Early Netherlandish Painting At The Crossroads

The nine papers collected in this publication- which comprises the third and latest edition to the symposium volumes by the Metropolitan Museum of Art - were first presented in conjunction with the Museum's exhibition of Early Netherlandish painting culled from its own holdings in 1998. The essays, by an international roster of leading specialists, together uncover the circumstances underlying the creation of works of art and shed new light on their meaning, in the context of the growing interdisciplinary activity and burgeoning scholarship in the field. The importance of archival research into the socio-economic factors that existed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is emphasized- especially, the impact of art markets on the production of paintings as well as sculpture. Much new material has surfaced as a result of advances in the technical investigation of works of art, underscoring the premise that the clues to the meaning of a work are often found not only in its method of manufacture but also in the specific audience for which it was intended and in the function that it originally served for that audience. -- Publisher description.

An illustrated scholarly analysis of the art and the cultural interpretations of the Flemish Primitives.

Publisher Description

an interpretation of early Netherlandish paintings with devotional portraits according to which many of these images act as visualisation of the spiritual process of the sitters.

The volume contains entries for paintings in the National gallery that were produced in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by artists from the Netherlands. The entries are arranged alphabetically by artist; a short biography and bibliography for each artist is followed by individual entries on the paintings, each in order of acquisition. The authors address traditional questions of attributes and iconography; in addition, they examine the social, economic, and religious context in which the individual work of art functioned. The volume is also probable the first museum catalogue to include the results of examination by infrared reflectography and dendrochronological analysis.

The history of northern Renaissance art, from the late 14th to the early 16th century, drawing on a rich range of sources to show how northern European art dominated the visual culture of Europe in this formative period