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.

The Limbourg Brothers: Early Netherlandish Masters

The Limbourg Brothers - Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry: Janvier (January) - 1412-16 - Illumination on vellum, 225 x 136 mm - Musée Condé, ChantillyThree Flemish brothers were the most famous of all late Gothic manuscript illuminators. Pol, Herman, and Jehanequin de Limburg. They were all born after 1385, in what is now The Netherlands, and had all died by 1416. These amazing artists synthesized the achievements of contemporary illuminators into a style characterized by subtlety of line, painstaking technique, and minute rendering of detail. The brothers worked together and, although the most celebrated appears to have been the eldest brother, Pol, it is difficult to distinguish their individual styles.

In about 1400, the brothers were apprenticed to a goldsmith in Paris, and between 1402 and 1404 Pol and Jehanequin were working for the duke of Burgundy in Paris, possibly on the illustration of a Bible moralisée, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

The Limbourg Brothers - Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry: Aout (August) - 1412-16 - Illumination on vellum, 225 x 136 mm - Musée Condé, ChantillySome time after Burgundy’s death in 1404, they entered the service of his brother, the duke de Berry, and it was for him that their most lavishly illustrated books of hours (the popular form of private prayer book of the period) were produced. The Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, considered their greatest work, is one of the landmarks of the art of book illumination and ranks among the supreme examples of the International Gothic style. It is essentially a court style, elegant and sophisticated, combining naturalism of detail with overall decorative effect. An awareness of the most progressive international currents of the time, particularly those deriving from Italy, suggests that at least one of the brothers visited there. The Très Riches Heures was left unfinished in 1416 but was completed about 1485 by Jean Colombe.

The Limbourg brothers were among the first to render specific landscape scenes with accuracy. Their art did much to influence the course that Early Netherlandish art would take during the 15th century.

A Visual Feast - Snow in the Middle Ages - (and beyond)

Allegory of Winter by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, fresco at the Palazzo Publico in Siena, c. 1338-1340 (click photo for larger image)A Snowball Fight in a Book of hours, second quarter of the 16th-century (click photo for larger image)Details from the January fresco at Castello Buonconsiglio, c. 1405-1410 (click photo for larger image)The Census at Bethlehem by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1566 (click photo for larger image)Here are some wonderful images for you to enjoy! The folks of the Middle Ages were well acquainted with snow! See more images like these at Retronaut.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti was an extraordinary Sienese painter whose most brilliant achievement was a fresco series on good and bad government that occupies three walls of the room in the Palazzo Pubblico. A “Book of Hours” refers to an illuminated Christian devotional book that was particularly popular in Northern Europe during the Middle Ages. Castello Buonconsiglio refers to a castle built for defensive purposes on a rocky hill, which was originally home to a Roman fortress.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder is considered by some to be the greatest Flemish painter of the sixteenth century. He is particularly well-known for his witty depictions of peasant life--and is definitely one of the fathers of genre painting.