ART HISTORY Journey Through a Thousand Years

“Essere Umano: To Be Human” Week Five: Northern

Northern Renaissance Art Under Burgundian Rule - The Brothers Limbourg Usher in the Renaissance – The Belles Heures Video - Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century – The Unicorn Tapestries – Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait – A Goldsmith in His Shop - The Medieval and Renaissance Altarpiece – The Monforte Altar – Albrecht Durer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow (Winter), 1565, oil on wood, 162 x 117 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)

Dr. Stephen Zucker & Dr. Beth Harris: “Northern Renaissance Art Under Burgundian Rule” From smARThistory (2015)

The Burgundian Netherlands (map: National Gallery of Art) We often think of the Renaissance as an entirely Italian phenomenon, but in northern Europe there was also a Renaissance. Though profoundly different, the Italian and Northern shared a similar interest in the natural world and re-creating the illusion of reality in their paintings and sculptures. In the fifteenth century, the northern European countries we know today as Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were controlled by the enormously wealthy Dukes of Burgundy (Burgundy is a region in France). This region during the fifteenth century is often referred to, today, as the Burgundian Netherlands. The court of the Dukes of Burgundy were the most important patrons of the early Northern Renaissance, but newly wealthy private citizens also commissioned art as part of a growing interest in private meditation and prayer. Portraits were also commissioned in growing numbers. Like Florence, cities in northern Europe (Bruges, Ghent and then later and Brussels), were rich industrial and banking centers during this period and this allowed a large merchant-class to flourish creating an ideal environment for artistic production. Classical antiquity? In Italy, the Renaissance was deeply influenced by the art and culture of Ancient Greece and Rome—in part because the art and architecture of antiquity was more immediately available (ruins were plentiful in many cities). Northern Europe however did not have such ready access to ancient monuments and so tended to draw instead more directly from medieval traditions such as manuscript illuminations. Oil paint: glazes Though the medium of oil paint had been in use since the late Middle Ages, the artists of the North more fully exploited this medium’s unique characteristics. Using thin layers of paint, called glazes, northern artists created a depth of color that was entirely new, and because oil paint can imitate textures far better than fresco or tempera, it was perfectly suited to representing the material reality that was so important to Renaissance artists and their patrons. In the Northern Renaissance, we see artists making the most of oil paint— creating the illusion of light reflecting on metal surfaces or jewels, and textures that appear like real fur, hair, wool or wood. The great artists of this period created work that reflected their increasingly mercantile world, even when they worked for the court of the Dukes. The spiritual world reigned supreme but the representation of wealth and power were also a hugely important motive for patrons whether a pope, a duke, or a banker. […] Bruce Cole & Adelheid Gealt: “The Limbourgs Usher in the Renaissance” From Art of the Western World: From Ancient Greece to Post-Modernism (1989)

