Petrus Christus: A Developer of the Interior Space

Petrus Christus - St Eligius in His Workshop - 1449 - Oil on panel, 98 x 85 cm - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (click photo for larger image)Petrus Christus - Virgin and Child in a Chamber - 1450-55 - Panel, 70 x 51 cm - Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City (click photo for larger image)Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus (born c. 1410/20, Baarle – died c. 1475/75, Brugge) is believed by some scholars to have been the pupil of Jan van Eyck--although it is debatable. In any case, he was most definitely heavily influenced by Van Eyck--as well as by Rogier van der Weyden. While lacking the power of these other masters--Christus does count among his best works his portraits--which place his sitters in clearly defined interiors. This represents a significant stylistic departure from the dark backgrounds of his day. Christus also created the earliest dated example of the use of geometric perspective, with a single vanishing point, in the north.

Follow this link to read some interesting details about about Christus' "St Eligius in His Workshop" (top image).

Jan van Eyck: The Master of Symbols

Jan van Eyck - Portrait of a Goldsmith (Man with Ring) - c. 1430 - Wood, 16,6 x 13,2 cm (without frame) - Muzeul National de Arta, Bucharest (click photo for larger image)Jan van Eyck - Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait) - 1434 - Oil on oak, 82 x 60 cm National Gallery, London (click photo for larger image)Jan van Eyck (born c. 1380/90 - died 1441) is the artist credited with perfecting the use of oil paint and has traditionally been exalted as the founder of Flemish painting. His work is characterized by an extensive number of disguised religious symbols.

Jan van Eyck is one of those masters in whom interest--over time--has remained high. His work is frequently copied and to own anything by the artist is a collector’s dream. His major achievement is the Ghent Altarpiece, featured elsewhere on this site. Indeed, the return of this famous work to Belgium had to be guaranteed--in the Treaty of Versailles, after WWI--before peace with Germany could be finalized. However, Jan van Eyck is also well known for many of his fine portraits--most notably the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait.

The Dignity and Grandeur of Dieric Bouts the Elder

Dieric Bouts the Elder - Portrait of a Man - c. 1470 - Oil on wood, 31 x 22 cm - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (click photo for larger image)Dieric Bouts the Elder - The Ordeal by Fire - c. 1460 - Oil on wood, 324 x 182 cm - Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels - This painting is one panel of a diptych that was painted by Bouts towards the end of his life. The paintings recount a horrific misadventure that befell Otto III and his treacherous wife. Bouts had found the story in a 12th-century chronicle written by Godefroy, Bishop of Viterbo. (click photo for larger image)Like many painters of his generation, Dieric Bouts the Elder (born c. 1415, now the Netherlands - died May 6, 1475, now Belgium) was heavily influenced by masters Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. Later on in his career, however, a greater severity and dignity in the treatment of figures; appears in his work. The facial expressions of the figures in his paintings show an extraordinary restraint that appears as a deliberately controlled intensity, made with great spiritual effect.

The Naturalism and Poetry of Robert Campin

Master of Flémalle - Mérode Altarpiece - c. 1427 - Oil on wood, 64,1 x 117,8 cm - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (click photo for larger image)Master of Flémalle - Madonna with the Child by a Fireplace - 1433-35 - Oil on panel, 34 x 24 cm - The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (click photo for larger image)Robert Campin (also known as the Master of Flémalle, according to most scholars) was one of the earliest and greatest masters of Flemish painting. Characterized by a naturalistic conception of form and a poetic representation of the objects of daily life, Campin’s work marks the break with the prevailing International Gothic style and prefigures the achievements of Jan van Eyck and the painters of the Northern Renaissance.

Claus Sluter: The Simultaneous Realist-Spiritualist

Claus Sluter - Well of Moses - 1395-1406 - Stone, height: 183 cm - Musée Archéologique, Dijon (click photo for larger image)Claus Sluter - Memorial to Philip the Bold - 1389-1406 - Stone - Charterhouse of Champmol, Dijon (click photo for larger image)Claus Sluter was born c. 1340, in what is now The Netherlands, and he died at some point between Sept. 24, 1405 and Jan. 30, 1406, in Dijon, Burgundy (now in France). Sluter was an influential master of early Netherlandish sculpture, who moved beyond the dominant French taste of the time and into highly individual monumental, naturalistic forms.

The works of Sluter are infused with a simultaneous realism, spirituality and monumental grandeur. His influence was far reaching, among both painters and sculptors of 15th-century northern Europe. From ducal archives, he is known to have entered the service of Philip II the Bold, duke of Burgundy, in around 1385. Philip II was ruler of the Netherlands and regent of France in the last decades of the century.

Spiritualist and naturalist in one, Sluter epitomized in sculpture the growing awareness of an individualized nature with discoverable laws and an enduring grandeur.