Flemish art and architecture

Flemish art and architecture,

The Medieval Period

During the Middle Ages, Flemish art followed the contemporary early Christian, Carolingian, and Romanesque styles. In the 12th cent. Rainer of Huy, Godefroid de Claire, and Nicholas of Verdun, among others, were noted for their work in metal and enamel. In the same century an important late Romanesque cathedral was built at Tournai (see Romanesque architecture and artRomanesque architecture and art,
the artistic style that prevailed throughout Europe from the 10th to the mid-12th cent., although it persisted until considerably later in certain areas.
..... Click the link for more information. ). In succeeding centuries, the metalworks of Dinant lent their name to the French word dinanderie, for metalwork, and Flemish brass workers and copper workers produced sophisticated pieces.

Splendid examples of secular architecture were executed in the 14th and 15th cent., including the Ypres cloth hall and the city halls of Brussels and Louvain. At Tournai painting, sculpture, and tapestry-making also flourished. Flanders followed the French in their adaptation of Gothic styles until the late 14th cent., when Flemish artists contributed vigorously realistic figures to the elegant, more fragile French manner of painting and manuscript illuminationillumination,
in art, decoration of manuscripts and books with colored, gilded pictures, often referred to as miniatures (see miniature painting); historiated and decorated initials; and ornamental border designs.
..... Click the link for more information.  (see also Gothic architecture and artGothic architecture and art,
structures (largely cathedrals and churches) and works of art first created in France in the 12th cent. that spread throughout Western Europe through the 15th cent., and in some locations into the 16th cent.
..... Click the link for more information. ). Jean de Cambrai introduced similarly powerful and realistic forms into French sculpture, along with André Beauneveu and Jacques de Baerze. Jean Bondol of Bruges was a leading illuminator and tapestrytapestry,
hand-woven fabric of plain weave made without shuttle or drawboy, the design of weft threads being threaded into the warp with fingers or a bobbin. The name has been extended to cover a variety of heavy materials, such as imitation tapestries woven on Jacquard looms,
..... Click the link for more information.  designer.

The marriage in 1369 of the daughter of the count of Flanders to the duke of Burgundy led to a concentration of artists around the wealthy Burgundian court. It was the center of activity for such painters and manuscript illuminators as Melchior Broederlam, the Limbourg brothers, the Boucicaut master, Jean Malouel, and Jan van Eyck. Claus Sluter executed the famous sculpture at the court-sponsored Carthusian monastery of Champmol.

The Northern Renaissance and Its Aftermath

In Flanders Renaissance works of art took on a character quite different from those of Italy. The masterpieces of 15th-century Flemish painting are remarkable for their acute observation of nature, symbolism in realistic disguise, depiction of spatial depth and landscape backgrounds, and delicate precision of brushwork. The achievements in symbolism (see iconographyiconography
[Gr.,=image-drawing] or iconology
[Gr.,=image-study], in art history, the study and interpretation of figural representations, either individual or symbolic, religious or secular; more broadly, the art of representation by pictures or images, which may or
..... Click the link for more information. ) and realismrealism,
in art, the movement of the mid-19th cent. formed in reaction against the severely academic production of the French school. Realist painters sought to portray what they saw without idealizing it, choosing their subjects from the commonplaces of everyday life.
..... Click the link for more information.  of Robert Campin (identified with the Master of Flémalle) and the Van Eycks, who mastered the technique of oil paintingpainting,
direct application of pigment to a surface to produce by tones of color or of light and dark some representation or decorative arrangement of natural or imagined forms.

See also articles on individual painters, e.g., Rubens; countries, e.g.
..... Click the link for more information.  in the first third of the century, were continued in the second third by Roger van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts, and Petrus Christus. These artists refined the depiction of psychological expression, landscape, and space.

In the last third of the 15th cent. Hugo van der Goes and Hieronymus Bosch were especially sensitive to complex emotional expression and fantastic subject matter, while Hans Memling, Gerard David, Joachim Patinir, Quentin Massys, Justus of Ghent, and Joos van Cleef produced paintings in a calmer mood, based on the achievements of earlier Flemings with occasional influences from Italian art. In general, with the exception of the brilliantly original Pieter Bruegel, the elder, late 15th-century Flemish art followed Italian models, although it preserved interest in genregenre
, in art-history terminology, a type of painting dealing with unidealized scenes and subjects of everyday life. Although practiced in ancient art, as shown by Pompeiian frescoes, and in the Middle Ages, genre was not recognized as worthy and independent subject matter
..... Click the link for more information.  realism and landscape paintinglandscape painting,
portrayal of scenes found in the natural world; these scenes are treated as the subject of the work of art rather than as an element in another kind of painting. Early Landscapes

In the West, the concept of landscape grew very slowly.
..... Click the link for more information.  as seen in the works of Paul Brill, Gillis van Coninxloo, and others.