[The] Flemish masters, working in a culture that accepted the material world as a manifestation of divine creation, found a means to describe nature, people, and light, in a manner still astonishing [despite the fact that they did not embrace the spirit of Renaissance humanism as it had been conceived in Southern Europe….] [T]hey anticipated the Italians in the exploration of landscape and in the development of the portrait. Their vision, unconstrained by the conventions of classical art or the generalizing forms adopted by the earliest masters of realism in Italy (such as Giotto), was meticulous, precise, and comprehensive. Nature and humanity were faithfully recorded by [artists like] van Eyck, Roger der Weyden, and their followers, such as Memlinc. Thus, while Van Eyck and Rogier places a renewed emphasis on humanity in their portraiture, they treated their subjects with unsparing frankness and honesty. They set the standard for verisimilitude by which all subsequent realism has been measured, and they reminded their viewers that humanity, though important, was not perfect; the imperfections on the exterior were mirrors for more serious flaws of human nature. A general pessimism about human nature kept Northern thinkers from leaping to Pico [della Mirandola]’s optimistic conclusions about man. But the determination to face life as it really was yielded a legacy just as important and enduring as Italy’s Renaissance. Northern artists tended to examine humanity in a broader context, looking at the environment in which people lived and at the social fabric that people created for themselves. Though humanity was often found wanting, the keys to understanding life offered by artists in the North were important to Western culture. Later images of social satire, themes of mortality and suffering, the exploration of the human psyche, and landscape both urban and natural all trace their origins to the arts of Northern Europe in the fifteenth sixteenth centuries. As in Italy, the resurgence of art independent of cathedral decoration – paintings, sculptures, as well as prints and drawings – occurred in both courtly and urban settings[…] This flood of artistic creation – mainly altarpieces, portraits, images of saints, and tombs – was partially destroyed by iconoclastic outbursts in the sixteenth century. To what extent overzealous Protestant reformers, anxious to rid themselves of the images representing [what they perceived as] Catholic idolatry, eradicated the legacy of the fifteenth century will never be known. But what survives reveals a culture clinging to faith, wishing to see clearly and accurately the embodiment of this faith. Equally important, patrons wished to be seen in order to be remembered; thus portraits of donors in altarpieces abounded. […]Art existed to embellish the rituals of life and death; it made the mysteries of religion more comprehensible by giving them concrete, visible form […But even the subjects of portraits, despite their detail and realism, were somewhat medieval in feeling, because they felt remote and far off from the viewer, part of a larger whole…] beings of another dimension. This was the higher reality, laden with meaning. No tree, no flower, no detail was too small to partake of some greater significance within the larger whole. The beauty these artists reflect is not the beauty of their invention but that of divinity made manifest. Finally, these works are beautiful in the medieval sense; their multiplicity of form and their complexity, as well as their material richness, endow them with a splendour associated with the spiritual. […] The birth of painting north of the Alps occurred in the court of Jean, the duke of Berry. Three brothers of notable talents and abundant invention, Pol, Jehanequin, and Herman Limbourg, worked for the duke from 1411 until his and their deaths in 1416 from the plague. Although the Limbourgs’ lives are well documented compared to those of other artists of the fifteenth century, very little is known about their training. Two of the brothers were apprenticed to a Parisian goldsmith when they were quite young, but little else is known about how their original style evolved. It seems likely, however, that the brothers went to Italy, where they saw the art in Florence and perhaps Siena. When the trip took place is uncertain, but it was surely one of the earliest of such journeys in what was to become a centuries-long and fruitful dialogue between the art of Italy and Northern Europe.

Herman, Paul and Jean de Limbourg, January, from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 1413-16, ink on vellum (Musée Condé, Chantilly). The figure in a blue robe on the opposite side of the table is a portrait of the patron, Jean de France, duc de Berry.

The duke must have been pleased with the brothers’ art for he gave them commissions for the illustration of several important manuscripts. Whether religious or secular, the illuminated, or illustrated, manuscript was an object of luxury.

Follow this Link to Get a Glimpse at The Teenage Limbourg Brothers’ Work! https://smarthistory.org/herman-paul-and-jean-de-limbourg-the-belles-heures-of-jean-de-france-duc- de-berry/

The duke’s love of illuminated manuscripts and the Limbourgs’ talents intersected and resulted in a monument of surpassing quality, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (Very Rich Hours), of about 1415. This book of hours contains a series of calendar pictures that are strikingly novel. It was traditional for books of hours, which contain liturgical text meant for private prayer and meditation, to begin with twenty-four small illustrations of the [constellations] and the labours of each month. But the Limbourgs disregarded this tradition and instead painted a comparatively large picture of each of the labours, with the complicated astrological information placed in an arch above each picture.[…] Thus these calendar pages escape the often narrowly conceived world of manuscript illumination to become, despite their miniature format, major works of art. These pages are, in fact, among the earliest and finest incunabula of Northern art.

Limbourg Brothers, May, from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 1413-16, ink on vellum (Musée Condé, Chantilly) The panoramic landscapes of the Limbourgs’ calendar pages are inventive and charming. They realistically show the buildings (some of them owned by the duke) and activities of both nobility and peasants. […] This is especially evident in the February scene, where the cold, gray world of distant villages and fields is contrasted with a pesaant family warming themselves at the little fire in their hearth […] There are carefully observed beehives, whose tops are covered with snow, the frozen haystacks, the barren trees, and the birds eating grain left for them by peasants demonstrate a new interest in and love for the natural world. There is also a feeling of joy in the coziness of the little house and delight in the beauty of the snowy landscape.

