trees and sky, gathering clouds, and approaching storm, create something of the same ominous feeling that informs the landscape elements of The Battle of Issus. Despite the red-roofed castle at the end of a winding road, which implies human habitation, the painting celebrates the grandeur and awesome immensity of nature. It is as if the dramatic background of a painting like Leonardo's Mona Lisa (see Fig. 14.28 in Chapter 14) has elevated itself to the foreground.
Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (ca. 1497-98)
Seizing on this widespread fear, in 1498, Albrecht Dürer executed a series of prints illustrating the Apocalypse and, in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, its chief signs—pestilence, war, famine, and death (Fig. 17.2). The prints were reproduced by the thousands and distributed across Germany and the rest of Europe, effectively securing Dürer's income for life.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death (c. 1562)
The Triumph of Death (Fig. 17.14 ), which Bruegel painted just a couple of years before this cycle, is an example. It was painted 40 years after the Peasant War and in the manner of Hieronymus Bosch (see Chapter 16, Closer Look), who was a generation older than Bruegel. This pointedly political work depicts a massive army of skeletons laying waste to all living things. Men are hanged from scaffolds, beheaded by swords, and crushed beneath the wheels of a death cart. The natural world is transformed into a desert. But most pertinent to the political climate are the figures in the lower corners. On the right, the aristocracy is overcome as a gentleman plays the lute and sings a love song to his lady, both of them damningly indifferent to the destruction going on behind them. At the lower left, an emperor or king succumbs as skeletons help themselves to his gold and jewels, an image suggesting that wealth is incapable of saving even the monarchy. The painting underscores the division between the aristocracy and the common people, even as it argues for the equality of everyone in the face of death.
altar
The elevated, tablelike structure before which religious services are celebrated.
antependium
The front of an altar.
Albrecht Dürer, Last Supper (1523)
The image is simple, straightforward, and clear. Gone is the elaborate composition that defined his earlier work. Dürer's task is now to portray, as unambiguously as possible, Lutheran doctrine, in this case a point that Luther had just made concerning Holy Communion. Luther had reaffirmed the sacrament of Communion, not as transubstantiation, in which the bread and wine literally disappear and are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, but as consubstantiation, in which Christ's body and blood are present "in, with, and under" the bread and wine. Thus the chalice on the table and the empty plate on the floor wait to be filled by the basket of bread and pitcher of wine at the bottom right.
engraving
The technique of carving, etching, or incising a design on a printing plate; also, the product of such a process
Jan van Eyck, Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife Giovanna Cenami (ca. 1434)
This celebration of individual identity marks Renaissance art in both the North and South. It is especially apparent in van Eyck's double portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini, an Italian merchant representing Medici interests in Bruges, and his wife. In his paintings, van Eyck expresses his love of detail through his ability to render in oil paint the texture of things and the way light plays across their surfaces. This skill is apparent in the glittering jewels of God's crown in the Ghent Altarpiece, for instance, and in the green wool of the wife's dress or the ermine of Giovanni Arnolfini's robe. This love of detail, presented through a smooth surface that does not show brushstrokes, is the hallmark of Northern Renaissance painting, the characteristic that distinguishes it most from painting in the South.
altarpiece
a panel, painted or sculpted, situated above and behind an altar
polyptych
an altarpiece constructed from multiple panels
chorale
congregational hymn of the German Lutheran church
Robert Campin, Mérode Altarpiece (ca. 1426)
created by painters in the workshop of an artist known as the Master of Flémalle, located in Tournai, in present-day Belgium. Some art historians have identified the Master of Flémalle as a painter named Robert Campin, and have attributed this painting to him, while others consider Campin only one of a group of painters who worked in the master's large workshop. In the center is a depiction of the Annunciation, in which the Archangel Gabriel visits the Virgin Mary to inform her that she will conceive God's son, Jesus, from the Holy Spirit, while maintaining her virginity. To the right is her intended husband, Joseph, at work in his carpentry shop. The left panel portrays the donors who commissioned the painting, depicted in prayer within the painting just as they would have appeared praying in front of it when the finished painting was hung in their home.
indulgence
dispensation given by the church to shorten a sinner's stay in purgatory.
Albrecht Dürer, The Large Turf, (1503)
display his Northern interest in the minutest details of nature but also his scientific mind, and his humanist interest in the phenomena of the natural world. This he shared with Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, after visiting Italy in 1505 to 1506 to learn the laws of scientific perspective from the Italian masters, Dürer was determined to introduce a more scientific approach to painting to Germany. To do so, he published theoretical treatises on drawing, perspective, proportion, measurement, and the techniques of painting.
oil painting
specially popular, because they were relatively inexpensive, were oil paintings. The medium of oil painting had been known for several centuries, and medieval painters had used oils to decorate stone, metal, and occasionally plaster walls. As we will see, oil painting enabled artists such as Jan van Eyck to add the kind of detail and subtle color and value gradations to their paintings that resulted in a remarkable realism. For many art historians, this detailed naturalism is the most distinctive feature of Northern European art.
predestination
the idea that people are "elected" by God to salvation prior to coming into the world, and that anyone so elected self-evidently lives in a way that pleases God. In fact, later Calvinists would come to believe that living a pure and pious life—often coupled with business success—made one's election manifest to one's neighbors.