
Master of the Ortenberg Altar
The Holy Kindred
c1425-1430
(central panel of the Ortenberg Altar) |
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Filippo Brunellesch
Dome of the Cathedral
1420-36
Duomo, Florence
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Netherlandish empiricism went an astonishingly long way. While
Jan van Eyck's
contemporary, Filippo
Brunelleschi (1377—1446), was "inventing" centralized
perspective in Florence, his own pictures contain no unified vanishing point. If
his spatial settings frequently seem highly "realistic", it should not be
forgotten that the mathematical principles of perspective employed by the
Italians strictly speaking contradict the workings of the human eye, which
sooner perceives slightly curved lines as straight rather than ones which really
are straight. Perspective employing a consistent vanishing point would only find
its way into Netherlandish art in the second half of the 15 th century.
The Netherlandish love of detail could be celebrated to its fullest
in portrayals of untamed nature. Although landscapes as a whole were
conceived on a less grandiose scale than in
Masaccio, the natural
kingdom is portrayed with a precision, technical sophistication and
exquisiteness which remain unequalled today. However different in
other respects, even the Italian painting of the Quattrocento
regularly drew fruitful inspiration from this same source. Thus the
young Raphael was not shy of siting his figures again and again
within a Netherlandish natural idyll. This influence of the North
upon the South nevertheless still tends to attract much less
attention in the literature than the exchanges in the opposite
direction.
It has, however, long been known that northern works were eagerly
collected south of the Alps. On closer inspection, it thus emerges
that an astonishingly high proportion of the works of
Hans Memling
(c. 1430/40—1494) were destined for Italian lovers of
art. Rogier van
der Weyden (c. 1400-1464) and
Hugo van der Goes (c. 1440-1482) both dispatched their
paintings across the Alps;
Joos van
Cleve (c. 1485—1540/41) would
later send his biggest altars there. Significantly, a large work by
Gerard David
(c. 1460—1523) for Liguria even modelled
itself on the layout of the Italian altarpiece. Down in the far
south of Italy,
Antonello da Messina (c. 1430-1479) became the
champion of Netherlandish ideas possibly without ever having crossed
the Alps. Most exciting of all within this process of exchange are
the rare personal meetings between artists, such as the work jointly
executed at the court of Urbino by the Italian
Piero della
Francesca
(c. 1415/20—1492), the Flemish artist
Joos van Gent (active c.
1460-1480) and the Spaniard
Pedro
Berruguete (c. 1450-1503?). So
close and fruitful was their collaboration that trying to identify
exactly who painted what continues to cause headaches even today.
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The discovery of nature and landscape
The reciprocal influences passing between North and South are
illustrated particularly clearly in the backgrounds of the paintings
of this era. In England, France and Germany from the final third of
the 13th century to the second half of the 14th century, there was a
preference for decorative, often very complicated and fussy
geometric patterns. They live on even in the work of
the otherwise.anything but conservative
Theodoric, and continue to
find echoes in the 15th and even early 16th century, not least in
the ornamental gold grounds of the Cologne painters and in particular
Stefan Lochner
(c. 1400-1451).
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Filippo Brunelleschi
Italian sculptor
(b. 1377, Firenze, d. 1446, Firenze)
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Filippo Brunellesch
Facade 1419-24 Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence
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Filippo Brunellesch
Loggia
1419-24
Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence
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Filippo Brunellesch
The nave of the church
begun 1419
San Lorenzo, Florence
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Filippo Brunellesch
Old Sacristy
1418-28
Church of San Lorenzo, Florence
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Filippo Brunellesch
Interior of the church
begun 1436
Santo Spirito, Florence
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Filippo Brunellesch
Sacrifice of Isaac
1401
Bronze relief
Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence
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Filippo Brunellesch
Crucifix
1412-13
Santa Maria Novella, Florence
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Justus
of Ghent Giusto da Guanto; Joos van Gent; Juste de Gand; Justus van
Gent
Belgium ( fl c. 1460–80).
(Joos van Wassenhove)
South Netherlandish painter, active also in Italy. He is
commonly identified with JOOS VAN WASSENHOVE, master at
Ghent, who is said to have gone to Rome some time between
1469 and 1475. Many of Justus’s works have been attributed
to the Spaniard Pedro Berruguete, and problems remain in
this area. Justus is documented between 1473 and 1475 in
Urbino, where he ran a workshop, and he was the only major
Netherlandish painter working in 15th-century Italy
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Joos van Gent
The Crucifixion
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 Joos van Gent
Portrait of Aristotle.
1475 |
 Joos van Gent
St Augustine
c. 1474
Musee du Louvre, Paris
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 Joos van Gent
The Institution of the Eucharist
1473-75
Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino
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Joos van Gent
Portrait of Solon.
1475
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See also
collection:
Bartolo di Fredi
Hubert & Jan van Eyck
Masaccio
Masolino
Hans Memling
Rogier van der Weyden
Hugo van der Goes
Gerard David
Antonello da Messina
Piero della Francesca
Pedro Berruguete
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