Herman, Paul and Jean de Limbourg, February, from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 1413-16, ink on vellum (Musée Condé, Chantilly)

Dr. Andrew Murray: “Introduction to Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century” From smARThistory (2017)

Dukes of Burgundy (from left to right): Philip the Bold, 16th century, oil on panel, 41 × 30 cm (Hospice Comtesse, Lille); After Rogier van der Weyden, , 16th century, oil on panel, 41 × 30 cm (Hospice Comtesse, Lille); After Rogier van der Weyden, Philip the Good, c. 1450, 29.6 x 21.3 cm (Musée des Beaux-Arts de ); Rogier van der Weyden, , c. 1454, oil on panel, 49 x 32 cm (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) “The unlimited arrogance of Burgundy! The whole history of that family, from the deeds of knightly bravado, in which the fast-rising fortunes of the first Philip take root, to the bitter jealousy of John the Fearless and the black lust for revenge in the years after his death, through the long summer of that other magnifico, Philip the Good, to the deranged stubbornness with which the ambitious Charles the Bold met his ruin – is this not a poem of heroic pride? Burgundy, as dark with power as with wine…greedy, rich Flanders. These are the same lands in which the splendour of painting, sculpture, and music flower, and where the most violent code of revenge ruled and the most brutal barbarism spread among the aristocracy.” —Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, 1919 (1996 English ed.) Burgundy and the Burgundian Netherlands: territories inherited by Charles the Bold in 1467 (map: National Gallery of Art)

This remarkable passage from Johan Huizinga’s early twentieth-century classic The Autumn of the Middle Ages anticipated how the history of Burgundy has been written by many later historians: that is, as a series of successive dukes (Philip the Bold, John the Fearless, Philip the Good, and Charles the Bold). The first of these, Philip the Bold, became one of the wealthiest individuals in western Europe after he inherited the county of Flanders from his father-in-law in 1384, adding to his lands in Burgundy. His successors expanded on these holdings to create a territorial power located between France and the Habsburg Empire. From the beginning, the dukes of Burgundy aspired to rival kings in their magnificence and authority. Their wealth and access to Flemish craftsmen enabled the dukes to produce one of the most visually splendorous court cultures in western Europe, one that in turn influenced royal patronage and ceremony in Spain, France, England, and the Habsburg Empire.

Claus Sluter workshop, Portal of the Charterhouse of Champmol, c. 1385-93 (photo: Dr. Steven Zucker) Monastery as monument

The first major project undertaken by a Burgundian duke was the construction of a Carthusian monastery outside Dijon, the Charterhouse of Champmol (1383—c. 1410), eventually served as a mausoleum for Philip the Bold and many of his descendants. The monastery was destroyed during the French Revolution and the site is now a psychiatric hospital, but some monuments from it survive, including the tombs of Philip the Bold and John the Fearless.

Claus Sluter, Tomb of Philip the Bold, 1390-1406, alabaster, 243 cm high (Musée Archéologique, Dijon) (photo: Dr. Andrew Murray)

Other monuments include the so-called Well of Moses, which sits above a well in the main cloister of the monastery, and which includes life-size statues of Old Testament prophets below a crucifixion scene (that does not survive). The base with the prophets can still be visited in its original place, as can the portal to the church of the Charterhouse, which still has life-size statues in deep relief of Philip and his wife Margaret praying to the Virgin and Child and supported by donor saints. The Charterhouse of Champmol was intended to secure Philip’s memory and prayers for his soul after he died, but it was also a political monument, serving to remind his family and peers of his wealth and power.

Claus Sluter (with Claus de Werve), Well of Moses, 1395-1405 (prophets 1402-05, painted by Jean Malouel), Asnières stone with gilding and polychromy, slightly less than 7 meters high, originally close to 13 meters with cross (photo: Dr. Steven Zucker)

A turn towards Flanders

During the fifteenth century the main site of ducal patronage moved towards the Burgundian territories in the Low Countries. After the assassination of John the Fearless in the presence of the French king in 1419, the third duke, Philip the Good, shifted his attention away from the intrigues of and France, focusing instead on consolidating and expanding his territories in the Netherlands. The most famous artworks made in the court of Philip the Good are the paintings of Jan van Eyck, who Philip retained in his services. Unfortunately, although we know van Eyck made portraits of Philip and his wife, Isabella of Portugal, there is no surviving work known to be commisssioned by Philip. As the art historian Craig Harbison has suggested, van Eyck might have been most often enlisted by the duke to decorate the courtly environment, either by painting walls or even designing stages and centerpieces for courtly ceremonies such as weddings, funerals, and tournaments. One of the most spectacular types of ceremonies would have been “Joyous Entries”: civic processions in which the duke and his entourage were guided through and around a town lined with pageantry, plays, and tableaux vivants. These events marked a town’s acceptance of their new or current ruler.