Italy attracted many 16th-century artists, such as Jan Gossaert and Jan van Scorel, who returned to Flanders and imported Italian Renaissance forms and motifs into the North. At this time the center of Flemish artistic activity moved to Antwerp, where a school of mannerist artists arose, more clearly influenced by Southern European aesthetic development (see mannerismmannerism,
a style in art and architecture (c.1520–1600), originating in Italy as a reaction against the equilibrium of form and proportions characteristic of the High Renaissance.
..... Click the link for more information. ). Frans Floris was a leading representative of this trend. The 16th-century landscape style, emphasizing exquisite detail and brilliant color, persisted in the works of Jan Bruegel, the elder; Roelandt Savery; Joost de Momper; and Gilles de Hondecoeter, who worked in Holland.

Achievements of the Seventeenth Century

With Rubens, Flemish art again became preeminent in Europe, and his influence dominated painting throughout much of the 17th cent. The greatest patron of Flemish art remained the church, and Rubens's greatest influence was exerted through his religious paintings rather than his portraiture or his apotheoses of European rulers. Elements of his energetic line, brushwork, and understanding of form, his rich, warm color, and his ideal of robust beauty were emulated in the work of his pupil Jacob Jordaens and in that of his more consciously elegant and more highly individual follower Sir Anthony Van Dyck.

Still lifestill life,
a pictorial representation of inanimate objects. The term derives from the 17th-century Dutch still-leven, meaning a motionless natural object or objects.
..... Click the link for more information.  and genre painting also flourished in 17th-century Flanders. Outstanding still-life painters included Jan Bruegel and Frans Snyders; genre painters included David Teniers and Adriaen Brouwer. The principal exponent of classicismclassicism,
a term that, when applied generally, means clearness, elegance, symmetry, and repose produced by attention to traditional forms. It is sometimes synonymous with excellence or artistic quality of high distinction.
..... Click the link for more information. , the painter Abraham Janssens, brought elements of Caravaggesque painting to the Flemish school (see Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi daCaravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da
or Amerigi da Caravaggio
, 1571–1610, Italian painter. His surname, Caravaggio, came from his birthplace. After an apprenticeship in Milan, he arrived (1592) in Rome where he eventually became a retainer of Cardinal Francesco
..... Click the link for more information. ). The graphic arts also flourished in Flanders at this time. The principal Flemish sculptor was François Duquesnoy, who practiced in Italy. Architecture in the later 16th and 17th cent. blended heavy northern decorative taste and steeply pitched roofs with Italian mannerist and baroquebaroque
, in art and architecture, a style developed in Europe, England, and the Americas during the 17th and early 18th cent.

The baroque style is characterized by an emphasis on unity among the arts.
..... Click the link for more information.  forms; the Antwerp town hall (1561–65) and Rubens's house (c.1610) are characteristic buildings.

The Eighteenth through the Twentieth Centuries

In the 18th cent. French rococorococo
, style in architecture, especially in interiors and the decorative arts, which originated in France and was widely used in Europe in the 18th cent. The term may be derived from the French words rocaille and coquille
..... Click the link for more information.  taste predominated in Flanders, but in the 19th cent. a flourishing Belgian school of romantic painters arose (see romanticismromanticism,
term loosely applied to literary and artistic movements of the late 18th and 19th cent. Characteristics of Romanticism

Resulting in part from the libertarian and egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, the romantic movements had in common only a
..... Click the link for more information. ). They included Gustave Wappers, Hendrik Leys, and the genre painter Henri de Braekeleer (1840–88). Two other noted Belgians, Alfred Stevens and Henri Evenepoel, worked chiefly in Paris.

A number of figures stand out as exemplars of modern Belgian art. Foremost is James Ensor, an individualistic painter of grotesque personal visions whose major works were created by 1900. Important artists of the 20th cent. include the founders of Belgian expressionismexpressionism,
term used to describe works of art and literature in which the representation of reality is distorted to communicate an inner vision. The expressionist transforms nature rather than imitates it.
..... Click the link for more information. , Jakob Smits and Eugene Laermans; the sculptor and painter Rik Wouters and later expressionist painters Frits van den Berghe and Constant Permeke; the internationally recognized exponents of surrealismsurrealism
, literary and art movement influenced by Freudianism and dedicated to the expression of imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and free of convention.
..... Click the link for more information.  Paul Delvaux and René Margritte; and the later painters of the abstract school Anne Bonnet and Louis van Lint. Victor Horta and Henri van de Velde are the major 20th-century Belgians architects.

Bibliography

See M. D. Whinney, Early Flemish Painting (1968); W. Gaunt, Flemish Cities (1970); L. and T. van Puyvelde, Flemish Painting (2 vol., tr. 1970 and 1972); M. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting (9 vol. in 10, tr. 1967–72).