Flemish painting of the 15th century. About various Flemish artists

IN XVcentury, the most significant cultural center of Northern Europe -Netherlands , a small but rich country, including the territory of present-day Belgium and Holland.

Dutch artistsXVFor centuries, they mainly painted altars, painted portraits and easel paintings commissioned by wealthy citizens. They loved the scenes of the Nativity and the Adoration of the Christ Child, often transferring religious scenes to real life situations. Numerous household items filling this environment for a person of that era contained an important symbolic meaning. So, for example, a washbasin and a towel were perceived as a hint of purity, purity; shoes-li were a symbol of fidelity, a burning candle - matrimony.

Unlike their Italian counterparts, Netherlandish artists rarely depicted people with classically beautiful faces and figures. They poetized the ordinary, "average" person, seeing his value in modesty, piety and integrity.

At the head of the Dutch school of paintingXVcentury stands ingeniousJan van Eyck (about 1390-1441). His famous"Ghent altar" opened a new era in the history of Dutch art. Religious symbols are translated into authentic images of the real world.

It is known that the "Ghent Altarpiece" was started by Jan van Eyck's elder brother, Hubert, but the main work fell on Jan.

The doors of the altar are painted inside and out. From the outside, it looks restrained and strict: all images are solved in a single grayish scale. The scene of the Annunciation, the figures of saints and donors (customers) are captured here. On holidays, the doors of the altar flung open and in front of the parishioners, in all the splendor of colors, paintings appeared, embodying the idea of ​​atonement for sins and the coming enlightenment.

With exceptional realism, the nude figures of Adam and Eve, the most renaissance in spirit images of the Ghent Altarpiece, are executed. The landscape backgrounds are magnificent - a typical Dutch landscape in the scene of the Annunciation, a sun-drenched flowering meadow with various vegetation in the scenes of worship of the Lamb.

With the same amazing observation, the world around is recreated in other works by Jan van Eyck. Among the most striking examples is the panorama of a medieval city inMadonna of Chancellor Rolin.

Jan van Eyck was one of the first outstanding portrait painters in Europe. In his work, the portrait genre acquired independence. In addition to paintings that are the usual type of portrait, van Eyck owns a unique work of this genre,"Portrait of the Arnolfinis". This is the first paired portrait in European painting. The spouses are depicted in a small cozy room, where all things have a symbolic meaning, hinting at the sanctity of the marriage vow.

With the name of Jan van Eyck, tradition also links the improvement of technology oil painting. He applied the paint layer by layer on the white ground surface of the board, achieving a special transparency of color. The image seemed to glow from within.

In the middle and in the 2nd halfXVcenturies, masters of exceptional talent worked in the Netherlands -Rogier van der Weyden And Hugo van der Goes , whose names can be put next to Jan van Eyck.

Bosch

On the edge XV- XVIcenturies public life The Netherlands was filled with social contradictions. Under these conditions, complex art was bornHieronymus Bosch (near I 450- I 5 I 6, real name Hieronymus van Aken). Bosch was alien to those foundations of attitude on which the Dutch school relied, starting with Jan van Eyck. He sees in the world the struggle of two principles, divine and satanic, righteous and sinful, good and evil. The creatures of evil penetrate everywhere: these are unworthy thoughts and deeds, heresy and all kinds of sins (vanity, sinful sexuality, devoid of the light of divine love, stupidity, gluttony), the machinations of the devil tempting holy hermits, and so on. For the first time, the sphere of the ugly as an object artistic comprehension so captivates the painter that he uses its grotesque forms. His paintings on the themes of folk proverbs, sayings and parables ("Temptation of St. An-tonia" , "Hay Cart" , "Garden of Delights" ) Bosch inhabits with bizarre-fantastic images, at the same time creepy, nightmarish, and comical. Here the artist comes to the aid of the centuries-old tradition of folk culture of laughter, the motifs of medieval folklore.

In Bosch's fantasy, there is almost always an element of allegory, an allegorical beginning. This feature of his art is most clearly reflected in the triptychs The Garden of Delights, which shows the detrimental consequences of sensual pleasures, and Hay, the plot of which personifies the struggle of mankind for illusory benefits.

Bosch's demonology coexists not only with a deep analysis of human nature and folk humor, but also with a subtle sense of nature (in vast landscape backgrounds).

brueghel

The pinnacle of the Dutch Renaissance was creativityPieter Brueghel the Elder (about 1525 / 30-1569), the closest to the mood of the masses in the era of the advancing Dutch revolution. Brueghel possessed in the highest degree what is called national identity: all the remarkable features of his art were grown on the basis of original Dutch traditions (he was greatly influenced, in particular, by Bosch's work).

For the ability to draw peasant types, the artist was called Breughel "Peasant". Reflections on the fate of the people permeated all his work. Brueghel captures, sometimes in an allegorical, grotesque form, the work and life of the people, severe national disasters (“The Triumph of Death”) and the inexhaustible love of life of the people ("Peasant Wedding" , "Peasant Dance" ). It is characteristic that in the paintings on evangelical themes("Census in Bethlehem" , "Massacre of the innocents" , "Adoration of the Magi in the snow" ) he presented the biblical Bethlehem as an ordinary Dutch village. With a deep knowledge of folk life, he showed the appearance and occupation of the peasants, a typical Dutch landscape, and even the characteristic masonry of houses. It is not difficult to see modern, and not biblical, history in the Massacre of the Innocents: torture, executions, armed attacks on defenseless people - all this happened during the years of unprecedented Spanish oppression in the Netherlands. Other paintings by Brueghel also have symbolic meaning:"Land of lazy people" , "Magpie on the gallows" , "Blind" (terrible, tragic allegory: the path of the blind, carried away into the abyss - is this not the life path of all mankind?).

The life of the people in the works of Brueghel is inseparable from the life of nature, in the transfer of which the artist showed exceptional skill. His"Snow Hunters" one of the most perfect landscapes in all world painting.

Although in many places, it is true, inconsistently, the works of some excellent Flemish painters and their engravings have already been discussed, I will not now keep silent about the names of some others, since I have not previously been able to obtain exhaustive information about the creations of these artists who visited Italy, in order to learn the Italian manner, and most of whom I knew personally, for it seems to me that their activities and their labors for the benefit of our arts deserve it. Leaving aside, therefore, Martin of Holland, Jan Eyck of Bruges, and his brother Hubert, who, as has already been said, made public in 1410 his invention of oil painting and the method of its application, and left many of his works in Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges, where he lived and died honorably, I will say that they were followed by Roger van der Weyde from Brussels, who created many things in different places, but mainly in his hometown, in particular in his town hall, four most magnificent oil-painted boards with stories pertaining to justice. His student was a certain Hans, whose hands we have in Florence a small picture of the Passion of the Lord, which is in the possession of the duke. His successors were: Ludwig of Louvain, the Fleming of Louvain, Petrus Christus, Justus of Ghent, Hugh of Antwerp and many others who never left their country and adhered to the same Flemish manner, and although Albrecht came to Italy at one time Dürer, who was talked about at length, nevertheless, he always retained his former manner, showing, however, especially in his heads, a spontaneity and liveliness that was not inferior to the wide fame that he enjoyed throughout Europe.

However, leaving them all aside, and with them also Luca from Holland and others, in 1532 I met in Rome with Michael Coxius, who had a good command of the Italian manner and painted many frescoes in this city and, in particular, painted two chapels in the church of Santa Maria de Anima. Returning after this to his homeland and having gained fame as a master of his craft, he, as I heard, painted on a tree for the Spanish King Philip a copy from a painting on a tree by Jan Eyck, located in Ghent. It was taken to Spain and depicted the triumph of the Lamb of God.

Somewhat later Martin Geemskerk studied in Rome, a good master of figures and landscapes, who created in Flanders many paintings and many drawings for engravings on copper, which, as already mentioned elsewhere, were engraved by Hieronymus Cock, whom I knew when I was in the service of the cardinal Ippolito dei Medici. All these painters were the most excellent writers of stories and strict zealots of the Italian manner.

I also knew, in 1545, in Naples, Giovanni of Calcar, a Flemish painter, who was a great friend of mine, and who had mastered the Italian manner to such an extent that it was impossible to recognize the hand of the Fleming in his things, but he died young in Naples, while on him there were high hopes. He made drawings for the Anatomy of Vesalius.

However, even more appreciated Diric from Louvain, an excellent master in this manner, and Quintan from the same regions, who in his figures adhered to nature as closely as possible, like his son, whose name was Jan.

Likewise, Jost of Cleve was a great colorist and a rare portrait painter, in which he greatly served the French king Francis, writing many portraits of various gentlemen and ladies. The following painters also became famous, some of whom come from the same province: Jan Gemsen, Mattian Cook from Antwerp, Bernard from Brussels, Jan Cornelis from Amsterdam, Lambert from the same city, Hendrik from Dinan, Joachim Patinir from Bovin and Jan Skoorl, from Utrecht a canon who transferred to Flanders many new pictorial techniques he brought from Italy, as well as: Giovanni Bellagamba from Douai, Dirk from Haarlem of the same province and Franz Mostaert, who was very strong in depicting landscapes, fantasies, all sorts of whims, dreams and visions. Hieronymus Hertgen Bosch and Pieter Brueghel of Breda were his imitators, and Lencelot excelled in the rendering of fire, night, lights, devils, and the like.

Peter Cook showed great ingenuity in stories and made the most magnificent cardboard for tapestries and carpets, had a good manner and a lot of experience in architecture. No wonder he translated into German the architectural works of the Bolognese Sebastian Serlio.

And Jan Mabuse was almost the first to transplant from Italy to Flanders the true way of depicting stories with a lot of naked figures, as well as depicting poetry. He painted the large apse of Midelburg Abbey in Zeeland. Information about these artists I received from the master painter Giovanni della Strada of Bruges and from the sculptor Giovanni Bologna of Douai, who are both Flemings and excellent artists, as will be said in our treatise on academicians.

As for those of them who, being from the same province, are still alive and valued, the first of them in terms of the quality of paintings and the number of sheets engraved by him on copper is Franz Floris from Antwerp, a student of the above-mentioned Lambert Lombarde. Revered, therefore, as the most excellent master, he worked so hard in all areas of his profession that no one else (so they say) better expressed his states of mind, grief, joy and other passions with the help of his most beautiful and original ideas, and so much so that , equating him with the Urbian, he is called the Flemish Raphael. True, his printed sheets do not fully convince us of this, for the engraver, be he any master of his craft, will never be able to fully convey either the idea, or the drawing, or the manner of the one who made the drawing for him.

His fellow student, trained under the guidance of the same master, was Wilhelm Kay of Breda, also working in Antwerp, a man of restraint, strict, reasonable, in his art zealously imitating life and nature, and also possessing a flexible imagination and able to do better than anyone else, to achieve a smoky color in his paintings, full of tenderness and charm, and although he is deprived of the glibness, lightness and impressiveness of his classmate Floris, he is, in any case, considered an outstanding master.

Michael Coxlet, whom I mentioned above and who is said to have brought the Italian style to Flanders, is very famous among Flemish artists for his strictness in everything, including his figures, full of some kind of artistry and severity. It is not for nothing that the Fleming Messer Domenico Lampsonio, who will be mentioned in his place, when discussing the two above-mentioned artists and the last one, compares them with a beautiful three-voiced piece of music, in which each performs his part with perfection. Among them, Antonio Moro from Utrecht in Holland, the court painter of the Catholic king, enjoys high recognition. It is said that his coloring in the image of any nature he chooses competes with nature itself and deceives the viewer in the most magnificent way. The aforementioned Lampsonius writes to me that Moreau, who is distinguished by the noblest disposition and enjoys great love, painted the most beautiful altarpiece depicting the resurrected Christ with two angels and Saints Peter and Paul, and that this is a wonderful thing.