Necklace of the Order of the Golden Fleece, mid-15th century, and enamel, 39 cm long (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Weltliche Schatzkammer)

Knights of the Golden Fleece

Philip the Good and Charles the Bold knew their titles (Dukes) were inferior to those of their neighbors (including the and the King of France), and they both sought crowns from the Holy Roman Emperor. Both also had ambitions to launch crusades against the . Even though these later two dukes never went on crusade, they often publicly fashioned themselves as defenders of Christendom. These two rulers therefore favored tapestries and manuscripts that depicted the lives and actions of chivalric heroes, particularly those of Alexander the Great (who conquered the east) and Saint George (a Christian warrior). In 1454, Philip the Good even hosted a grand banquet, the famous “Feast of the Pheasant.” This spectacle was intended to encourage the members of the chivalric order Philip founded, the Knights of the Golden Fleece, to vow to support a crusade. The tables were decorated with statues, and automata (moving statues), and accompanied by music. An elephant (most probably a mechanical one) with an actor dressed as a woman personifying the church was led before the guests, and the Knights had to make their oath before a live pheasant decorated with pearls and a gold necklace (perhaps like that worn by members of the Golden Fleece).

Vow of the Pheasant (Philip the Good and Isabella at the Feast of the Pheasant in Lille in 1454), 16th century, oil on canvas, 39.3 x 85 cm (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) Splendor and ambition

Not everyone in Burgundy shared these chivalric values. The refusal of the Netherlandish towns to fully support and fund Charles’s wars played a major part in his downfall and death at the Battle of Nancy in 1477. This event marked the beginning of the end for the Burgundian state, but its art and ceremony would remain a strong influence on the Habsburg dynasty that subsequently took control over the Burgundian Netherlands. The towns that had provided the crafts, stages, hosts, and audience for the Burgundian courts would also continue to develop their own civic visual and ceremonial cultures. The remarkable splendor and influence of the short-lived Burgundian court stemmed from its feverish and often violent ambition as a wealthy but precarious power in western Europe.

The Unicorn Tapestries (1495–1505)

Lavishly woven in fine wool and silk with silver and gilded threads, the seven wall hangings collectively known as “The Unicorn Tapestries” are certainly amongst the most spectacular surviving artworks of the late Middle Ages. They are also amongst the most enigmatic, in both meaning and origin. They appear to have been designed in Paris, produced in Brussels or Liège, and for centuries were owned by the La Rochefoucauld family before being purchased by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who donated them to The Met Cloisters in 1937. For a long time now, scholars have noted that the letters “A” and “E” are in several places woven into these pictures, but despite a string of theories — such as the debunked idea that Anne of Brittany commissioned them to celebrate her marriage — no one knows what these letters stand for. The tapestries themselves tell a story, which is likewise mysterious. “The unicorn was a symbol of many things in the Middle Ages,” as Richard Preston writes, including Christianity, immortality, wisdom, love, and marriage. Add to this that every least element in the tapestries — from flora and fauna to clothes and gestures — had a particular medieval meaning, and it’s little wonder that their significance is unclear to us. Certainly, the unicorn is a proxy for Christ. But he is also an image of the lover brought down like a stag in the allegorical hunts evoked in medieval works like Chaucer’s The Book of the Duchess and Gottfried von Straussburg’s Tristan and Isolde. He is both a creature of flesh and spirit, earthly longing and eternal life. In the first tapestry, we see a group of noblemen and hunters leading their dogs into a lusciously forested landscape, represented by a millefleurs background. A page — apparently posted up in a tree (though to medieval eyes, he would have been understood to be standing in a grove) — is here to signal that the unicorn these men are hunting has been sighted.

The second tapestry gives us our first glimpse of the unicorn himself. He is, as Magaret B. Freeman (a former curator of the Cloisters) says, “extremely handsome — from the tip of his spiraled horn to his curly beard and exquisitely plumed tail.” All around the unicorn, the hunting party stands and talks, watching their quarry as he dips his purifying horn into the water that pours forth from a fountain into a stream. (It was, in the Middle Ages, considered unsportsmanlike for huntsmen to pursue their prey until it had begun to run.) The image is notable especially for its many animals — above all the pairs of goldfinches and pheasants perched on the lip of the fountain. So fine was the textile-makers’ art, it is possible to make out the male pheasant’s reflection in the water.

The third tapestry is the most gruesome. It shows the hunters plunging their pikes into the unicorn at full gallop, struggling to escape the men and dogs just as a stag would — by cooling off and obscuring his tracks in a stream.

