Northern Renaissance

<p>The Northern Renaissance took hold across Flanders, the Netherlands, and Germany between roughly 1430 and 1580, developing alongside the Italian Renaissance but following its own path. Where Italian painters chased idealized proportion, Northern artists built their reputation on close observation: every fold of cloth, strand of hair, and reflection in a mirror rendered with almost obsessive precision. This attention to detail was made possible by a technical breakthrough. Painters in the region refined oil paint into a medium that could hold thin, layered glazes, letting light pass through and bounce back off the panel underneath.</p> <p><a href="/apps/masterpieces/artist/jan-van-eyck"><strong>Jan van Eyck</strong></a> is usually credited as the movement's founding figure. His <a href="/apps/masterpieces/art/arnolfini-portrait"><strong>Arnolfini Portrait</strong></a> and <a href="/apps/masterpieces/art/annunciation-van-eyck"><strong>The Annunciation</strong></a> show how a domestic interior or a shaft of light could carry layers of religious meaning without a single obvious symbol out of place. <a href="/apps/masterpieces/artist/albrecht-durer"><strong>Albrecht Dürer</strong></a> carried the tradition into printmaking and self-portraiture, most famously in his <a href="/apps/masterpieces/art/self-portrait-at-28"><strong>Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight</strong></a>. <a href="/apps/masterpieces/artist/hieronymus-bosch"><strong>Hieronymus Bosch</strong></a>, <a href="/apps/masterpieces/artist/hugo-van-der-goes"><strong>Hugo van der Goes</strong></a>, and <a href="/apps/masterpieces/artist/lucas-cranach-elder"><strong>Lucas Cranach the Elder</strong></a> each pushed the style in different directions, from fantastical moral allegory to court portraiture, but all shared the same commitment to rendering the physical world exactly as the eye could see it.</p>