Martin de Vos is also famous for good ideas and good coloring, he writes excellently from nature. As for the ability to paint the most beautiful landscapes, Jacob Grimer, Hans Bolz and all the other Antwerp masters of their craft, about whom I have not been able to get exhaustive information, have no equal. Pieter Aartsen, nicknamed Pietro the Long, painted in his native Amsterdam an altarpiece with all its doors and with the image of Our Lady and other saints. The whole thing as a whole cost two thousand crowns.

Lambert of Amsterdam is also praised as a good painter, who lived for many years in Venice and mastered the Italian style very well. He was the father of Federigo, who, as our academician, will be mentioned in his place. Also known are the excellent master Pieter Bruegel from Antwerp, Lambert van Hort from Hammerfoort in Holland, and as a good architect Gilis Mostaert, brother of the aforementioned Francis, and, finally, the very young Peter Porbus, who promises to be an excellent painter.

And in order to learn something about the miniaturists in these parts, we are told that the following were prominent among them: Marino from Zirksee, Luca Gourembut from Ghent, Simon Benich from Bruges and Gerard, as well as several women: Susanna, the sister of the said Luke, invited for this by Henry VIII, King of England, and lived with honor there all her life; Clara Keyser of Ghent, who died at the age of eighty, retaining, it is said, her virginity; Anna, daughter of a doctor, Master Seger; Levina, daughter of the aforesaid master Simon of Bruges, who was married to a nobleman by the aforementioned Henry of England, and was valued by Queen Mary, just as Queen Elizabeth values ​​her; likewise Katharina, the daughter of Master Jan of Gemsen, went to Spain in due time for a well-paid service under the Queen of Hungary, in a word, and many others in these parts were excellent miniaturists.

As for colored glass and stained glass, there were also many masters of their craft in this province, such as Art van Gort from Nimwengen, Antwerp burgher Jacobe Felart, Dirk Stae from Kampen, Jan Eyck from Antwerp, whose hand made the stained glass windows in the chapel St. Gifts in the Brussels Church of St. Gudula, and here in Tuscany, for the Duke of Florence and according to the drawings of Vasari, many of the most magnificent stained-glass windows made of fused glass were made by the Flemings Gualtver and Giorgio, masters of this business.

In architecture and sculpture, the most famous Flemings are Sebastian van Oye of Utrecht, who did some fortification work in the service of Charles V and later King Philip; Wilhelm of Antwerp; Wilhelm Kukuur from Holland, a good architect and sculptor; Jan from Dale, sculptor, poet and architect; Jacopo Bruna, sculptor and architect, who did many works for the now reigning Queen of Hungary and was the teacher of Giovanni Bologna of Douai, our Academician, of whom we shall speak a little further.

Giovanni di Menneskeren from Ghent is also revered as a good architect, and Matthias Mennemaken from Antwerp, who is under the king of Rome, and, finally, Cornelius Floris, brother of the aforementioned Francis, is also a sculptor and an excellent architect, the first to introduce in Flanders the method of how make grotesques.

Sculpture is also, with great honor for himself, Wilhelm Palidamo, brother of the aforementioned Henry, a most learned and diligent sculptor; Jan de Sart of Niemwegen; Simon from Delft and Jost Jason from Amsterdam. And Lambert Souave from Liège is a most excellent architect and engraver with a chisel, in which he was followed by Georg Robin of Ypres, Divik Volokarts and Philippe Galle, both from Harlem, as well as Luke of Leiden and many others. They all studied in Italy and painted ancient works there, only to return, as most of them did, to their homes as excellent craftsmen.

However, the most significant of all the above was Lambert Lombard from Liège, a great scientist, intelligent painter and excellent architect, teacher of Francis Floris and Wilhelm Kay. Messer Domenico Lampsonio of Liège, a man of the most excellent literary education and very versed in all fields, who was with the English Cardinal Polo while he was alive, and is now secretary to the Monsignor of the Bishop - Prince of the City, informed me in his letters of the high merits of this Lambert and others Liege. It was he, I say, who sent me the life of the said Lambert, originally written in Latin, and more than once sent me bows on behalf of many of our artists from this province. One of the letters I received from him and sent on October 30, 1564, reads as follows:

“For four years now, I have been constantly going to thank Your Honor for the two greatest blessings that I received from you (I know that this will seem to you a strange introduction to a letter from a person who has never seen or known you). This, of course, would be strange if I really didn’t know you, which was the case until good fortune, or rather the Lord, showed me such mercy that they fell into my hands, I don’t know in what ways, Your most excellent writings on architects, painters and sculptors. However, at that time I did not know a word of Italian, whereas now, although I have never seen Italy, I, by reading your above-mentioned writings, thank God, have learned in this language the little that gives me the courage to write this letter to you. . Such a desire to learn this language was aroused in me by these writings of yours, which, perhaps, no other writings could ever do, for the desire to understand them was caused in me by that incredible and innate love that I had from childhood for these most beautiful arts. , but most of all to painting, your art, pleasing to every sex, age and condition and not causing the slightest harm to anyone. At that time, however, I still did not know at all and could not judge about it, but now, thanks to persistent repeated reading of your writings, I have acquired so much knowledge in it that, however insignificant this knowledge may be, or even almost non-existent, nevertheless, they are quite enough for me for a pleasant and joyful life, and I value this art above all the honors and riches that only exist in this world. This insignificant knowledge, I say, is nevertheless so great that I could well use oil paints, no worse than any mazilka, to depict nature and especially a naked body and all kinds of clothes, not daring, however, to go further, namely to paint things less certain and requiring a more experienced and firm hand, such as: landscapes, trees, waters, clouds, aurora, lights, etc. However, in this, as in the field of fiction, I could to a certain extent and if necessary, perhaps to show that I have made some progress through this reading. Nevertheless, I have limited myself to the above boundaries and paint only portraits, especially since numerous occupations, necessarily connected with my official position, do not allow me more. And in order to at least somehow testify to you my gratitude and appreciation for your good deeds, that is, that thanks to you I learned the most beautiful language and learned painting, I would send you, along with this letter, a small self-portrait, which I painted looking at my face in the mirror, if I had no doubt whether this letter would find you in Rome or not, since you could currently be in Florence or in your homeland in Arezzo.

In addition, the letter contains all sorts of other details that are not relevant to the case. In other letters, he asked me, on behalf of many kind people living in these parts and who heard about the secondary printing of these biographies, that I write for them three treatises on sculpture, painting and architecture with illustrations, which, as models, from case to case, explained would be separate provisions of these arts, as did Albrecht Dürer, Serlio and Leon Battista Alberti, translated into Italian by the nobleman and Florentine academician Messer Cosimo Bartoli. I would have done it more than willingly, but my intention was only to describe the life and works of our artists, and by no means to teach by means of drawings the arts of painting, architecture and sculpture. Not to mention the fact that my work, which for many reasons has grown under my hands, will probably turn out to be too long without other treatises. However, I could not and should not have acted otherwise than I did, could not and should not deprive the due praise and honor of any of the artists and deprive readers of the pleasure and benefit that I hope they will derive from these my labors.

VI - Netherlands 15th century

Petrus Christus

Petrus Christus. Nativity of Christ (1452). Berlin Museum.

The works of the Netherlanders in the 15th century are far from being exhausted by the disassembled works and in general the samples that have come down to us, and at one time this work was downright fabulous in terms of productivity and high skill. However, in that material of a secondary category (and yet of what high quality!), which is at our disposal, and which is often only a weakened reflection of the art of the main masters, only a small number of works are of interest to the history of the landscape; the rest, without personal feeling, repeat the same patterns. Among these paintings, several works by Petrus Christus (born around 1420, died in Bruges in 1472), who until recently was considered a student of Jan van Eyck and really imitated him more than anyone else, stand out. We will meet with Christus later - when studying the history of everyday painting, in which he plays a more important role; but even in the landscape, he deserves a certain attention, although everything that he has done has a somewhat languid, lifeless shade. A perfectly beautiful landscape spreads only behind the figures of the Brussels "Lament over the Body of the Lord": a typical Flemish view with soft lines of hills on which castles stand, with rows of trees planted in valleys or climbing in thin silhouettes along the slope of demarcated hills; right there - a small lake, a road winding between fields, a town with a church in a hollow - all this under a clear morning sky. But, unfortunately, the attribution of this picture to Christus is highly doubtful.

Hugo van der Goes. Landscape on the right wing of the Portinari altarpiece (circa 1470) Uffizi Gallery in Florence

It should, however, be noted that in the authentic paintings of the master in Berlin Museum perhaps the best part is the landscapes. The scenery in "The Adoration of the Child" is especially attractive. The shading frame here is a wretched canopy, attached to rocky boulders, as if entirely written off from nature. Behind this "backstage" and the dark-clothed figures of the Mother of God, Joseph and the midwife Sibyl, the slopes of two hills circle, between which a grove of young trees nestled in a small green valley. At the edge of the forest, shepherds listen to an angel flying above them. A road leads past them to the city wall, and its branch creeps up to the left hill, where under a row of willows one can see a peasant chasing donkeys with sacks. Everything breathes with an amazing world; however, it must be admitted that there is, in essence, no connection with the depicted moment. Before us is a day, spring, - there is no attempt to mean anything " Christmas mood". In "Flemal" we see at least something solemn in the whole composition and the desire to depict a December Dutch morning. In Christus, everything breathes with pastoral grace, and one feels the artist's complete inability to delve into the subject. We will meet the same features in landscapes of all other minor masters of the middle of the 15th century: Dare, Meire and dozens of nameless ones.

Gertchen St Jans. "The Burning of the Remains of John the Baptist". Museum in Vienna.

That is why Hugo van der Goes' most brilliant painting, Portinari Altarpiece (in Florence in the Uffitz), is remarkable because in it the artist-poet is the first among the Netherlands to try in a decisive and consistent way to draw a connection between the mood of the dramatic action itself and the landscape background. We saw something similar in the Dijon painting "Flemal", but how far ahead did Hugo van der Goes go ahead of this experience, working on a painting commissioned by the rich banker Portinari (representative in Bruges of the Medici trade affairs) and intended for sending to Florence. It is possible that at Portinari himself, Hus saw paintings by the Medici artists he loved: Beato Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Baldovinetti. It is also possible that a noble ambition spoke in him to show Florence the superiority of domestic art. Unfortunately, we do not know anything about Gus, except for a rather detailed (but also not clarifying the essence) story about his insanity and death. As for where he came from, who was his teacher, even what he wrote besides the Portinari Altarpiece, then all this remains under the cover of mystery. Only one thing is clear, even from a study of his painting in Florence, - this is an exceptional passion for the Netherlander, spirituality, vitality of his work. In Goose, both the dramatic plasticity of Roger and the deep sense of nature of the van Eycks were combined into one inseparable whole. To this was added his personal peculiarity: some kind of beautiful pathetic note, some kind of gentle, but by no means relaxed sentimentalism.

There are few paintings in the history of painting that would be full of such trepidation, in which the soul of the artist, all the wonderful complexity of her experiences, would so shine through. Even if we did not know that Hus had gone into a monastery from the world, that there he led some kind of strange semi-social life, entertaining honored guests and feasting with them, that then the darkness of madness took possession of him, one "Portinari Altarpiece" would tell us about the sick soul of its author, about her attraction to mystical ecstasy, about the interweaving of the most diverse experiences in her. The bluish, cold tone of the triptych, alone in the entire Dutch school, sounds like wonderful and deeply sad music.