In the fourth, the unicorn defends himself. He gores a greyhound with his horn and kicks at one of the huntsmen.

The two remaining fragments of the fifth tapestry reveal a surprising turn of events. A maiden has beguiled the unicorn, who is now so docile he doesn’t even seem to mind the dog licking at the wound on his back. However, the presence of one of the hunters blowing his horn does not bode well.

And indeed, in the sixth tapestry two separate scenes are depicted — the brutal killing of the unicorn (in the upper left-hand corner) and the transportation of the dead unicorn on a horse’s back (front and center). Here the unicorn’s wound is clearly Christ-like, and the expressions on the faces of those gathered round suggest they are at the very least ambivalent about the success of this hunt.

The seventh tapestry shows the unicorn alive and well, and entirely tamed. He is fenced in and chained to a tree, but the chain is less than secure and the fence is low. He has submitted to his captivity. The red stains on his flank, in the words of the Met’s catalog, “do not appear to be blood, as there are no visible wounds like those in the hunting series; rather, they represent juice dripping from bursting pomegranates” — a medieval symbol of marriage and fertility.

The Cloisters’ current curator posits this last tapestry “may have been created as a single image rather than part of the series.” But a former curator, Margaret B. Freeman thought like many others that it may have been the mystical conclusion of the series, in which the “unicorn, miraculously come to life again,” stands for both the risen Christ and the “lover- bridegroom, at last secured by his adored lady.”

Whatever their meaning, the Unicorn Tapestries are among the most impressive medieval artworks in existence. The work of several (if not several dozen) designers, painters, and weavers, their rich beauty startles us into attention even today.

Courtesy of The Public DomainReview, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-unicorn-tapestries-1495-1505

Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker: "Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait" From Smarthistory (2015)

Possibly the most famous of all the Northern Renaissance artists is Jan Van Eyck, and certainly the most famous painting to emerge from the Northern Renaissance is his “Arnolfini Portrait” – follow the video link to have a closer look! https://smarthistory.org/jan-van-eyck-the-arnolfini-portrait/.

Jan van Eyck, Portrait of a Man in a Red Turban (Self Portrait?), 1433. National Gallery, London

Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece, completed 1432. Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent

Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, Oil on panel, c. 1435. 66cm x 62cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris

Christie Zappella: “Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in his Shop" smARThistory (2015)

Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in his Shop, 1449, oil on oak panel, 39 3/8 x 33 3/4 inches / 100.1 x 85.8 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) zoomable image Out shopping Like many Northern Renaissance paintings, Petrus Christus’ Goldsmith in his Shop reveals its complexities to the viewer over time. At first, one sees a group of three people inside a room filled with trinkets. The two standing figures—a male and a female in dressed in rich, expensive-looking clothing—appear to be a couple, as the man has his arm wrapped around the back of the woman. This woman gestures with her left hand towards the seated man, who, clad in a plain, red garment with a matching hat, looks up at the woman. In his left hand, he holds a small balance which supports a gold ring (fans of northern art will recognize this as a small scale—much like the one that appears in Vermeer’s much later Woman Weighing Gold from 1662-1663). In fact, the figures are inside a gold shop, and the man is a goldsmith. The baubles on display—objects made from precious metal, stones, glass, and coral—are his wares, and the standing couple is probably about to make a purchase.

Left: Mirror, Jan Van Eyck, Arnolfini Portrait, 1434 (detail); right: Mirror and still-life (detail), Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in his Shop, 1449 However, there is much more to this story. The smith appears to be seated at a work desk, but in fact, the front of the desk is visible, and a length of fabric hangs over it, into our space. Most importantly, a convex mirror resting on the smith’s desk (in the lower right hand corner of the painting) reveals a cityscape. What we see is not a mere desk however. It is, in fact, the front of the smith’s shop, which opens on a street in Bruges (in present-day Belgium, and the city where Christus lived and worked). The two young men captured in the mirror hold a falcon and approach the smith’s shop. The mirror situates us, the viewer, on the street in Bruges with that couple, looking into the smith’s shop at the artisan and the rich patrons behind him. A gift for a royal wedding Although genre scenes, or images of every day life, became popular in the North later (“the North” meaning all of the countries above Italy), Christus’ creation of illusionistic and complex space implies that the painting also carries a complex meaning. Since the painting is signed and dated by the artist in white paint in the center foreground, it can firmly be placed in the year 1449. This is the year that King James II of Scotland married Mary of Guelders. The , Phillip the Good, who was also a renowned patron of the arts in Bruges, commissioned the goldsmith Willem van Bleuten to make the couple a gift for their wedding. Thus, the painting is believed to depict van Bleuten as he is about to give the royal couple a gift of golden rings, made for their marriage.

