History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 34

FLEMISH ART
Written by The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
Flemish art, art of the 15th, 16th, and early 17th centuries in Flanders, known for its
vibrant materialism and unsurpassed technical skill. From the van Eycks through
Bruegel to Rubens, the Flemish painters were masters of the oil medium and used it
primarily to portray a robust and realistically detailed vision of the world around them.
Their paintings reflect clearly the changes in fortune of this narrow slice of country
between France, Germany, and the Low Countries: first came the peaceful, pious, and
prosperous 15th-century reigns of the dukes of Burgundy; then a long confused
succession of religious crises and civil wars; and finally the imposition of autocratic
rule by the kings of Spain.
The precursors of the Flemish school are usually placed in Dijon, the first capital of the
dukes of Burgundy. Philip the Bold (reigned 1363–1404) established the powerful
Flemish-Burgundian alliance that lasted more than a century—until 1482. He also
established a tradition of art patronage that was to last nearly as long. Among the
artists he attracted to Dijon were the sculptor Claus Sluter of Haarlem and the painter
Melchior Broderlam of Ypres, in whose richly textured works one can see the
attachment to the world of surface appearances that is so characteristic of the Flemish
school.
Philip the Good (reigned 1419–67) moved the Burgundian capital to Brugge (Bruges),
centre of the northern wool trade, transforming that commercially minded city into an
artistic centre. In 1425 Philip officially employed Jan van Eyck as his painter. The
major works of van Eyck—“The Ghent Altarpiece” (1432; St. Bavo, Ghent), “The
Madonna of Chancellor Rolin” (1432; Louvre, Paris), and “Giovanni Arnolfini and His
Bride” (1434; National Gallery, London)—are astonishing in that they are both the
beginning and the culmination of early Flemish painting. Van Eyck is credited by the
art historian Giorgio Vasari with the invention of oil painting (paint in which a drying oil
is the vehicle), but if so it is an invention that began at the peak of technical perfection,
for no succeeding painter’s works have so well maintained their freshness of surface
and brilliance of colour. Van Eyck’s artistic vision, static and formal though it is, also
has maintained its power, imbuing everything he painted with a spiritual presence, for
all his unbridled love of material appearances.
While continuing to embellish their works with brilliant colour and richly textured
surfaces, the following generation of painters wisely did not attempt to imitate van
Eyck but looked to Italy for advances in pictorial structure. In his masterpiece, “The
Escorial Deposition” (1435; Escorial, Madrid), Rogier van der Weyden focused on the
drama of the scene, eliminating everything extraneous. The linear rhythms of
assembled mourners move horizontally across the shallow, crowded composition,
preventing the viewer from dwel ling on any one detail. Petrus Christus explored the
underlying physical structure of his human subjects, giving them a strangely geometric
appearance; and Dirck Bouts was the first Flemish painter to accurately use one-point
perspective and to proportion his figures to their surroundings. These innovations,
however, were extraneous to the spirit of the early Flemish tradition, which inevitably
declined along with the self-assurance and religious convictions of the Flemish
burghers, caught as they were in the late 15th century by the fall of the house of
Burgundy and the economic collapse of Brugge. Of the late masters of early Flemish
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