14_CH14_P468-503.qxp 9/10/09 11:40 Page 468 14_CH14_P468-503.qxp 9/10/09 11:40 Page 469 CHAPTER 14 Artistic Innovations in Fifteenth-Century Northern Europe HE GREAT CATHEDRALS OF EUROPE’S GOTHIC ERA—THE PRODUCTS of collaboration among church officials, rulers, and the laity—were mostly completed by 1400. As monuments of Christian faith, they T exemplify the medieval outlook. But cathedrals are also monuments of cities, where major social and economic changes would set the stage for the modern world. As the fourteenth century came to an end, the were emboldened to seek more autonomy from the traditional medieval agrarian economy was giving way to an economy based aristocracy, who sought to maintain the feudal status quo. on manufacturing and trade, activities that took place in urban Two of the most far-reaching changes concerned increased centers. A social shift accompanied this economic change. Many literacy and changes in religious expression. In the fourteenth city dwellers belonged to the middle classes, whose upper ranks century, the pope left Rome for Avignon, France, where his enjoyed literacy, leisure, and disposable income. With these successors resided until 1378. On the papacy’s return to Rome, advantages, the middle classes gained greater social and cultural however, a faction remained in France and elected their own pope. influence than they had wielded in the Middle Ages, when the This created a schism in the Church that only ended in 1417. But clergy and aristocracy had dominated. This transformation had a the damage to the integrity of the papacy had already been done. profound effect on European culture, including the development Such scandals undermined confidence in the institutional Church, of the visual arts. leading many laypeople to turn to religious movements that Cities such as Paris, London, Prague, Bruges, Barcelona, and encouraged them to read sacred texts on their own, to meditate on Basel were home to artisans, dayworkers, and merchants as well Scripture, and to seek a personal relationship with God. One as aristocrats. Urban economies based more on money and wages such movement was called the Modern Devotion, but mendicant than landed wealth required bankers, lawyers, and entrepreneurs. friars and other clerics also encouraged this new lay piety. Investors seeking new products and markets encouraged techno- Although the Church was not wholly comfortable with this logical innovations, such as the printing press, an invention with phenomenon, the persuasiveness of the preachers supporting it sweeping consequences. Some cities specialized in manufacturing spread the new outlook. These religious impulses and increasing specific goods, such as tapestries, or working in specific materials, literacy fueled a demand for books in vernacular (local) languages, such as metalworking (map 14.1). The raw materials for such including translations of Scripture. The printing press made products came from mines or farms from all over Europe, as well books more available, further stimulating the development and as Asia and Africa, following organized trade routes. Trade put spread of knowledge. more liquid wealth into the hands of merchants and artisans, who Books and the ideas within them spread easily in an era when political changes brought significant changes to northern Europe whose boundaries now began to resemble those of present-day Detail of figure 14.16, Rogier van der Weyden, St. Luke Drawing the Virgin European nations. The Hundred Years’ War between France and CHAPTER 14 ARTISTIC INNOVATIONS IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY NORTHERN EUROPE 469 14_CH14_P468-503.qxp 4/12/09 15:19 Page 470 export of oak for painted panels area of limewood carving N North a wool imports to Flanders for tapestry/cloth e Sea S center for wood sculpture c i center for printing/print-making l t a goldsmiths B tapestry center for panel painting/manuscript ENGLAND illumination London S’Hertogenbosch Bruges Antwerp glish Channel En Ghent Brussels GERMANY POLAND ATLANTIC Tournai Aachen Rouen Arras Liège M e Mainz OCEAN u Prague Paris s e Se U Melun in O e e B J in O N Loire h H A R Y E M D I Tours Champmol Colmar A Bay Poitiers N Buxheim Vienna U Dijon Basel of G R FRANCE U AUSTRIA Biscay B Geneva St. Wolfgang S P e L n A ô Venice LE h I P R ST y Ferrara Dan A r ube L C e n Avignon e A e s Florence A G N d U O G r T Madrid A i R a R ITALY t A Barcelona Corsica i O SPAIN c P S Rome e a Córdoba Naples Sardinia GRANADA M e d i t e r r a n e 300 km a n S 300 miles e a Sicily Map 14.1 Craft and manufacturing specialties in Northern Europe in the Early Modern period England finally ended in 1453. This allowed the French monarchy regions of Europe for trade routes led to the voyages of to recover, but civil war kept England politically unstable until Christopher