This interpretation also explains the very expensive brocaded and bejeweled clothes—well out of the budget of the average man—worn by the standing couple. The piece of fabric on the desk is believed to be a wedding girdle (belt), and also supports this interpretation. The two men in the convex mirror may not only be a device used to demonstrate the artist’s virtuoso skill in this tour de force of illusionistic painting. The falcon held by the men is a symbol of greed and pride. Since the scale in the hand of the goldsmith, along with the illusions to marriage and purity, represent perfection and balance, the presence of the two figures with their ill-associated bird creates a contrast between the perfect world of the royals and the imperfect world of the viewer. The royal couple is morally superior to the common

man. Couple (detail), Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in his Shop, 1449, oil on oak panel, 39 3/8 x 33 3/4 inches / 100.1 x 85.8 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Dr. Donna Sandler: “The Medieval and Renaissance Altarpiece” From smARThistory (2020)

Michael Pacher, Sankt Wolfgang Altarpiece, 1471-81, polychrome pine, linden, gilding, oil, over 40 feet high and more than 20 feet wide (Parish Church, Sankt Wolfgang, Austria) [In the fifteenth century, every church featured an altar in the sanctuary. The summit of the worship came at the moment when the priest offered the bread and wine up to Christ and consecrated them in His name as Jesus did at the Last Supper.]

Rogier van der Weyden, Seven Sacraments Altarpiece, 1445–50, oil on panel, 200 cm × 223 cm ([…] The altar came to symbolize the tomb of Christ. It became the stage for the sacrament of the Eucharist, and gradually over the course of the Early Christian period began to be ornamented by a cross, candles, a cloth (representing the shroud that covered the body of Christ), and eventually, an altarpiece (a work of art set above and behind an altar). In Rogier van der Weyden’s Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments, one sees Christ’s sacrifice and the contemporary celebration of the Mass joined. The Crucifixion of Christ is in the foreground of the central panel of the triptych with St. John the Evangelist and the Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross, while directly behind, a priest celebrates the Eucharist before a decorated altarpiece upon an altar. Though altarpieces were not necessary for the Mass, they became a standard feature of altars throughout Europe from the thirteenth century, if not earlier. One of the factors that may have influenced the creation of altarpieces at that time was the shift from a more cube- shaped altar to a wider format, a change that invited the display of works of art upon the rectangular altar table. Though the shape and medium of the altarpiece varied from country to country, the sensual experience of viewing it during the medieval period did not: chanting, the ringing of bells, burning candles, wafting incense, the mesmerizing sound of the incantation of the liturgy, and the sight of the colorful, carved story of Christ’s last days on earth and his resurrection would have stimulated all the senses of the worshipers. In a way, to see an altarpiece was to touch it—faith was experiential in that the boundaries between the five senses were not so rigorously drawn in the Middle Ages […] Germany, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia were most often associated with polyptychs (many-paneled works) that have several stages of closing and opening, in which a hierarchy of different media from painting to sculpture engaged the worshiper in a dance of concealment and revelation that culminated in a vision of the divine.

Rhenish Master, Altenberger Altar, c. 1330 (wings are in the collection of the Städel Museum, Frankfurt) For example, the altarpiece from Altenberg contained a statue of the Virgin and Christ Child which was flanked by double-hinged wings that were opened in stages so that the first opening revealed painted panels of the Annunciation, Nativity, Death and Coronation of the Virgin (image above). The second opening disclosed the Visitation, Adoration of the Magi, and the patron saints of the Altenberg cloister, Michael and Elizabeth of Hungary. When the wings were fully closed, the Madonna and Child were hidden and painted scenes from the Passion were visible.[…]

Rood screen of St. Andrew Church, Cherry Hinton, England (photo: Oxfordian Kissuth, CC BY-SA 3.0) English parish churches had a predilection for rood screens, which were a type of carved barrier separating the nave (the main, central space of the church) from the chancel. Altarpieces carved out of alabaster became common in fourteenth-century England, featuring scenes from the life of Christ; these were often imported by other European countries.

