ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS - NORTHERN RENAISSANCE 1400 - 1500
1) How were public altarpieces used and how were they effective? 2) How were private devotional images used? 3) How is the notion of the infinite important to art of this period? 4) Why is the invention of portraiture important? 5) How would you describe 15th century northern humanism? 6) Why was oil painting important to Northern Renaissance artists? 7) What are the important art works of this period and how did they personify the era? |
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Key Ideas
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Critic Robert Hughes on Jan van Eyck:
“Thus each object, each face and body in Jan van Eyck’s work is spiritualized by its almost total detail: his scrutiny goes beyond the concrete and waits for our symbolic imagination to catch up with it. The objects themselves are charged with symbolism; Jan van Eyck’s attitude to nature was medieval in that he seems to have regarded each created thing as a symbol of the workings of God’s mind, and the universe as immense structure of metaphors.”
Robert Hughes, The Complete Paintings of the The Van Eycks, Harry Abrams: NY, 1968, p. 6.
FREE RESPONSE: one typed page - 30 minutes
Defend or reject Hughes’s assertion by referring to at least one painting by van Eyck.
“Thus each object, each face and body in Jan van Eyck’s work is spiritualized by its almost total detail: his scrutiny goes beyond the concrete and waits for our symbolic imagination to catch up with it. The objects themselves are charged with symbolism; Jan van Eyck’s attitude to nature was medieval in that he seems to have regarded each created thing as a symbol of the workings of God’s mind, and the universe as immense structure of metaphors.”
Robert Hughes, The Complete Paintings of the The Van Eycks, Harry Abrams: NY, 1968, p. 6.
FREE RESPONSE: one typed page - 30 minutes
Defend or reject Hughes’s assertion by referring to at least one painting by van Eyck.
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