The Northern Renaissance and its characteristics

The very term "Revival" ("rinascita") belongs to the art historian Giorgio Vasari. Later the word was picked up by the French and transformed into Renaissance (Renaissance) - so this period is also called. Its time frame is difficult to determine: it is believed that it began with the great plague of 1347 and ended with the onset of the New Time, with the first bourgeois revolution. What exactly revived this period? Vasari believed that the spirit of antiquity, the wisdom of Greek philosophers and the ancient Roman culture. All this blossomed on the territory of Italy after the "dark ages" - so the historian christened the period of the Middle Ages. The Transalpine or Northern Renaissance came much later than the Italian, and has its own peculiarities.

North of the Alps in Western and Central Europe for a long time in the culture of reigns gothic, reached its highest peak in the XIV century ("Flaming Gothic"). However, at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries in Burgundy, painters and sculptors begin to appear, which depart from the canons of subtle Gothic style. It is, above all, the Limburg brothers and the sculptor K. Sluther. At that time the duchy of Burgundy extended far beyond the present French province and covered Belgium and the Netherlands. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Northern Renaissance was most clearly manifested in these countries.

If scientists connect the beginning of the Italian Renaissance with the fall of Constantinople and the arrival in Italy of a large number of Byzantine refugees carrying a Greek culture, then the countries in which the North Renaissance came a century later - the Netherlands, Germany, France, England and others - World outlook. If in Italy the philosophy of the masses was anthropocentrism, then in the north of the Alps - pantheism.

Pantheism claims that God is poured in nature, and therefore the surrounding landscape is worthy of perpetuation on canvas as a godly attribute. In the Italian Renaissance, nature is idealized, devoid of specifically realistic details, and often serves only as a background for the portrait. Northern Renaissance, seeking to capture real views, gives rise to an independent genre in painting - landscape. Especially this direction in the fine arts blossomed under the brush of German masters A. Durer, L. Cranach A. Altdorfer, Frenchman J. Fouquet, Dutchman I. Patinir.

The portrait is another genre where the Northern Renaissance was most clearly manifested. Artists G. Holbein Jr. and Durer in Germany, Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck in the Netherlands, J. Clouet and F. Clouet, J. Fouquet in France try to convey not the physical beauty of the face, but the psychology of the person depicted on the canvas, A huge emotional expressiveness of the image. Following the medieval aesthetics of the "ugly", the masters often use the grotesque, which is more than anything Jerome Bosch surpassed.

The second genre that spawned the Northern Renaissance is everyday scenes. In Italy, a major customer of art objects was the Church, which wanted to see pictures on biblical subjects. In the Netherlands, the increasingly class-leading bourgeoisie takes over the baton: merchant guilds and handicraft shops order their portraits from artists against the backdrop of their hometown, which, combined with the flowering of the landscape, generates genre scenes. The largest master of everyday scenes is Peter Brueghel the elder, also called "The Peasant," because he liked to depict scenes from peasant life. For him and other "small Dutch" is characterized by extraordinary virtuosity and careful drawing of details.