Northern Renaissance Art Movement

Northern Renaissance Art Movement, History, Northern Renaissance Oil Paintings & Artists.

The Brief German Renaissance.

The first thirty years of the sixteenth century were one of the most brilliant and exciting periods in the art history of Germany. Germany was blessed with a unique generation of famous artists. who were in constant contact and traveled to other cities and countries. Although Durer dominated the country's cultural scene, a productive, intense debate developed around him. This was a brief yet splendid period of the Renaissance. Artists such as Albrecht Altdorfer, Lucas Cranach, and Grunewald Grunewald all painted for different patrons during this time. Then the Reformation soon came crashing down on everyone. A radical change in Northern Renaissance German art was brought about by Luther's rejection of all devotional images.

The Flemish and Dutch Renaissance.

The first few decades of the sixteenth century saw a major turning point in Low Countries art. The decline of the last generation of accomplished masters in the fifteenth-century tradition made way for a brand-new current, based on the reworking of the novel trends in Italian art, experienced first-hand in journeys to the south, and combined with the decorative exuberance and descriptive detail typical of Flemish art, Antwerp became the center along the North Sea coast. Painters like Hieronymus Bosh, Metsys, and Mabuse traveled to Venice and Rome to study Italian art, gaining various points of view. But they didn't travel there simply to learn, but to make their particular contribution to the advancement of the painting of the High Renaissance and the birth of the "modern manner". The Antwerp "Italianate painters" formed a recognizable movement, in close contact with the artistic centers of the northern provinces, where Albrecht Durer's influence was strongest.

Jan Gossaert, one of the most original and influential of the "Italianate painters" of the Flemish Renaissance, took the name Mabuse from the ancient name of his hometown. First documented in the Antwerp Painters' Guild in 1503, he traveled to Rome with Duke Philip of Burgundy in 1508. On his return, Mabuse's innovations began to show in his works. He began to display an original style that retained some of the meticulous attention to detail typical of fifteenth-century Flemish painting but also borrowed from the Italian "modern manner", particularly in their use of light, perspective, architectural settings, monumental figures, and the relationship between figures and their surroundings.

The Birth of Oil Painting Becomes Mainstream.

In the Netherlands, painters were improving upon oil paint, which had previously been used for painting on leather. This was because animal hides needed flexible paint that would not crack and flake off. Before using oils, painters had used tempera, but when they began to use oils, they far surpassed the range of techniques they had been working with. Oil allowed for variation in light, texture, tone, and value, and because it could be thinned with oil to create one effect and thinned with turpentine to create another, it gave them the ability to paint light, mist, fog, chiffon, and other ephemeral elements into their art. Oil techniques were spread to Italy and then from there to Venice.

The Northern painters wanted to explore the magical mystery of nature and objects and present them to the world in detail. This paved the way for a modern understanding of how space, distance, and time affect color and how to manipulate that knowledge of canvas. To explain, this effect is seen in the differing colors of mountains in a photograph. These are the foreground mountains in their true colors and the more distant peaks in purples and blues. Through these two areas of focus, color, and perspective, they were able to devise aerial and color perspectives as well. These four things became standard artistic tools in later Realism movements.

With the Roman Catholic Church losing power to the Protestant Reformation and the whims of kings and other points of contention, secular thought and freedom of the mind were becoming more prevalent. Exchanges of ideas such as humanism and the enjoyment and investigation of science, music, art, and literature helped foster the foundation for creating a philosophy based on discovery and more open minds. Secular literature and art broke free from the Church's forbidding nature, and works were created that would never have seen the light of day in previous centuries.

Most of the visual art activity in the Northern Renaissance occurred in the "low countries" of Holland, Flanders, and Germany. Previous styles of religious artwork had placed God in the heavens or were singular figures. This period saw painters placing Biblical figures in earthly contexts. That era also saw the rise of portraits of non-religious people, especially of people who were rich and famous. Johannes Vermeer painted oil paintings of servants and everyday people, such as Girl With a Pearl Earring.

Other Northern Renaissance artists: Quentin Massys, and Hans Memling.

Partly from: Identity This Art and TheArtist.me