The culture of the Netherlands in the 15th century was religious, but the religious feeling took on a greater humanity and individuality than in the Middle Ages. From now on, sacred images called the worshiper not only to worship, but also to understanding and empathy. The most common in art were the plots associated with the earthly life of Christ, the Mother of God and the Saints, with their worries, joys and sufferings, well known and understandable to every person. Religion was still given the main place, many people lived according to the laws of the church. Altar compositions written for Catholic churches were very common, because the customers were the Catholic Church, which occupied a dominant position in society, although then the Reformation era followed, which divided the Netherlands into two warring camps: Catholics and Protestants, faith still remained in first place, which changed significantly only in the Enlightenment.

Among the Dutch townspeople there were many people of art. Painters, sculptures, carvers, jewelers, stained glass makers were part of various workshops along with blacksmiths, weavers, potters, dyers, glassblowers and pharmacists. However, in those days, the title of "master" was considered a very honorary title, and artists carried it with no less dignity than representatives of other, more prosaic (in the opinion of a modern person) professions. The new art originated in the Netherlands at the end of the 14th century. It was the era of itinerant artists who were looking for teachers and customers in a foreign land. The Dutch masters were primarily attracted by France, which maintained long-standing cultural and political ties with their fatherland. For a long time Dutch artists remained only diligent students of their French counterparts. The main centers of activity of the Dutch masters in the XIV century were the Parisian royal court - during the reign of Charles V the Wise (1364-1380), but already at the turn of the century, the courts of the two brothers of this king became the centers: Jean of France, Duke of Berry, in Bourges and Philip the Brave, Duke of Burgundy, in Dijon, at the courts, which Jan van Eyck worked for a long time.

The artists of the Dutch Renaissance did not strive for a rationalistic awareness of the general patterns of being, they were far from scientific and theoretical interests and passions ancient culture. But they successfully mastered the transfer of the depth of space, the atmosphere saturated with light, the finest features of the structure and surface of objects, filling every detail with deep poetic spirituality. Based on the traditions of the Gothic, they showed a special interest in the individual appearance of a person, in the structure of his spiritual world. The progressive development of Dutch art at the end of the 15th and 16th centuries. associated with an appeal to the real world and folk life, the development of a portrait, elements of everyday genre, landscape, still life, with an increased interest in folklore and folk images facilitated a direct transition from the Renaissance itself to the principles art XVII century.

It was in the XIV and XV centuries. accounts for the origin and development of altar images.

Initially, the word altar was used by the Greeks and Romans for two wax-covered and joined together writing boards that served as notebooks. They were wooden, bone or metal. The inner sides of the fold were intended for records, the outer ones could be covered with various kinds of decorations. The altar was also called the altar, a sacred place for sacrifices and prayers to the gods in the open air. In the 13th century at the height of gothic art the entire eastern part of the temple, separated by an altar barrier, was also called the altar, and in Orthodox churches from the 15th century - the iconostasis. An altar with movable doors was the ideological center of the temple interior, which was an innovation in Gothic art. Altar compositions were most often written according to biblical subjects, while icons with the faces of saints were depicted on the iconostases. There were such altar compositions as diptychs, triptychs and polyptychs. A diptych had two, a triptych had three, and a polyptych had five or more parts connected by a common theme and compositional design.

Robert Campin - a Dutch painter, also known as the Master of Flemal and Merode Altarpiece, according to surviving documents, Campin, a painter from Tournai, was the teacher of the famous Rogier van der Weyden. The best-known surviving works of Kampen are four fragments of altarpieces, which are now kept at the Städel Art Institute in Frankfurt am Main. Three of them are generally believed to come from the Abbey of Flemal, after which the author received the name of the Master of Flemal. The triptych, formerly owned by the Countess Merode and located in Tongerloo in Belgium, gave rise to another nickname for the artist - the Master of the Altar of Merode. Currently, this altar is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). The brushes of Campin also belong to the Nativity of Christ from the museum in Dijon, two wings of the so-called Verl Altarpiece, stored in the Prado, and about 20 more paintings, some of them are only fragments of large works or modern copies of long-lost works to the Master.

The Merode altarpiece is a work of particular importance for the development of realism in Netherlandish painting and, in particular, for the composition of the style of Netherlandish portraiture.

In this triptych, before the eyes of the viewer, a contemporary urban dwelling appears to the artist in all real authenticity. The central composition containing the Annunciation scene depicts the main living room of the house. On the left wing, you can see a courtyard fenced with a stone wall with porch steps and an ajar front door leading to the house. On the right wing there is a second room, where the owner's carpentry workshop is located. It clearly shows the path that the Master from Flemal went, translating the impressions of real life into an artistic image; consciously or intuitively, this task became the main goal of the creative act he undertook. The master from Flemal considered his main goal to be the depiction of the Annunciation scene and the depiction of the figures of pious customers worshiping the Madonna. But in the end, it outweighed the concrete life principle embedded in the picture, which brought to our days in its primordial freshness the image of living human reality, which was once for the people of a certain country, a certain era and a certain social status, the everyday life of their true existence. The master from Flemal proceeded in this work entirely from those interests and that psychology of his compatriots and fellow citizens, which he himself shared. Having apparently paid the main attention to the everyday environment of people, making a person a part of the material world and putting him almost on the same level with household items that accompany his life, the artist managed to characterize not only the external, but also the psychological appearance of his hero.

A means for this, along with the fixation of specific phenomena of reality, was also a special interpretation of the religious plot. In compositions on common religious themes, the Master from Flemal introduced such details and embodied in them such symbolic content that led the viewer's imagination away from the interpretation of traditional legends approved by the church and directed him to the perception of living reality. In some of the paintings, the artist reproduced legends borrowed from religious apocryphal literature, in which an unorthodox interpretation of plots was given, common in the democratic strata of Dutch society. This was most evident in the altar of Merode. A deviation from the generally accepted custom is the introduction of the figure of Joseph into the scene of the Annunciation. It is no coincidence that the artist paid so much attention to this character here. During the life of the Master of Flemal, the cult of Joseph grew enormously, which served to glorify family morality. In this hero of the gospel legend, housekeeping was emphasized, his belonging to the world was noted as an artisan of a certain profession and a husband, who was an example of abstinence; the image of a simple carpenter appeared, full of humility and moral purity, wholly in tune with the burgher ideal of the era. In the altar of Merode, it was Joseph who the artist made the conductor of the hidden meaning of the image.

Both the people themselves and the fruits of their labor, embodied in the objects of the environment, acted as carriers of the divine principle. The pantheism expressed by the artist was hostile to official church religiosity and lay on the path to its denial, anticipating some elements of the new religious doctrine that spread at the beginning of the 16th century - Calvinism, with its recognition of the sanctity of every profession in life. It is easy to see that the paintings of the Master from Flemal are imbued with the spirit of “righteous everyday life”, close to those ideals of the “devotio moderna” teaching, which were mentioned above.

Behind all this stood the image of a new man - a burgher, a city dweller with a completely original spiritual warehouse, clearly expressed tastes and needs. To characterize this man, it was not enough for the artist that he, giving the appearances of his heroes, a greater share of individual expressiveness than did his predecessors miniaturists. To active participation in this matter, he attracted the material environment accompanying a person. The hero of the Master of Flemal would be incomprehensible without all these tables, stools and benches knocked together from oak boards, doors with metal brackets and rings, copper pots and earthenware jugs, windows with wooden shutters, massive canopies over the hearths. An important thing in characterizing the characters is that through the windows of the rooms one can see the streets of their native city, and at the threshold of the house grow bunches of grass and modest, naive flowers. In all this, it was as if a particle of the soul of a person living in the depicted houses was embodied. People and things live common life and as if made of the same material; the owners of the rooms are as simple and "strongly put together" as the things they own. These are ugly men and women dressed in good-quality cloth clothes that fall in heavy folds. They have calm, serious, concentrated faces. Such are the customers, husband and wife, who are kneeling in front of the door of the Annunciation room on the altar of Merode. They left their warehouses, shops and workshops and busily came from those very streets and from those houses that are visible behind the open gate of the courtyard to pay their debt to piety. Their inner world is whole and unperturbed, their thoughts are focused on worldly affairs, their prayers are concrete and sober. The picture glorifies human everyday life and human labor, which, in the interpretation of the Master from Flemal, is surrounded by an aura of goodness and moral purity.

It is characteristic that the artist found it possible to attribute similar signs of human character even to those characters of religious legends, whose appearance was most determined by traditional conventions. The master from Flemal was the author of that type of "burgher Madonna", which for a long time remained in the Netherlandish painting. His Madonna lives in an ordinary room in a burgher's house, surrounded by a cozy and homely atmosphere. She sits on an oak bench near a fireplace or a wooden table, she is surrounded by all kinds of household items that emphasize the simplicity and humanity of her appearance. Her face is calm and clear, her eyes are lowered and look either at a book or at a baby lying on her lap; in this image, the connection with the field of spiritualistic ideas is not so much emphasized as his human nature; he is filled with a concentrated and clear piety, responding to feelings and psychology common man those days (Madonna from the scene of the "Annunciation" of the Merode altar, "Madonna in the room", "Madonna by the fireplace"). These examples show that the Master of Flemal strongly refused to transmit artistic means religious ideas that demanded the removal of the image of a pious person from the sphere of real life; in his works, not a person was transferred from the earth to imaginary spheres, but religious characters descended to earth and plunged into the thick of contemporary human everyday life in all its true originality. The appearance of the human personality under the brush of the artist acquired a kind of integrity; weakened the signs of his spiritual splitting. This was largely facilitated by the consonance of the psychological state of the characters plot pictures the material environment surrounding them, as well as the lack of disunity between the facial expressions of individual characters and the nature of their gestures.

In a number of cases, the Master from Flemal arranged the folds of the clothes of his heroes according to the traditional pattern, however, under his brush, the breaks in the fabrics took on a purely decorative character; they were not assigned any semantic load associated with the emotional characteristics of the owners of the clothes, for example, the folds of Mary's clothes. The location of the folds enveloping the figure of St. Jacob's wide cloak entirely depends on the shape of the human body hidden under them and, above all, on the position of the left hand, through which the edge of the heavy fabric is thrown. Both the person himself and the clothes put on him, as usual, have a clearly tangible material weight. This is served not only by the modeling of plastic forms developed by purely realistic methods, but also by the newly resolved relationship between the human figure and the space allotted to it in the picture, which is determined by its position in the architectural niche. By placing the statue in a niche with a clearly perceptible, albeit incorrectly built, depth, the artist at the same time managed to make the human figure independent of architectural forms. It is visually separated from the niche; the depth of the latter is actively emphasized by chiaroscuro; the illuminated side of the figure stands out in relief against the background of the shaded side wall of the niche, while a shadow falls on the light wall. Thanks to all these techniques, the person depicted in the picture seems to himself to be overwhelming, material and integral, in his appearance free from connection with speculative categories.

The achievement of the same goal was served by the new understanding of lines that distinguished the Master from Flemal, which lost its former ornamental-abstract character in his works and obeyed the real natural laws of constructing plastic forms. The face of St. Jacob, although devoid of the emotional power of expressiveness inherent in the features of the Sluterian prophet Moses, features of new quests were also found in him; the image of an aged saint is sufficiently individualized, but it does not have a naturalistic illusory nature, but rather, elements of a generalizing typification.

