ART 331 - Seminar in Northern European Art

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2019/20b: Jan van Eyck and the Rise of Renaissance Painting. This seminar explores the breathtaking paintings of the Renaissance painter Jan van Eyck, whose pioneering achievements in the fifteenth century ushered in art history’s so-called Northern Renaissance. Van Eyck’s mastery of oil painting helped him create psychologically expressive portraits, exceptionally realistic human figures, convincing views of nature, and many other innovative subjects in both his religious and secular works. For diverse patrons, van Eyck executed a variety of image types, from massive altarpieces to memorial panel paintings for tomb monuments to small private pictures for visual delectation. So desirable were the painter’s works that they circulated and were copied throughout Europe, becoming especially sought-after commodities in Italy where dukes and artists alike recognized van Eyck’s unique artistic accomplishments.

In this course we consider topics such as the rise of portraiture and ideas of selfhood; the representation of beauty and the nude figure; the art of death and commemoration; the modern scientific examination of paintings; the relationship between artists and patrons; the exchange of artistic ideas between Northern Europe and Italy during the Renaissance; and the development of individual and regional artistic styles. We focus on Jan van Eyck’s works – including paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations – and on those by his most significant contemporaries including Rogier van der Weyden, who is represented in Vassar’s own Loeb Art Center. In addition to multiple visits to the Loeb, we will study major paintings by van Eyck and his colleagues in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection, and the Met Cloisters, all in New York City. Travel expenses are funded by the Department. Christopher Platts.

Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor

One 2-hour period.