Altarpiece of Saint Eustache, Saint-Denis, Paris, 1250-1260 (Musée de Cluny, Paris) The abbey of St.-Denis in France boasted a series of rectangular stone altarpieces that featured the lives of saints interwoven with the most important episodes of Christ’s life and death. For example, the life of St. Eustache unfolds to either side of the Crucifixion on one of the altarpieces, the latter of which participated in the liturgical activities of the church and often reflected the stained-glass subject matter of the individual chapels in which they were found.[…]

The altarpiece of the Church of St. Martin, Ambierle, 1466 (photo: D Villafruela, CC BY-SA 3.0)[…] In the later medieval period in France (15th–16th centuries), elaborate polyptychs with spiky pinnacles and late Gothic tracery formed the backdrop for densely populated narratives of the Passion and resurrection of Christ. In the seven-paneled altarpiece from the church of St.-Martin in Ambierle, the painted outer wings represent the patrons with their respective patron saints and above, the Annunciation to the Virgin by the archangel Gabriel of the birth of Christ. On the outer sides of these wings, painted in grisaille are the donors’ coats of arms. Turrets (towers) crowned by triangular gables and divided by vertical pinnacles with spiky crockets create the framework of the polychromed and gilded wood carving of the inner three panels that house the story of Christ’s torture and triumph over death against tracery patterns that mimic stained glass windows found in Gothic churches.

The altarpiece of the Church of St. Martin, detail of the Passion (photo: D Villafruela, CC BY-SA 3.0) To the left, one finds the Betrayal of Christ, the Flagellation, and the Crowning with the Crown of Thorns — scenes that led up to the death of Christ. The Crucifixion occupies the elevated central portion of the altarpiece, and the Descent from the Cross, the Entombment, and Resurrection are represented on the right side of the altarpiece. There is an immediacy to the treatment of the narrative that invites the worshiper’s immersion in the story: […] The scenes on the altarpiece are made imminently accessible by the use of contemporary garb, highly detailed architectural settings, and exaggerated gestures and facial expressions. One feels compelled to enter into the drama of the story in a visceral way—feeling the sorrow of the Virgin as she swoons at her son’s death. This palpable quality of empathy that propels the viewer into the Passion of Christ makes the historical past fall away: we experience the pathos of Christ’s death in the present moment. According to medieval theories of vision, memory was a physical process based on embodied visions. According to one twelfth-century thinker, they imprinted themselves upon the eyes of the heart. The altarpiece guided the faithful to a state of mind conducive to prayer, promoted communication with the saints, and served as a mnemonic device for meditation, and could even assist in achieving communion with the divine.

Chalice, mid-15th century, possibly from Hungary (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) The altar had evolved into a table that was alive with color, often with precious stones, with relics, the chalice (which held the wine) and paten (which held the Host) consecrated to the blood and body of Christ, and finally, a carved and/or painted retable: this was the spectacle of the holy.

Paten, c. 1230-50, German (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)[…]

Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris: "The Monforte Altar" From smARThistory (2015)

Once again, Dr. Zucker and Dr. Harris are here to draw us into a conversation at they explore their favourite features of the Monforte Altar “Adoration of the Magi.”

Follow the Link to the Video: https://smarthistory.org/hugo-van-der-goes-the-adoration-of-the-kings-monforte-altar/.

Dr. Sally Hickson: “Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” From smARThistory (2015)

Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1498, woodcut, 15-1/4 x 11-7/16″ / 38.8 x 29.1 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) Cowboy movies Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, always reminds me of my lifelong love of Hollywood cowboy movies. American westerns are almost all predicated on Christian themes, and riddled with simple symbolic numbers. Maybe you are familiar with the 1960 Western The Magnificent Seven and their connection to the Seven Virtues? And in terms of the Seven Vices, in the 2007 remake of 3.10 to Yuma, the ‘villain,’ Ben Wade, is trailed by six members of his outfit who try to free him from his captors—his release would restore their numbers to seven (and need I point out that ten minus three—the 3.10 of the title— is seven?). In the original poster for High Noon, Gary Cooper confronts four villains. This is why, for me, Durer’s Four Horsemen, drawn from the Book of Revelation (the last book of the New Testament which tells of the end of the world and the coming of the kingdom of God), have always been the sinister apocalyptic cowboys of world-ending destruction; Conquest, War, Pestilence (or Famine) and Death itself. Of course, that’s not at all what Dürer intended. The image was made as one of a series of fifteen illustrations for a 1498 edition of the Apocalypse, a subject of popular interest at the brink of any new millennium. In 1511, after the world had failed to end, the plates were republished and further cemented Dürer’s enduring fame as a print-maker.