Looking at the Merode altar for the first time, one gets the feeling that we are inside the spatial world of the picture, which has all the basic properties of everyday reality - boundless depth, stability, integrity and completeness. The artists of international gothic, even in their most daring works, did not strive to achieve such a logical construction of the composition, and therefore the reality they depicted did not differ in reliability. In their works there was something from a fairy tale: here the scale and relative position of objects could change arbitrarily, and reality and fiction were combined into a harmonious whole. Unlike these artists, the Flemal master dared to depict the truth and only the truth in his works. This was not easy for him. It seems that in his works, objects treated with excessive attention to the transmission of perspective are crowded into the space occupied. However, the artist writes out their smallest details with amazing perseverance, striving for maximum concreteness: each object is endowed only with its inherent shape, size, color, material, texture, degree of elasticity and the ability to reflect light. The artist even conveys the difference between the lighting, which gives soft shadows, and the direct light streaming from two round windows, resulting in two shadows sharply outlined in the upper central panel of the triptych, and two reflections on the copper vessel and candlestick.

The Flemal master managed to transfer the mystical events from their symbolic surroundings to the everyday environment, so that they do not seem banal and ridiculous, using a method known as "hidden symbolism". Its essence lies in the fact that almost any detail of the picture can have a symbolic meaning. For example, the flowers on the left wing and the central panel of the triptych are associated with the Virgin Mary: roses indicate her love, violets indicate her humility, and lilies indicate chastity. A polished bowler hat and a towel are not just household items, but symbols that remind us that the Virgin Mary is “the purest vessel” and “the source of living water.”

The artist's patrons must have had a good understanding of the meaning of these established symbols. The triptych contains all the richness of medieval symbolism, but it turned out to be so closely woven into the world of everyday life that it is sometimes difficult for us to determine whether this or that detail needs symbolic interpretation. Perhaps the most interesting symbol of this kind is the candle next to the vase of lilies. It has just gone out, as can be judged by the luminous wick and the curling haze. But why was it lit in broad daylight, and why did the flame go out? Perhaps the light of this particle of the material world could not withstand the divine radiance from the presence of the Most High? Or maybe it is the flame of the candle that represents the divine light, extinguished to show that God turned into a man, that in Christ “the Word became flesh”? Also mysterious are two objects that look like small boxes - one on Joseph's workbench, and the other on the ledge outside the open window. It is believed that these are mousetraps and they are intended to convey a certain theological message. According to Blessed Augustine, God had to appear on Earth in human form in order to deceive Satan: "The Cross of Christ was a mousetrap for Satan."

An extinguished candle and a mousetrap are unusual symbols. They were introduced into the fine arts by the Flemal master. In all likelihood, he was either a man of extraordinary erudition, or communicated with theologians and other scientists, from whom he learned about the symbolism of everyday objects. He not only continued the symbolic tradition of medieval art within the framework of a new realistic trend, but expanded and enriched it with his work.

It is interesting to know why he simultaneously pursued two completely opposite goals in his works - realism and symbolism? Obviously, they were for him interdependent and did not conflict. The artist believed that, depicting everyday reality, it is necessary to “spiritualize” it as much as possible. This deeply respectful attitude to the material world, which was a reflection of divine truths, makes it easier for us to understand why the master paid the same close attention to the smallest and almost inconspicuous details of the triptych as to the main characters; everything here, at least in a hidden form, is symbolic, and therefore deserves the most careful study. The hidden symbolism in the works of the Flemalsky master and his followers was not only an external device superimposed on a new realistic basis, but was an integral part of the entire creative process. Their Italian contemporaries felt this well, as they appreciated both the amazing realism and the "piety" of the Flemish masters.

Campin's works are more archaic than the works of his younger contemporary Jan van Eyck, but they are democratic and sometimes simple in their everyday interpretation of religious subjects. Robert Campin had a strong influence on subsequent Netherlandish painters, including his student Rogier van der Weyden. Campin was also one of the first portrait painters in European painting.

Ghent altar.

Ghent, the former capital of Flanders, retains the memory of its former glory and power. In Ghent, many outstanding cultural monuments, but for a long time people have been attracted to the masterpiece of the greatest painter of the Netherlands Jan van Eyck - the Ghent Altarpiece. More than five hundred years ago, in 1432, this fold was brought to the church of St. John (now the Cathedral of St. Bavo) and installed in the chapel of Jos Feyd. Jos Feyd, one of the richest inhabitants of Ghent, and later its burgomaster, commissioned an altar for his family chapel.

Art historians have spent a lot of effort to find out which of the two brothers - Jan or Hubert van Eyck - played leading role in building an altar. The Latin inscription says that Hubert started and Jan van Eyck finished it. However, the difference in the pictorial handwriting of the brothers has not yet been established, and some scientists even deny the existence of Hubert van Eyck. The artistic unity and integrity of the altar is beyond doubt that it belongs to the hand of one author, which can only be Jan van Eyck. However, a monument near the cathedral depicts both artists. Two bronze figures covered with green patina silently observe the surrounding bustle.

The Ghent Altarpiece is a large polyptych consisting of twelve parts. Its height is about 3.5 meters, width when open is about 5 meters. In the history of art, the Ghent Altarpiece is one of the unique phenomena, an amazing phenomenon of creative genius. Not a single definition in its pure form is applicable to the Ghent altar. Jan van Eyck was able to see the heyday of an era that is somewhat reminiscent of Florence during the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent. As conceived by the author, the altar gives a comprehensive picture of ideas about the world, God and man. However, medieval universalism loses its symbolic character and is filled with concrete, earthly content. The painting on the outer side of the side wings, visible on ordinary, non-holiday days, when the altar was kept closed, is especially striking in its vitality. Here are the figures of donors - real people, contemporaries of the artist. These figures are the first examples of portrait art in the work of Jan van Eyck. Restrained, respectful poses, prayerfully folded hands give the figures some stiffness. And yet this does not prevent the artist from achieving amazing life truth and integrity of images.

In the bottom row of paintings of the daily cycle, Jodocus Veidt is depicted - a solid and sedate person. A voluminous purse hangs on his belt, which speaks of the solvency of the owner. Veidt's face is unique. The artist conveys every wrinkle, every vein on the cheeks, sparse, short-cropped hair, veins swollen at the temples, a wrinkled forehead with warts, a fleshy chin. Even the individual shape of the ears did not go unnoticed. Veidt's small swollen eyes look incredulous and searching. They have a lot of life experience. Equally expressive is the figure of the customer's wife. A long, thin face with pursed lips expresses cold severity and prim piety.

Jodocus Veidt and his wife are typical Dutch burghers, combining piety with prudent practicality. Under the mask of severity and piety, which they wear, a sober attitude to life and an active, businesslike character are hidden. Their belonging to the burgher class is expressed so sharply that these portraits bring a peculiar flavor of the era to the altar. The figures of the donors, as it were, connect the real world, in which the viewer standing in front of the picture, is located, with the world depicted on the altar. Only gradually does the artist transfer us from the earthly sphere to the heavenly one, gradually developing his narrative. Kneeling donors are turned to the figures of St. John. These are not the saints themselves, but their images, carved by people from stone.

The scene of the Annunciation is the main one in the outer part of the altar, and announces the birth of Christ and the advent of Christianity. All the characters depicted on the outer wings are subordinate to it: the prophets and sibyls who predicted the appearance of the Messiah, both Johns: one who baptized Christ, the other who described his earthly life; humbly and reverently praying donors (portraits of the customers of the altar). In the very essence of what is being done, there is a secret foreboding of the event. However, the scene of the Annunciation takes place in a real room of a burgher's house, where, thanks to the open walls and windows, things have color and heaviness and, as it were, spread their meaning widely outside. The world becomes involved in what is happening, and this world is quite concrete - outside the windows you can see the houses of a typical Flanders town. The characters of the outer wings of the altar are devoid of living life colors. Mary and the archangel Gabriel are painted almost in monochrome.

The artist endowed with color only the scenes of real life, those figures and objects that are associated with the sinful earth. The Annunciation scene, divided by frames into four parts, nevertheless makes up a single whole. The unity of the composition is due to the correct perspective construction of the interior in which the action takes place. Jan van Eyck far surpassed Robert Campin in the clarity of his depiction of space. Instead of a heap of objects and figures, which we observed in a similar scene by Campin ("Merode Altarpiece"), Jan van Eyck's painting captivates with a strict orderliness of space, a sense of harmony in the distribution of details. The artist is not afraid of the image of empty space, which is filled with light and air, and the figures lose their heavy clumsiness, acquiring natural movements and poses. It seems that if Jan van Eyck had written only the outer doors, he would have already performed a miracle. But this is only a prelude. After the miracle of everyday life, a festive miracle comes - the doors of the altar swing open. Everything everyday - the hubbub and crowd of tourists - recedes before the miracle of Jan van Eyck, in front of the open window to Ghent of the Golden Age. The open altar is dazzling, like a casket full of jewels illuminated by the sun's rays. Ringing bright colors in all their diversity express the joyful affirmation of the value of being. The sun that Flanders has never known pours from the altar. Van Eyck created what nature deprived his homeland. Even Italy has not seen such a boiling of colors, every color, every shade found here the maximum intensity.

In the center of the upper row rises on the throne a huge figure of the creator - the almighty - the god of hosts, dressed in a flaming red mantle. The image of the Virgin Mary is beautiful, holding the Holy Scriptures in her hands. The Reading Mother of God is a striking phenomenon in painting. The figure of John the Baptist completes the composition of the central group of the upper tier. The central part of the altar is framed by a group of angels - on the right, and singing angels playing musical instruments - on the left. It seems that the altar is filled with music, you can hear the voice of each angel, so clearly it can be seen in the eyes and movements of their lips.

Like strangers, the forefathers Adam and Eve, naked, ugly and already middle-aged, bearing the burden of a divine curse, enter the fold, shining with paradise inflorescences. They seem to be secondary in the hierarchy of values. The image of people in close proximity to the highest characters of Christian mythology was a bold and unexpected phenomenon at that time.

The heart of the altar is the middle lower picture, the name of which is given to the whole fold - "Adoration of the Lamb". There is nothing sad in the traditional scene. In the center, on a purple altar, is a white lamb, from whose chest blood flows into a golden cup, the personification of Christ and his sacrifice in the name of the salvation of mankind. Inscription: Ecce agnus dei qvi tollit peccata mindi (Behold the lamb of God that bears the sins of the world). Below is the source of living water, a symbol of the Christian faith with the inscription: Hic est fons aqve vite procedens de sede dei et agni (This is the source of the water of life that comes from the throne of God and the Lamb) (Apocalypse, 22, I).

Kneeling angels surround the altar, which is approached from all sides by the saints, the righteous and the righteous. On the right are the apostles, led by Paul and Barnabas. To the right are the ministers of the church: popes, bishops, abbots, seven cardinals and various saints. Among the latter are St. Stephen with the stones with which he was beaten, according to legend, and St. Livin - the throne of the city of Ghent with a tongue torn out.

On the left is a group of characters from the Old Testament and pagans forgiven by the church. Prophets with books in their hands, philosophers, sages - all who, according to church teaching, predicted the birth of Christ. Here is the ancient poet Virgil and Dante. In the depths on the left is a procession of holy martyrs and holy wives (on the right) with palm branches, symbols of martyrdom. At the head of the right procession are Saints Agnes, Barbara, Dorothea and Ursula.

The city on the horizon is the heavenly Jerusalem. However, many of his buildings resemble real buildings: the Cologne Cathedral, the Church of St. Martin in Maastricht, a watchtower in Bruges and others. On the side panels adjacent to the Adoration of the Lamb scene, on the right are hermits and pilgrims - old men in long robes with staffs in their hands. The hermits are led by St. Anthony and St. Paul. Behind them, in the depths, Mary Magdalene and Mary of Egypt are visible. Among the pilgrims, the powerful figure of St. Christopher. Next to him, perhaps, St. Iodokus with a shell on his hat.

