Together with Italy the leading region of Europe for the production of paintings

during
the fifteenth century
was an area that roughly coincides with modern-day Belgium.
Several of the greatest painters of the fifteenth century worked there.
We will study two of them in this course, Jan van Eyck
and Rogier van der Weyden.
We can use this image on the screen to describe the main characteristics of
Netherlandish
painting.
It shows part of a picture by van Eyck
that shows a man named Arnolfini.
It is in the National Gallery in London. It was painted in 1434.
Like their Italian counterparts, Netherlandish artists from the beginning of the
fifteenth century
wanted to be more realistic than their medieval predecessors.
This is what made them modern.
Instead of emphasizing the illusion of depth through the use of linear perspective,
as has happened in the early Renaissance in Italy,
they emphasized the careful rendition of details
in the objects and the materials that they included in their paintings.
Look here for example at the lamp
and at the mirror.
This realism in the details is very effective in creating the illusion that what we
see
is real.
The will to represent things in a way that looks realistic
co-existed in Netherlandish painting of the fifteenth century
with a strong symbolism.
Painters wanted to look modern by making things look real,
but they did not want to give up other ways of communicating that they had
developed
in the past. An important one was associating symbolic meanings with different
things. We can see a good example
of this in this image.
It is a detail of another painting by van Eyck,
made around 1435. It's title is the Virgin of Chancellor Rolin.
It's in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Behind the hands on the left we see a landscape made up of vineyards.
We could think that this was simply there,
but always keep in mind that paintings don't reproduce reality. They are ideas that
have taken on
a visual form.
This is obvious, but part of the magic of painting lies in the fact
that it is so convincing that we are always fooled by it.

Let's go back to the vineyards which we see again in this detail of the same
painting.
Art historians have learned that the man who commissioned it,
who we see here,
earned part of his money from his extensive vineyards in the region of Burgundy.
Clearly this landscape was included in the painting not because it happened to be
there,
but to remind viewers of the wealth and power of the man
placed in front of it.
So remember.
A new and meticulous attention to detail
co-exists in Netherlandish painting of the fifteenth century
with disguised symbolism.
Before we focus on the achievements of van Eyck and van der Weyden in the next
videos,
two concepts need to be explained.
One is the term Netherlandish painting that I have been using,
the second is the technique of oil painting that was used by painters in the
Netherlands.
The term Netherlandish painting,
or sometimes early Netherlandish painting,
is used in the history of art and in museums to refer to artists who worked
during the fifteenth century and the early years of the sixteenth century
in a region then known as The Netherlands.
This included the country that we still know by that name, The Netherlands,
but it also included an area just to the south,
that roughly coincides with present day Belgium, as I have said.
In fact, the most populated and important cities were there, in the Southern
Netherlands,
and it was there that most of the leading painters worked.
So remember, we use the term early Netherlandish painting to refer to pictures made
in the fifteenth century
and the early sixteenth century,
primarily in a region that coincides with what is now Belgium,
especially in the cities of Brugge,
Ghent,
Brussels and Leuven.
The second concept that we need to explain is the technique of oil painting.
This was used by Netherlandish painters of the fifteenth century instead of tempera
which was used in Italy.
The difference between oil painting and tempera is simple.
The pigment
or coloring agent
is mixed with a binding medium that is not egg yoke as in tempera,
but a type of oil that will dry when in contact with the air.
The most commonly used was linseed oil.

What is special about this is that most pigments, when mixed in oil, become
translucent,
when applied to a panel or a canvas they have a characteristic gloss and depth of
colour
very different from tempera which is opaque.
Even though oil paint had been used earlier to supplement other techniques,
it was developed and refined during the fifteenth century by Netherlandish artists,
and it was specifically associated by writers with the art of Jan van Eyck
who achieved great fame throughout Europe. The way Netherlandish artists used oil
paint was by applying it
over an underlying white layer
used to prepare the panel support for painting.
The effect achieved by this was once explained to me by restorer.
Think of a piece of toast with butter on it.
Over this apply a layer of dark jam.
This would be the oil paint.
The white underneath seems to glow through the covering layer, creating a luxurious
looking surface.
When making a painting, very thin layers of paint could be applied over and over,
adding to the sense of depth.

Aside from the appearance of a surface, the second feature of oil paint,
that made it different from tempera,
is that it allowed for a smooth continuous modelling of volume.
This was because oil dried slowly,
as opposed to the fast drying tempera,
and different strokes of varying colors or tones
could be blended and used to create smooth transitions.

Look at the belly and the legs in this detail on the screen.
The volumes look around because the artist can blend darker with lighter tones,
as he shapes the three-dimensional body.
If this were painted with tempera,
small strokes of slightly different tones would be painted next to each other
and would blend in our eyes only when seen from a distance.
By the sixteenth century oil had become the predominant technique in all of Europe,
but
its use evolved
with artists focusing on different properties of the medium,
such as its consistence,
which allowed them to work up the texture of paintings. Oil paint would never be
used again
with a meticulous precision of Netherlandish artists.