A mirror on the wall
Bruges, 1434. In a room stand a man with a large black hat and a woman in a green dress; he raises his hand as if in greeting or oath. Wooden pattens lie on the floor, oranges on the windowsill, and a single candle burns in the chandelier. On the back wall hangs a round mirror. In it we see the couple from behind and two more people in the doorway. Above it, in flourishing script, the painter wrote: “Johannes de eyck fuit hic 1434”, Jan van Eyck was here.
What exactly the picture shows, a wedding, a betrothal or simply a portrait of a couple, is still disputed. What is certain is that it is one of the most famous paintings in the world, and that hardly anyone before had painted everyday life so precisely.
The invention of reality
The Early Netherlandish painters did not invent oil painting, but they perfected it. They built up their pictures in many thin, translucent layers. This produced glowing colours, soft transitions and surfaces that render velvet, fur, glass and metal with deceptive realism. Through windows, wide landscapes open up that one can study with a magnifying glass.
Many objects also carry a meaning. A lily stands for Mary’s purity, a towel or a water jug for her immaculacy. The art historian Erwin Panofsky spoke of “disguised symbolism”: the sacred is hidden in the everyday.
The Ghent Altarpiece
One of the key works of the period is the Ghent Altarpiece in St Bavo’s Cathedral, begun according to its inscription by Hubert van Eyck and completed by his brother Jan in 1432. At its centre, a vast crowd adores the Lamb of God; above them sit Mary, John the Baptist and, at the centre, God the Father or Christ (the identification is disputed); at the sides stand Adam and Eve, naked and almost life-size, a sensation for northern painting at the time. The altarpiece has been stolen several times, was taken by the Nazis to a salt mine near Altaussee during the Second World War, and has been undergoing extensive restoration since 2012; the upper panels are due back in the cathedral in spring 2027.
Van der Weyden, Memling and Bosch
Rogier van der Weyden, city painter of Brussels, painted scenes of overwhelming emotional power. In his Descent from the Cross, the figures stand as if in a shallow golden shrine, and Mary collapses in the same pose as the dead Christ. In Bruges, Hans Memling, who came from Seligenstadt on the Main, created calm, harmonious altarpieces and portraits.
Hieronymus Bosch in ’s-Hertogenbosch was entirely his own. His Garden of Earthly Delights shows a paradise, a world full of naked people, giant fruits and fantastic creatures, and a hell with instruments of torture made from musical instruments. His pictures are still interpreted in many different ways.
Influence as far as Italy
Netherlandish pictures were sought after throughout Europe. Italian merchants doing business in Bruges had their portraits painted or ordered altarpieces. When Hugo van der Goes’s Portinari Altarpiece arrived in Florence in 1483, painters there studied it closely, and its realistic shepherds especially impressed them.
The three-quarter portrait before a window or dark ground, as developed by van Eyck and Memling, was later taken up by Italian portraitists too.
Why it still matters
The Early Netherlandish painters showed that painting could capture the visible world with unprecedented precision. The portrait, the interior and the landscape as pictorial worlds of their own have one of their roots here. And their works still invite close looking, with new discoveries in mirrors, windows and folds of drapery.
Further reading
- Erwin Panofsky: Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character (1953).
- Max J. Friedländer: From Van Eyck to Bruegel (German original 1916).