The legend of the Holy Scriptures became a folk mystery, played out on a holiday in Flanders. But Flanders is unreal here - a low and foggy country. The picture is midday light, emerald green. The churches and towers of the Flanders cities have been transferred to this promised fictional land. The world flocks to the land of van Eyck, bringing the luxury of exotic outfits, the brilliance of jewelry, the southern sun and the unprecedented brightness of colors.

The number of plant species represented is extremely diverse. The artist had a truly encyclopedic education, knowledge of a wide variety of objects and phenomena. From a gothic cathedral to a small flower lost in the sea of ​​plants.

All five wings are occupied by the image of a single action, stretched in space and thus in time. We see not only those worshiping the altar, but also crowded processions - on horseback and on foot, gathering to the place of worship. The artist depicted crowds of different times and countries, but does not dissolve in the mass, and does not depersonalize human individuality.

The biography of the Ghent altarpiece is dramatic. During its more than five hundred years of existence, the altar has been repeatedly restored and taken out of Ghent more than once. So, in the 16th century it was restored by the famous Utrecht painter Jan van Scorel.

Since the end, since 1432, the altar was placed in the church of St. John the Baptist, later renamed the Cathedral of St. Bavo in Ghent. He stood in the family chapel of Jodocus Veidt, which was originally in the crypt and had a very low ceiling. Chapel of St. John the Evangelist, where the altar is now exhibited, is located above the crypt.

In the 16th century, the Ghent altar was hidden from the savage fanaticism of the iconoclasts. The outer doors depicting Adam and Eve were removed in 1781 by order of Emperor Joseph II, who was embarrassed by the nakedness of the figures. They were replaced by copies of the 16th-century artist Mikhail Koksi, who dressed the progenitors in leather aprons. In 1794, the French, who occupied Belgium, took the four central paintings to Paris. The remaining parts of the altar, hidden in the town hall, remained in Ghent. After the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire, the exported paintings returned to their homeland and were reunited in 1816. But almost at the same time they sold the side doors, which for a long time passed from one collection to another and, finally, in 1821, got to Berlin. After the First World War, according to the Treaty of Versailles, all the wings of the Ghent Altar were returned to Ghent.

On the night of April 11, 1934 in the church of St. Bavo there was a theft. The thieves took away the sash depicting just judges. It was not possible to find the missing painting to this day, and now it has been replaced by a good copy.

When the Second World War began, the Belgians sent the altar to southern France for storage, from where the Nazis transported it to Germany. In 1945, the altar was discovered in Austria in the salt mines near Salzburg and again transported to Ghent.

In order to carry out complex restoration work, which was required by the state of the altar, in 1950-1951 a special commission of experts was created from the largest restorers and art historians, under the leadership of which complex research and restoration work took place: using microchemical analysis, the composition of paints was studied, ultraviolet, infrared X-rays author's alterations and other people's layers of paints are determined. Then later records were removed from many parts of the altar, the paint layer was strengthened, the polluted areas were cleared, after which the altar again shone with all its colors.

The great artistic significance of the Ghent altarpiece, its spiritual value were understood by van Eyck's contemporaries and subsequent generations.

Jan van Eyck, along with Robert Campin, was the initiator of the art of the Renaissance, which marked the rejection of medieval ascetic thinking, the turning of artists to reality, their discovery of true values ​​and beauty in nature and man.

The works of Jan van Eyck are distinguished by color richness, careful, almost jewelery detailing, and confident organization of an integral composition. The tradition connects with the name of the painter the improvement of the technique of oil painting - repeated application of thin, transparent layers of paint, which makes it possible to achieve greater intensity of each color.

Overcoming the traditions of the art of the Middle Ages, Jan van Eyck relied on living observance of reality, striving for an objective reproduction of life. The artist attached particular importance to the image of a person, sought to convey the unique appearance of each of the characters in his paintings. He closely studied the structure of the objective world, capturing the features of each object, landscape or interior environment.

Altar compositions by Hieronymus Bosch.

It was towards the end of the 15th century. Troubled times have come. The new rulers of the Netherlands, Charles the Bold, and then Maximilian I, forced their subjects to obey the throne with fire and sword. Recalcitrant villages were burned to the ground, gallows and wheels appeared everywhere, on which the rebels were quartered. Yes, and the Inquisition did not doze off - in the flames of bonfires, heretics were burned alive, who dared to disagree with the powerful church at least in some way. Public executions and torture of criminals and heretics took place in the central market squares of Dutch cities. It is no coincidence that people started talking about the end of the world. Scientists theologians even called the exact date of the Last Judgment - 1505. In Florence, the public was turned on by the frantic sermons of Savonarola, foreshadowing the nearness of retribution for human sins, and in the north of Europe, heresiarch preachers called for a return to the origins of Christianity, otherwise, they assured their flock, people would face terrible torments of hell.

These moods could not but be reflected in art. And so the great Dürer creates a series of engravings on the themes of the Apocalypse, and Botticelli illustrates Dante, drawing the crazy world of hell.

All of Europe reads Dante's Divine Comedy and the Revelation of St. John” (Apocalypse), as well as the book “Vision of Tundgal”, which appeared in the XII century, written allegedly by the Irish king Tundgal, about his posthumous journey through the underworld. In 1484, this book was also published in 's-Hertogenbosch. Of course, she also ended up in Bosch's house. He reads and rereads this gloomy medieval opus, and gradually the images of hell, the images of the inhabitants of the underworld, crowd out the characters from his mind. Everyday life, his stupid and rogue countrymen. Thus, Bosch began to turn to the topic of hell only after reading this book.

So, hell, according to the writers of the Middle Ages, is divided into several parts, each of which is punished for certain sins. These parts of hell are separated from each other by icy rivers or fiery walls, and connected by thin bridges. This is how Dante imagined hell. As for the inhabitants of hell, Bosch’s idea is formed from the images on the old frescoes of city churches and from the masks of devils and werewolves that the inhabitants of his hometown wore during holidays and carnival processions.

Bosch is a real philosopher, he painfully thinks about human life, about its meaning. What could be the end of the existence of a man on earth, a man so stupid, sinful, low, unable to resist his weaknesses? Only hell! And if earlier on his canvases the pictures of the underworld were strictly separated from the pictures of earthly existence and served rather as a reminder of the inevitability of punishment for sins, now hell for Bosch becomes just a part of human history.

And he writes "Hay Cart" - his famous altar. Like most medieval altarpieces, the Hay Cart consists of two parts. On weekdays, the doors of the altar were closed, and people could only see the image on the outer doors: a man, exhausted, bent by the hardships of being, wanders along the road. Bare hills, almost no vegetation, only two trees were depicted by the artist, but under one a fool plays the bagpipes, and under the other a robber mocks his victim. And a bunch of white bones in the foreground, and a gallows, and a wheel. Yes, the gloomy landscape was depicted by Bosch. But there was nothing fun in the world around him. On holidays, during solemn services, the doors of the altar were opened, and the parishioners saw a completely different picture: on the left side, Bosch painted paradise, Eden, a garden where God settled the first people Adam and Eve. The whole history of the fall is displayed in this picture. And now Eve turned towards earthly life, where - in the central part of the triptych - people rush about, suffering and sinning. In the center is a huge wagon of hay around which human life goes. Everyone in the medieval Netherlands knew the saying: "The world is a hay cart, and everyone tries to get as much as they can out of it." The artist depicts here both a disgusting fat monk, and illustrious aristocrats, and jesters and rogues, and stupid, narrow-minded burghers - everyone is involved in a crazy pursuit of material wealth, everyone is running, not suspecting that they are running to their inevitable death.

The picture is a reflection on the madness reigning in the world, in particular, on the sin of stinginess. It all starts with original sin (earthly paradise on the left side) and ends with punishment (hell on the right side).

An unusual procession is depicted on the central part. The whole composition is built around a huge cart of hay, which is dragged to the right (to hell) by a group of monsters (symbols of sins?), followed by a cortege led by the powers that be on horseback. And a crowd of people rages around, including priests and nuns, and by all means try to snatch some hay. Meanwhile, something like a love concert is going on upstairs in the presence of an angel, a devil with a monstrous trumpet nose, and various other devilish spawn.

But Bosch was aware that the world is not unambiguous, it is complex and multifaceted; low and sinful side by side with high and pure. And in his picture a beautiful landscape appears, against the background of which all this swarm of small and soulless people seems to be a temporary and transient phenomenon, while nature, beautiful and perfect, is eternal. He also paints a mother washing a child, and a fire on which food is cooked, and two women, one of whom is pregnant, and they froze, listening to a new life.

And on the right wing of the triptych, Bosch depicted hell as a city. Here, under the black and red sky, devoid of God's blessing, work is in full swing. Hell is settling down in anticipation of a new batch of sinful souls. Bosch's demons are cheerful and active. They resemble costumed devils, the characters of street performances, who, dragging sinners into the "hell", amused the audience with jumping grimaces. In the picture, the devils are exemplary workers. True, while some towers are erected by them with such zeal, others manage to burn down.

Bosch interprets the words of the scripture about hellfire in his own way. The artist represents it as a fire. Charred buildings, from the windows and doors of which fire bursts out, become in the master's paintings a symbol of sinful human thoughts, burning out from the inside to ashes.

In this work, Bosch philosophically summarizes the entire history of mankind - from the creation of Adam and Eve, from Eden and heavenly bliss to retribution for sins in the terrible kingdom of the Devil. This concept - philosophical and moral - underlies his other altars and canvases ("The Last Judgment", "The Flood"). He paints multi-figure compositions, and sometimes in the depiction of hell, its inhabitants become not like the builders of majestic cathedrals, as in the triptych "Hay Carriage", but like vile old women, witches, with the enthusiasm of housewives preparing their disgusting cooking, while they serve as instruments of torture ordinary household items - knives, spoons, frying pans, ladles, cauldrons It was thanks to these paintings that Bosch was perceived as a singer of hell, nightmares and torture.

Bosch, as a man of his time, was convinced that evil and good do not exist one without the other, and evil can be defeated only by restoring the connection with good, and good is God. That is why the righteous of Bosch, surrounded by fiends, often read the Holy Scriptures or even just talk with God. So they, in the end, find strength in themselves and, with God's help, overcome evil.

Bosch's paintings are truly a grandiose treatise on good and evil. By means of painting, the artist expresses his views on the causes of evil reigning in the world, talks about how to fight evil. There was nothing like this in art before Bosch.

A new, 16th century began, but the promised end of the world never came. Earthly worries supplanted torments about the salvation of the soul. Trade and cultural ties between cities grew and strengthened. Paintings by Italian artists came to the Netherlands, and their Dutch counterparts, getting acquainted with the achievements of their Italian colleagues, perceived the ideals of Raphael and Michelangelo. Everything around was changing quickly and inevitably, but not for Bosch. He still lived in 's-Hertogenbosch, in his beloved estate, reflected on life and wrote only when he wanted to pick up brushes. Meanwhile, his name became known. In 1504, the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Handsome, ordered him an altar with the image of the Last Judgment, and in 1516, the governor of the Netherlands, Margarita, acquired his “Temptation of St. Anthony." Engravings from his work were a huge success.

Among the artist's latest works, the most notable are The Prodigal Son and The Garden of Earthly Delights.

The large altar "Garden of Earthly Delights" is perhaps one of the most fantastic and mysterious works in world painting, in which the master reflects on the sinfulness of man.

