Painting, Piety and Power: Northern Renaissance Art

This course examines the major painters working in the Low Countries (present-day Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) during the dynamic era encompassing the later Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation. Our survey covers the early Flemish painters Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and their brilliant line of followers, Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes, Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel. Through group discussions and illustrated lectures, students become engaged not only with the distinctive visual character of these marvelous works of art, but also with their cultic, devotional, social and political uses. Special topics include: the development of a northern European realist tradition, changing forms of patronage and aesthetic production, the rising social status and self-consciousness of the artist, the changing character of piety and religious experience, the impact of humanism and Reformation and evolution of secular imagery (portraiture, landscape, satire and more). May count towards European Studies minor.