Detail, Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1498 The horsemen In the text of Revelation, the main distinguishing feature of the four horses is their color; white for conquest, red for war, black for pestilence and/or famine, and pale (from ‘pallor’) for death (Clint Eastwood, Pale Rider, anyone?). The riders each arrive armed with a rather obvious attribute; conquest with a bow, war with a sword, and a set of balances for pestilence/famine. Dürer’s pale rider carries a sort of pitchfork or trident, despite the fact that he’s given no weapon in the Biblical account; he simply unleashes hell. Here’s the text from Revelation, chapter 6: The First Seal—Rider on White Horse Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer. The Second Seal—War When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come.” And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him. The Third Seal—Famine When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand…” The Fourth Seal—Death When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth. The quality of Dürer’s woodcut is breathtaking; one hears and feels the furor of the clattering hooves and the details, shading and purity of form are astonishing. Dürer’s unique genius as a woodcut artist was his ability to conceive such complex and finely detailed images in the negative—woodcut is a relief process in which one must cut away the substance of the design to preserve the outlines. Before Dürer it was often a rather crude affair. No one could draw woodblocks with the finesse of Dürer (much of the cutting was done by skilled craftsmen following Dürer’s complex outlines). The images are astonishingly detailed and textural, as finely tuned as drawings. So influential was Dürer’s graphic output, in both woodcut and engraving, that his prints became popular models for succeeding generations of painters. He was no mean painter himself, producing a varied and articulate array of self- portraits, as well as religious works, and turning his mind and his hand to the production of an influential book on perspective. He was a humanist, painter, print-maker, theorist and keen observer of nature and is therefore often referred to in popular discourse as the ‘Leonardo of the North’—although his actual output was considerably greater than that Italian Renaissance master.

Detail, Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1498 Dürer’s particular genius here is the translation of the distinctive colors of the horses into a black-and-white medium, which he achieves by very distinctly drawing their various weapons and by placing them in order from background to foreground, slightly overlapping, so that they ride across the composition in the same order as they appear in the text. This places the apparition of Death, a skeletal monster on a skeletal horse, in the foreground, trampling the figures in his path.

Detail, Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1498 In the wake of Death’s trampling hooves, a monstrous, fanged reptilian creature noshes on the mitre of a Bishop, a prefiguration, perhaps, of the imminence of the Protestant Reformation that would sweep across northern Europe in opposition to the excesses of the church and papacy. In this context, the thundering hooves of the horses could presage religious reform (Dürer’s Four Apostles, painted for Nuremberg’s town hall, bears inscriptions from the texts of Martin Luther), although Luther himself did not approve of the visionary nature of Revelation, declaring it, “neither apostolic nor prophetic.”

Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514, engraving, 23.81 x 18.57 cm (Mia)

Michael Wolgemut, View of the City of Nuremberg, 1493, from The Nuremberg Chronicle (Nuremburg: Anton Koberger) (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Albrecht Dürer, The Seven Golden Candlesticks and the Seven Stars from The Apocalypse, 1511, originally published 1498, woodcut, 39.53 x 28.26 cm (Minneapolis Institute of Art)

Albrecht Dürer, German, 1471-1528, Wing of a Blue Roller, 1512, watercolor (The Albertina Museum, Vienna) ATTRIBUTIONS

p. 2, Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris, "Northern Renaissance art under Burgundian rule," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed August 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/burgundy-and-the- burgundian-netherlands/. p. 3, Bruce Cole and Adelheid Gealt, Art of the Western World: From Ancient Greece to Post-Modernism, Summit Books, New York, 1989, pp. 113 – 116. p. 8, Dr. Andrew Murray, "Introduction to Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century," in Smarthistory, July 17, 2017, accessed August 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/introduction-to-burgundy/. p. 23, Christine Zappella, "Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in his Shop," in Smarthistory, November 28, 2015, accessed August 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/petrus-christus-a-goldsmith-in-his-shop/. p. 25, Dr. Donna L. Sadler, "The Medieval and Renaissance Altarpiece," in Smarthistory, January 27, 2020, accessed August 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/altarpiece-medieval-renaissance/. p. 34, Dr. Sally Hickson, "Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed August 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/albrecht-durer-four-horsemen/.

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