Three paintings depict the Garden of Eden, an illusory earthly paradise and Hell, thus telling about the origins of sin and its consequences. On the outer wings, the artist depicted a certain sphere, inside which, in the form of a flat disk, is the earth's firmament. The rays of the sun break through the gloomy clouds, illuminating the earth's mountains, reservoirs and vegetation. But neither animals nor man are here yet - this is the land of the third day of creation. And on the inner doors, Bosch presents his vision of earthly life, and, as usual, the left door depicts the gardens of Eden. Bosch, by the will of his brush, inhabits the Garden of Eden with all the animals known in his time: there is a giraffe and an elephant, a duck and a salamander, a northern bear and an Egyptian ibis. And all this lives against the backdrop of an exotic park in which palm trees, oranges and other trees and shrubs grow. It would seem that complete harmony is spilled in this world, but evil does not sleep, and now a cat is clutching a strangled mouse in its teeth, in the background a predator is tormenting a dead doe, and an insidious owl has settled in the fountain of life. Bosch does not show the scenes of the fall, he seems to be saying that evil was born along with the appearance of his life. Departing from tradition, Bosch on the left wing of the triptych tells not about the fall, but about the creation of Eve. That is why it seems that evil came into the world from that moment, and not at all when the devil seduced the first people with the fruits from the tree of knowledge. When Eve appears in Paradise, ominous changes take place. A cat strangles a mouse, a lion pounces on a doe - for the first time, innocent animals show bloodthirstiness. An owl appears in the very heart of the fountain of life. And on the horizon, silhouettes of bizarre buildings are piled up, reminiscent of outlandish structures from the middle part of the triptych.

The central part of the altar shows how evil, which was only born in Eden, flourishes magnificently on Earth. Among unseen, fantastic plants, half-mechanisms, half-animals, hundreds of naked, faceless people enter into some kind of surreal intercourse with animals and with each other, hide in the hollow shells of giant fruits, assuming some crazy poses. And in the whole movement of this living, bustling mass - sinfulness, lust and vice. Bosch did not change his understanding of human nature and the essence of human existence, but unlike his other earlier works, there are no everyday sketches here, nothing resembles the genre scenes of his previous paintings - just pure philosophy, an abstract understanding of life and death. Bosch, as a brilliant director, builds the world, manages a huge mass of swarming people, animals, mechanical and organic forms, organizing them into a strict system. Everything here is connected and natural. The bizarre forms of the rocks of the left and central wings continue with the forms of burning structures in the background of the underworld; the fountain of life in heaven is contrasted with the rotten "tree of knowledge" in hell.

This triptych is undoubtedly the most mysterious and symbolically complex work of Bosch, which gave rise to a variety of interpretations of the assumption regarding the religious and sexual orientation of the artist. Most often, this picture is interpreted as an allegorical - moralizing judgment of lust. Bosch paints a picture of a false paradise, literally filled with symbols of lust, drawn mainly from traditional symbolism, but partly from alchemy - a false doctrine that, like carnal sin, blocks a person's path to salvation.

This altar impresses with countless scenes and characters and an amazing heap of symbols behind which there are new hidden meanings, often indecipherable. Probably, this work was not intended for the general public coming to the church, but for educated burghers and courtiers who highly valued scholars and intricate allegories of a moralistic content.

And Bosch himself? Hieronymus Bosch- a gloomy science fiction writer, proclaimed by the surrealists of the 20th century as his predecessor, spiritual father and teacher, the creator of subtle and lyrical landscapes, a deep connoisseur of human nature, a satirist, moral writer, philosopher and psychologist, a fighter for the purity of religion and a fierce critic of church bureaucrats, whom many considered a heretic, - this truly brilliant artist managed to be understood even during his lifetime, to achieve the respect of his contemporaries and to be far ahead of his time.

At the end of the 14th century, Jan Van Aken, the great-grandfather of the artist, settled in the small Dutch town of 's-Hertogenbosch. He liked the town, things were going well, and it never occurred to his descendants to leave somewhere in search of a better life. They became merchants, artisans, artists, built and decorated 's-Hertogenbosch. There were many artists in the Aken family - grandfather, father, two uncles and two brothers Jerome. (Grandfather Jan Van Aken is credited with the authorship of the murals that have survived to this day in the 's-Hertogenbosch church of St. John).

The exact date of Bosch's birth is not known, but it is believed that he was born around 1450. The family lived in abundance - the artist's father had many orders, and the mother, the daughter of a local tailor, probably received a good dowry. Subsequently, their son Hieronymus Van Aken, a great patriot of his native city, began to call himself Hieronymus Bosch, taking the shortened name of 's-Hertogenbosch as a pseudonym. He signed Jheronimus Bosch, although his real name is Jeroen (the correct Latin version is Hieronymus) Van Aken, that is, from Aachen, where his ancestors apparently came from.

The pseudonym "Bosch" is derived from the name of the city of 's-Hertogenbosch (translated as "the ducal forest"), a small Dutch town located near the Belgian border, and in those days - one of the four largest centers of the Duchy of Brabant, the possession of the Dukes of Burgundy. Jerome lived there all his life. Hieronymus Bosch had a chance to live in a troubled era on the eve of great changes. The undivided dominion of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands, and with it and everything else in life, comes to an end. The air was full of anticipation of religious unrest and the upheavals associated with them. Meanwhile, outwardly, everything looked safe. Trade and crafts flourished. Painters in their works glorified a rich and proud country, every corner of which was turned into an earthly paradise by hard work.

And so, in a small town in the south of the Netherlands, an artist appeared, filling his paintings with visions of hell. All these horrors were written out so colorfully and in detail, as if their author had looked into the underworld more than once.

's-Hertogenbosch was a prosperous trading city in the 15th century, but it stood apart from the great centers of art. To the south of it were the richest cities of Flanders and Brabant - Ghent, Bruges, Brussels, where at the beginning of the 15th century the great schools of the Dutch "golden age" of painting were formed. The powerful Burgundian dukes, who united the Dutch provinces under their rule, patronized the economic and cultural life of the cities where Jan Van Eyck and the Master from Flemal worked. In the second half of the 15th century, in the cities north of 's-Hertogenbosch, Delft, Harlem, Leiden, Utrecht, bright masters worked, and among them the brilliant Rogier van der Weyden and Hugo van der Goes, new, revivalist ideas about the world and the place of man in it were taking shape. Man, the philosophers of modern times argued, is the crown of creation, the center of the universe. These ideas were brilliantly embodied in those years in the work of Italian artists, the great contemporaries of Bosch Botticelli, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci. However, the provincial 's-Hertogenbosch did not at all resemble Florence, the free and flourishing capital of Tuscany, and for some time this cardinal breakdown of all established medieval traditions and foundations did not concern it. One way or another, Bosch absorbed new ideas, art historians suggest that he studied in Delft or in Harlem.

Bosch's life came at a turning point in the development of the Netherlands, when, with the rapid growth of industry, crafts greater value they acquired sciences, enlightenment, and at the same time, as often happens, people, even the most educated, sought refuge and support in the dark medieval superstitions, in astrology, alchemy and magic. And Bosch, a witness of these cardinal processes of transition from the dark Middle Ages to the light Renaissance, brilliantly reflected in his work the inconsistency of his time.

In 1478, Bosch married Aleid van Merwerme, a family that belonged to the top of the urban aristocracy. The Boschs lived on a small estate owned by Aleyd, not far from 's-Hertogenbosch. Unlike many artists, Bosch was financially secure (the fact that he was far from poor is evidenced by the high amounts of taxes he paid, records of which are preserved in archival documents) and could only do what he wanted. He did not depend on orders and the location of customers and gave himself free rein in choosing the subjects and style of his paintings.

Who was he, Hieronymus Bosch, this, perhaps, the most mysterious artist in world art? A suffering heretic or a believer, but with an ironic mindset, cynically mocking human weaknesses? A mystic or a humanist, a gloomy misanthrope or a merry fellow, an admirer of the past or a wise seer? Or maybe just a lonely eccentric, displaying the fruits of his crazy imagination on canvas? There is also such a point of view: Bosch took drugs, and his paintings are the result of a drug trance

So little is known about his life that it is completely impossible to get an idea of ​​​​the artist's personality. And only his paintings can tell about what kind of person their author was.

First of all, the breadth of interests and depth of knowledge of the artist strikes. The plots of his paintings are played out against the background of buildings of both contemporary and ancient architecture. In his landscapes - all the then known flora and fauna: animals of the northern forests live among tropical plants, and elephants and giraffes graze on Dutch fields. In the painting of one altar, he reproduces the sequence of building a tower according to all the rules of engineering art of that time, and in another place he depicts the achievement of 15th-century technology: water and windmills, melting furnaces, forges, bridges, wagons, ships. In the paintings depicting hell, the artist shows weapons, kitchen utensils, musical instruments, and the latter are written out so accurately and in detail that these drawings could serve as an illustration for a textbook on the history of musical culture.

Bosch was well aware of the achievements of contemporary science. Doctors, astrologers, alchemists, mathematicians are frequent heroes of his paintings. The artist's ideas about the world beyond the grave, about what the underworld looks like, are based on a deep knowledge of theological, theological treatises and the lives of the saints. But the most amazing thing is that Bosch had an idea about the teachings of secret heretical sects, about the ideas of medieval Jewish scientists, whose books at that time had not yet been translated into any European language! And, besides, folklore, the world of fairy tales and legends of his people, is also reflected in his paintings. Undoubtedly, Bosch was a true man of the new time, a man of the Renaissance, he was excited and interested in everything that happened in the world. Bosch's work conditionally consists of four levels - literal, plot; allegorical, allegorical (expressed in parallels between the events of the Old and New Testaments); symbolic (using the symbolism of medieval, folklore representations) and secret, associated, as some researchers believe, with the events of his life or with various heretical teachings. Playing with symbols and signs, Bosch composes his grandiose pictorial symphonies, in which the themes of a folk song, the majestic chords of the heavenly spheres, or the insane roar of an infernal machine sound.

Bosch's symbolism is so diverse that it is impossible to pick up one common key to his paintings. Symbols change their purpose depending on the context, and they can come from a variety of, sometimes distant from each other, sources - from mystical treatises to practical magic, from folklore to ritual performances.

Among the most mysterious sources was alchemy - an activity aimed at turning base metals into gold and silver, and, in addition, to create life in a laboratory, which clearly bordered on heresy. In Bosch, alchemy is endowed with negative, demonic properties and its attributes are often identified with symbols of lust: copulation is often depicted inside a glass flask or in water - a hint of alchemical compounds. Color transitions sometimes resemble the first stages of the transformation of matter; jagged towers, trees hollow inside, fires are both symbols of hell and death and a hint of the fire of alchemists; a hermetic vessel or a melting furnace are also emblems of black magic and the devil. Of all the sins, lust has perhaps the most symbolic designations, starting with cherries and other “voluptuous” fruits: grapes, pomegranates, strawberries, apples. It is easy to recognize sexual symbols: men's are all pointed objects: a horn, an arrow, a bagpipe, often hinting at an unnatural sin; female - everything that absorbs: a circle, a bubble, a clam shell, a jug (also denoting the devil who jumps out of it during the Sabbath), a crescent moon (also hinting at Islam, which means heresy).

There is also a whole bestiary of "unclean" animals, drawn from the Bible and medieval symbols: a camel, a hare, a pig, a horse, a stork and many others; one cannot fail to name a snake, although it is not so common in Bosch. The owl is the messenger of the devil and at the same time heresy or a symbol of wisdom. The toad, denoting sulfur in alchemy, is a symbol of the devil and death, like everything dry - trees, animal skeletons.