Columbus, which would enrich the Spanish crown late in the fifteenth century. French kings, however, had to and bring European culture to another hemisphere. contend with their Burgundian cousins, who controlled the trad- A new style of visual art that stressed naturalism accompanied ing hub of northern Europe: the rich lands of Flanders in the these political and social changes. As in the medieval era, aristo- southern Netherlands (present-day Belgium) and the northern crats and churchmen continued to commission works, but the Netherlands (present-day Holland). Indeed, Duke Philip the new ranks of society—bureaucrats and merchants—also became Good of Burgundy (r. 1419–1467) was one of the most powerful art patrons. For the merchants and middle-class patrons in urban men of the century. centers, painters made images in a new medium with a new char- Duke Philip’s son, Charles, wanted to create his own kingdom acter. Using oil paints, artists in the Netherlands made paintings out of the regions he inherited, a matter on which he unsuccess- that still astonish viewers today by their close approximation to fully petitioned the Holy Roman emperor. The emperor had optical reality. By midcentury, this strongly naturalistic style nominal control of much of Central Europe, but local rulers became the dominant visual language of northern Europe, attract- within this region often flouted his authority. On the Iberian ing patrons from all classes and many countries. peninsula, the marriage between Queen Isabella of Castile and This transition was gradual and by no means universal. Faced King Ferdinand of Aragon created a unified Spanish kingdom with a growing middle class, the traditional aristocracy attempted that became increasingly powerful. Competition among the to maintain their privileges and status. Among the aristocratic 470 PART III THE RENAISSANCE THROUGH ROCOCO 14_CH14_P468-503.qxp 9/10/09 11:40 Page 471 courts of France, the Holy Roman Empire, England, and the Dijon. Although the monastery was almost completely destroyed Burgundian Netherlands, many of which were linked by treaty or in the late eighteenth century during the anti-aristocratic riots of marriage, a preference emerged for a highly refined form of the French Revolution, some parts of the building survive. For the Gothic art, which has been termed International Gothic. Yet construction of this monastery, which Philip intended to serve as within these courtly images were the seeds of the heightened his family mausoleum, he assembled a team of artists, many of naturalism that would blossom in the fifteenth century. them from the Netherlands. Chief among them was the sculptor Claus Sluter (ca. 1360–1406) who came from Brussels. Remnants of Sluter’s work at the Chartreuse de Champmol include tombs, COURTLY ART: portal sculptures and other sculptural projects. THE INTERNATIONAL GOTHIC THE WELL OF MOSES AT THE CHARTREUSE DE As the fourteenth century came to an end, aristocratic patrons CHAMPMOL The most emblematic among those of the throughout Europe indulged a taste for objects made of sumptu- International Gothic style is The Well of Moses (fig. 14.1). At one ous materials with elegant forms, based on the Gothic style. The time, this hexagonal well, surrounded by statues of Hebrew Bible latter had been born in France and was linked with the powerful prophets, was topped by a life-size Calvary scene with Christ on French monarchy, so its latest manifestation owed a great deal to the Cross flanked by his mother and saints. This served as a visual the forms and traditions of France. Cosmopolitan courts such as expression of the fulfillment by the New Testament of the Hebrew Avignon and Paris attracted artists from many regions and Bible. With the loss of most of the Calvary scene, however, it is allowed them to exchange ideas. These circumstances produced the six figures of Hebrew Bible prophets on the base who must the style historians call the International Gothic. The artists of the represent Sluter’s achievement for us. Supported on a narrow con- International Gothic also adapted some elements from four- sole and framed by slim colonnettes. The majestic Moses wears a teenth-century Italy, including devices to imply spatial settings long flowing beard and drapery that envelops his body like an borrowed from Duccio and Pietro Lorenzetti, and certain themes ample shell. The swelling forms of the prophets seem to reach out and compositions, such as aristocrats enjoying the countryside (see figs. 13.30 and 13.31). The chronological limits of this style are somewhat fluid, as some objects ascribed to the International Gothic date from the mid-fourteenth century, whereas others may date as late as the mid-fifteenth. International Gothic artists came from Italy, France, Flanders, Germany, Spain, Bohemia, Austria, England, and elsewhere.