Other common symbols are: a ladder, indicating the path to knowledge in alchemy or symbolizing sexual intercourse; an inverted funnel is an attribute of fraud or false wisdom; a key (cognition or sexual organ), often shaped not to be opened; a severed leg is traditionally associated with mutilation or torture, and in Bosch it is also associated with heresy and magic. As for all sorts of evil spirits, then Bosch's fantasy knows no bounds. In his paintings, Lucifer takes on a myriad of guises: these are traditional devils with horns, wings and a tail, insects, half-humans - half-animals, creatures with a part of the body turned into a symbolic object, anthropomorphic machines, freaks without a body with one huge head on legs, dating back to antique in a grotesque way. Often demons are depicted with musical instruments, mostly wind, which sometimes become part of their anatomy, turning into a nose-flute or nose-trumpet. Finally, the mirror, traditionally a diabolical attribute associated with magical rituals, in Bosch becomes an instrument of temptation in life and ridicule after death.

In the time of Bosch, the artists painted mainly paintings on religious subjects. But already in his earliest works, Bosch rebels against the established rules - he is much more interested in living people, people of his time: wandering magicians, healers, jesters, actors, beggars musicians. Traveling through the cities of Europe, they not only fooled gullible dupes, but also entertained respectable burghers and peasants, told what was happening in the world. Not a single fair, not a single carnival or church holiday could do without them, these vagabonds, brave and cunning. And Bosch writes these people, preserving for posterity the flavor of his time.

Let us imagine a small Dutch town with its narrow streets, pointed churches, tiled roofs and the indispensable town hall on the market square. Of course, the arrival of a magician is a huge event in the life of ordinary burghers, who, in general, have no special entertainment - maybe only a festive service in the church and an evening with friends in the nearest tavern. The performance scene of such a visiting magician comes to life in a painting by Bosch. Here he is, this artist, laying out the objects of his craft on the table, fooling the honest people with great pleasure. We see how a respectable lady, carried away by the magician's manipulations, leaned over the table in order to better see what he was doing, while a man standing behind her pulled a wallet out of her pocket. Surely a magician and a clever thief are one company, and both of them have so much hypocrisy and hypocrisy on their faces. It would seem that Bosch is writing an absolutely realistic scene, but suddenly we see a frog climbing out of the mouth of a curious lady. It is known that in medieval fairy tales, the frog symbolized naivety and gullibility, bordering on outright stupidity.

Around the same years, Bosch created the grandiose painting The Seven Deadly Sins. In the center of the picture is placed the pupil - "God's Eye". On it is an inscription in Latin: "Beware, beware - God sees." Around are scenes representing human sins: gluttony, laziness, lust, vanity, anger, envy and stinginess. The artist dedicates a separate scene to each of the seven deadly sins, and the result is a story of human life. This picture, written on a blackboard, first served as a table surface. Hence the unusual circular composition. The scenes of sins look like cute jokes on the theme of the moral baseness of a person, the artist is more likely to joke than to condemn and be indignant. Bosch admits that stupidity and vice thrive in our lives, but this is human nature, and nothing can be done about it. People from all classes, from all walks of life appear in the picture - aristocrats, peasants, merchants, clergy, burghers, judges. On the four sides of this large composition, Bosch depicted "Death", "Last Judgment", "Paradise" and "Hell" - what, as they believed in his time, ends the life of every person.

In 1494, Sebastian Brant's poem "The Ship of Fools" with illustrations by Dürer was published in Basel. “In night and darkness the world is plunged, rejected by God - fools swarm on all roads,” wrote Brant.

It is not known for sure whether Bosch read the creations of his brilliant contemporary, but in his painting “Ship of Fools” we see all the characters of Brant’s poem: drunken revelers, loafers, charlatans, jesters and grumpy wives. Without a rudder and without sails, a ship with fools is sailing. Its passengers indulge in gross carnal pleasures. No one knows when and where the voyage will end, which shores they are destined to land on, and they don’t care - they live in the present, forgetting about the past and not thinking about the future. Best Places occupied by a monk and a nun bawling obscene songs; the mast has turned into a tree with a lush crown, in which Death grins evilly, and over all this madness a flag with the image of a star and a crescent, Muslim symbols, signifying a departure from the true faith, from Christianity, flutters.

In 1516, on August 9, according to the archives of 's-Hertogenbosch, the "famous artist" Hieronymus Bosch died. His name became famous not only in Holland, but also in other European countries. The Spanish King Philip II collected his best works and even placed the Seven Deadly Sins in his bedroom in the Escorial, and the Hay Cart above his desk. A huge number of "masterpieces" of numerous followers, copyists, imitators and simply scammers who forged the works of the great master appeared on the art market. And in 1549, in Antwerp, the young Pieter Brueghel organized the "Workshop of Hieronymus Bosch", where, together with his friends, he made engravings in the style of Bosch, and sold them with great success. However, already at the end of the 16th century, people's lives changed so dramatically that the symbolic language of the artist became incomprehensible. Publishers, printing engravings from his works, were forced to accompany them with lengthy comments, while speaking only about the moralizing side of the artist's work. Bosch's altars disappeared from churches, moving into the collections of highbrow collectors who enjoyed deciphering them. In the 17th century, Bosch was practically forgotten precisely because all his works were filled with symbols.

Years passed, and of course, in the gallant 18th and practical 19th centuries, Bosch turned out to be completely unnecessary, moreover, alien. The Gorky hero Klim Samgin, looking at a picture of Bosch in the old Munich Pinakothek, is amazed: “It is strange that this annoying picture found a place in one of the best museums in the German capital. This Bosch acted with reality like a child with a toy - broke it, and then glued the pieces as he wished. Nonsense. This is suitable for a feuilleton of a provincial newspaper. The artist's works were gathering dust in the storerooms of the museum, and art historians only briefly mentioned in their writings about this strange medieval painter who painted some kind of phantasmagoria.

But then the 20th century came, with its terrible wars that turned all the understanding of man about man, the century that brought the horror of the Holocaust, the madness of the continuously adjusted work of Auschwitz furnaces, the nightmare of the atomic mushroom. And then there was the American apocalypse of September 11, 2001, and Moscow's Nord-Ost how old values ​​are debunked and discarded in the name of some new and unknown, in our time it has again become amazingly modern and fresh. And his painful reflections and mournful insights, the results of his thoughts about the eternal problems of good and evil, human nature, about life, death and faith, which does not leave us no matter what, become incredibly valuable and truly necessary. That is why we look again and again at his brilliant, ageless canvases.

Bosch's works in their symbolism resemble the works of Robert Campin, but the comparison of Campin's realism and the phantasmagoria of Hieronymus Bosch is not entirely appropriate. In the works of Campin there is the so-called "hidden symbolism", the symbolism of Campin is well-established, more understandable, as if the glorification of the material world. Bosch's symbolism is more of a mockery of the world around, its vices, and not a glorification of this world. Bosch interpreted biblical stories too freely.

Conclusion.

Many artists of the 15th century became famous for praising religion in their works, material world. Most of them used symbolism for this, a hidden meaning in the depiction of everyday objects. The symbolism of Kampin was somehow ordinary, but despite this it was not always possible to understand whether secret symbolism was hidden in the image of any object or whether the object was just a part of the interior.

Jan van Eyck's works contained religious symbolism, but it faded into the background, in his works Jan van Eyck depicted elementary scenes from the Bible, and the meaning and plots of these scenes were clear to everyone.

Bosch mocked the world around him, used symbolism in his own way and interpreted the surrounding events and people's actions. Despite the extreme interest of his work, they were soon forgotten and were mostly in private collections. Interest in it revived only at the beginning of the 20th century.

Dutch culture reached its peak in the 1960s. XVI century. But in the same period, events occurred due to which the old Netherlands ceased to exist: the bloody rule of Alba, which cost the country many thousands of human lives, led to a war that completely ruined Flanders and Brabant - the main cultural regions of the country. The inhabitants of the northern provinces, speaking out in 1568 against the Spanish king, did not lower their arms until the very victory in 1579, when the creation of a new state, the United Provinces, was proclaimed. It included the northern regions of the country, led by Holland. The southern Netherlands remained under Spanish rule for nearly a century.

The most important reason for the death of this culture was the Reformation, which forever divided the Dutch people into Catholics and Protestants. At the very time when the name of Christ was on the lips of both warring parties, the fine arts ceased to be Christian.

In Catholic areas, painting on religious subjects has become a dangerous business: both following the naive colorful medieval ideals and the tradition of free interpretation of biblical themes coming from Bosch could equally bring artists under suspicion of heresy.

In the northern provinces, where Protestantism had triumphed by the end of the century, painting and sculpture were "expelled" from churches. Protestant preachers vehemently denounced church art as idolatry. Two destructive waves of iconoclasm - 1566 and 1581. - destroyed a lot of wonderful works of art.

At the dawn of the New Age, the medieval harmony between the earthly and heavenly worlds was broken. In the life of a person at the end of the 16th century, a sense of responsibility for one's actions in the face of God gave way to following the norms of public morality. The ideal of holiness was replaced by the ideal of burgher integrity. Artists depicted the world that surrounded them, increasingly forgetting about its Creator. The symbolic realism of the Northern Renaissance was replaced by a new, worldly realism.

Today, the altars of the great masters lend themselves to restoration, precisely because such masterpieces of painting are worthy of being preserved for centuries.

"Never trust a computer that you can't throw out a window." - Steve Wozniak

The Netherlandish painter, usually identified with the Flemal master - an unknown artist who stands at the origins of the tradition of early Netherlandish painting (the so-called "Flemish primitives"). Mentor of Rogier van der Weyden and one of the first portrait painters in European painting.

(The Liturgical Vestments of the Order of the Golden Fleece - The Cope of the Virgin Mary)

A contemporary of the miniaturists working on manuscript illumination, Campin was nevertheless able to achieve a level of realism and observation that no other painter had ever seen before him. Yet, his writings are more archaic than those of his younger contemporaries. Democracy is noticeable in everyday details, sometimes there is an everyday interpretation of religious subjects, which will later be characteristic of Netherlandish painting.

(Virgin and Child in an Interior)

Art historians have long tried to find the origins of the Northern Renaissance, to find out who was the first master who laid this style. For a long time it was believed that the first artist who slightly departed from the traditions of the Gothic was Jan van Eyck. But by the end of the 19th century, it became clear that van Eyck was preceded by another artist, whose brush belongs to the triptych with the Annunciation, previously owned by Countess Merode (the so-called “Merode triptych”), as well as the so-called. Flemish altar. It was assumed that both of these works belong to the hand of the Flemal master, whose identity was not yet established at that time.

(The Nuptials of the Virgin)

(Holy Virgin in Glory)

(Werl Altarpiece)

(Trinity of the Broken Body)

(Blessing Christ and Praying Virgin)

(The Nuptials of the Virgin - St. James the Great and St. Clare)

(Virgin and Child)

Gertgen tot Sint Jans (Leiden 1460-1465 - Haarlem until 1495)

This early dead artist, who worked in Haarlem, is one of the most important figures in North Netherlandish painting at the end of the 15th century. Possibly trained in Haarlem in the workshop of Albert van Auwater. He was familiar with the work of the artists of Ghent and Bruges. In Haarlem, as an apprentice painter, he lived under the Order of St. John - hence the nickname "from [the monastery] St. John" (tot Sint Jans). Hertgen's painting style is characterized by a subtle emotionality in the interpretation of religious subjects, attention to the phenomena of everyday life and a thoughtful, poetic-spiritual elaboration of details. All this will be developed in the realistic Dutch painting of the following centuries.

(Nativity, at Night)

(Virgin and Child)

(The Tree of Jesse)

(Gertgen tot Sint Jans St. Bavo)

Van Eyck's rival for the title of the most influential master of early Netherlandish painting. The artist saw the goal of creativity in understanding the individuality of the individual, he was a deep psychologist and an excellent portrait painter. Having preserved the spiritualism of medieval art, he filled the old pictorial schemes with the Renaissance concept of an active human personality. At the end of his life, according to the TSB, "rejects the universalism of van Eyck's artistic worldview and focuses all attention on the inner world of man."

(Uncovering the relics of St. Hubert)

Born in the family of a wood carver. The artist's works testify to a deep acquaintance with theology, and already in 1426 he was called "master Roger", which allows us to suggest that he had a university education. He began working as a sculptor, at a mature age (after 26 years) began to study painting with Robert Campin in Tournai. He spent 5 years in his workshop.

(Reading Mary Magdalene)

The period of Rogier's creative formation (to which, apparently, the Louvre "Annunciation" belongs) is poorly covered by sources. There is a hypothesis that it was he who, in his youth, created works attributed to the so-called. Flemalsky master (a more likely candidate for their authorship is his mentor Campin). The apprentice so learned Campin's desire to saturate biblical scenes with cozy details of domestic life that it is almost impossible to distinguish between their works of the early 1430s (both artists did not sign their works).

(Portrait of Anton of Burgundy)

The first three years of Rogier's independent work are not documented in any way. Perhaps he spent them in Bruges with van Eyck (with whom he probably crossed paths before in Tournai). In any case, his famous composition"Luke the Evangelist Painting the Madonna" is imbued with the obvious influence of van Eyck.

(Evangelist Luke painting the Madonna)

In 1435, the artist moved to Brussels in connection with his marriage to a native of this city and translated his real name Roger de la Pasture from French into Dutch. Became a member of the city guild of painters, became rich. He worked as a city painter on orders from the ducal court of Philip the Good, monasteries, nobility, Italian merchants. He painted the city hall with paintings of the administration of justice by famous people of the past (the frescoes have been lost).

(Portrait of a lady)

By the beginning of the Brussels period belongs the grandiose in emotionality "Descent from the Cross" (now in the Prado). In this work, Rogier radically abandoned the pictorial background, focusing the viewer's attention on the tragic experiences of numerous characters that fill the entire space of the canvas. Some researchers are inclined to explain the turn in his work as a passion for the doctrine of Thomas a Kempis.

(Descent from the cross with donor Pierre de Ranchicourt, Bishop of Arras)

The return of Rogier from the crude Campenian realism and refinement of the Vanayckian Proto-Renaissance to medieval tradition most evident in the Last Judgment polyptych. It was written in 1443-1454. commissioned by Chancellor Nicolas Rolen for the altar of the hospital chapel, founded by the latter in the Burgundian city of Beaune. The place of complex landscape backgrounds here is occupied by a golden glow experienced by generations of his predecessors, which cannot distract the viewer from reverence for the holy images.

(Altar of the Last Judgment in Bonn, right outer wing: Hell, left outer wing: Paradise)

In the jubilee year 1450, Rogier van der Weyden made a trip to Italy and visited Rome, Ferrara and Florence. He was warmly welcomed by the Italian humanists (Nicholas of Cusa is famous for his praise), but he himself was interested mainly in conservative artists like Fra Angelico and Gentile da Fabriano.

(Beheading of John the Baptist)

With this trip in the history of art, it is customary to associate the first acquaintance of Italians with the technique of oil painting, which Rogier mastered to perfection. By order of the Italian dynasties Medici and d "Este, the Fleming executed the Madonna from the Uffizi and the famous portrait of Francesco d'Este. Italian impressions were refracted in altar compositions ("The Altar of John the Baptist", the triptychs "Seven Sacraments" and "Adoration of the Magi"), made them upon their return to Flanders.

(Adoration of the Magi)

The portraits by Rogier have some common features, which is largely due to the fact that almost all of them depict representatives of the highest nobility of Burgundy, whose appearance and demeanor were imprinted by the general environment, upbringing and traditions. The artist draws in detail the hands of the models (especially the fingers), ennobles and lengthens the features of their faces.

(Portrait of Francesco D "Este)

In recent years, Rogier worked in his Brussels workshop, surrounded by numerous students, among whom, apparently, were such prominent representatives of the next generation as Hans Memling. They spread his influence across France, Germany and Spain. In the second half of the 15th century in northern Europe, Rogier's expressive manner prevailed over the more technical lessons of Campin and van Eyck. Even in the 16th century, many painters remained under his influence, from Bernart Orlais to Quentin Masseys. By the end of the century, his name began to be forgotten, and already in the 19th century, the artist was remembered only in special studies on early Netherlandish painting. Restoring it creative way complicated by the fact that he did not sign any of his works, with the exception of the Washington portrait of a woman.

(Annunciation of Mary)

Hugo van der Goes (c. 1420-25, Ghent - 1482, Auderghem)

Flemish painter. Albrecht Dürer considered him the largest representative of early Netherlandish painting along with Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden.

(Portrait of a Man of Prayer with St. John the Baptist)

Born in Ghent or in the town of Ter Goes in Zeeland. The exact date of birth is unknown, but a decree of 1451 was found that allowed him to return from exile. Consequently, by that time he had managed to do something wrong and spend some time in exile. Joined the Guild of St. Luke. In 1467 he became the master of the guild, and in 1473-1476 he was its dean in Ghent. He worked in Ghent, from 1475 in the Augustinian monastery of Rodendal near Brussels. In the same place in 1478 he took the monastic dignity. His last years were marred by mental illness. However, he continued to work, fulfilling orders for portraits. In the monastery he was visited by the future emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Maximilian of Habsburg.

(The Crucifixion)

He continued the artistic traditions of Dutch painting in the first half of the 15th century. Art activities are varied. In his early works the influence of Bouts is noticeable.

Participated as a decorator in the decoration of the city of Bruges on the occasion of the wedding in 1468 of the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold and Margaret of York, later in the design of celebrations in the city of Ghent on the occasion of the entry into the city of Charles the Bold and the new Countess of Flanders in 1472. Obviously, his role in these works was leading, for, according to the surviving documents, he received a larger payment than the rest of the artists. Unfortunately, the paintings that were part of the design have not been preserved. The creative biography has many ambiguities and gaps, since none of the paintings is dated by the artist or signed by him.

(Benedictine Monk)

The most famous work is the large altarpiece "Adoration of the Shepherds", or "Portinari Altarpiece", which was painted c. 1475 commissioned by Tommaso Portinari, a representative of the Medici bank in Bruges, and had a profound influence on Florentine painters: Domenico Ghirlandaio, Leonardo da Vinci and others.

(Portinari Altarpiece)

Jan Provost (1465-1529)

There are references to the master Provost in the documents of 1493, stored in the Antwerp town hall. And in 1494 the master moved to Bruges. We also know that in 1498 he married the widow of the French painter and miniaturist Simon Marmion.

(The Martyrdom of St. Catherine)

We do not know who Provost studied with, but his art was clearly influenced by the last classics of the early Netherlandish Renaissance, Gerard David and Quentin Masseys. And if David sought to express the religious idea through the drama of the situation and human experiences, then in Quentin Masseys we will find something else - a craving for ideal and harmonious images. First of all, the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, whose work Masseys met during his trip to Italy, affected here.

In the paintings of the Provost, the traditions of G. David and K. Masseys merged into one. In the State Hermitage collection there is one work by Provost - "Mary in Glory", painted on a wooden board using the technique of oil paint.

(The Virgin Mary in Glory)

This huge painting depicts the Virgin Mary, surrounded by golden radiance, standing on a crescent moon in the clouds. In her arms is the Christ child. Above her hover in the air God the Father, St. Spirit in the form of a dove and four angels. Below - kneeling King David with a harp in his hands and Emperor Augustus with a crown and scepter. In addition to them, the painting depicts the sibyls (characters ancient mythology predicting the future and interpreting dreams) and prophets. In the hands of one of the sibyls is a scroll with the inscription "The bosom of the virgin will be the salvation of the nations."

In the depths of the picture, a landscape striking in its subtlety and poetry with city buildings and a port is visible. This whole complex and theologically intricate plot was traditional for Dutch art. Even the presence of ancient characters was perceived as a kind of attempt at a religious justification of ancient classics and did not surprise anyone. What seems complicated to us was perceived by the artist's contemporaries with ease and was a kind of alphabet in the paintings.

However, the Provost takes a certain step forward in mastering this religious story. He unites all his characters in a single space. He combines earthly (King David, Emperor Augustus, sibyls and prophets) and heavenly (Mary and angels) in one scene. According to tradition, he depicts all this against the backdrop of a landscape, which further enhances the impression of the reality of what is happening. The Provost diligently translates the action into contemporary life. In the figures of David and Augustus, one can easily guess the customers of the painting, rich Dutch people. The ancient sibyls, whose faces are almost portrait, vividly resemble the rich townswomen of that time. Even the magnificent landscape, despite all its fantasticness, is deeply realistic. He, as it were, synthesizes the nature of Flanders in himself, idealizes it.

Most of Provost's paintings - religious nature. Unfortunately, a significant part of the works has not been preserved, and it is almost impossible to recreate a complete picture of his work. However, according to contemporaries, we know that the Provost took part in the design of the solemn entry of King Charles to Bruges. This speaks of the fame and great merits of the master.

(Virgin and Child)

According to Dürer, with whom the Provost traveled for some time in the Netherlands, the entrance was furnished with great pomp. All the way from the city gates to the house where the king stayed was decorated with arcades on the columns, there were wreaths, crowns, trophies, inscriptions, torches everywhere. There were also many living paintings and allegorical depictions of the "emperor's talents".
The provost took a great part in the design. Netherlandish art of the 16th century, typified by Jan Provost, gave rise to works that, in the words of B. R. Wipper, "captivate not so much as the creations of outstanding masters, but as evidence of a high and diverse artistic culture."

(Christian Allegory)

Jeroen Antonison van Aken (Hieronymus Bosch) (circa 1450-1516)

The Dutch artist, one of the greatest masters of the Northern Renaissance, is considered one of the most enigmatic painters in the history of Western art. In Bosch's hometown of 's-Hertogenbosch, a center for Bosch's creativity has been opened, which presents copies of his works.

Jan Mandijn (1500/1502, Haarlem - 1559/1560, Antwerp)

Dutch Renaissance and Northern Mannerist painter.

Jan Mandijn belongs to the group of Antwerp artists following Hieronymus Bosch (Peter Hayes, Herri met de Bles, Jan Wellens de Kokk), who continued the tradition of fantastic images and laid the foundations of the so-called Northern Mannerism as opposed to Italian. The works of Jan Mandijn, with his demons and evil spirits, are closest to the legacy of the mysterious.

(Saint Christopher. (State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg))

The authorship of paintings attributed to Mandane, except for The Temptations of St. Anthony", has not been established for certain. It is believed that Mundane was illiterate and therefore could not sign his "Temptations" in Gothic script. Art historians suggest that he simply copied the signature from the finished sample.

It is known that around 1530 Mandijn became a master in Antwerp, Gillis Mostert and Bartholomeus Spranger were his students.

Marten van Heemskerk (real name Marten Jacobson van Ven)

Marten van Ven was born in North Holland to a peasant family. Against the will of his father, he goes to Haarlem, to study the artist Cornelis Willems, and in 1527 he goes as an apprentice to Jan van Scorel, and at present, art historians are not always able to determine the exact belonging of individual paintings by Scorel or Hemskerk. Between 1532 and 1536 the artist lives and works in Rome, where his works are very successful. In Italy, van Heemskerk creates his paintings in the artistic style of Mannerism.
After returning to the Netherlands, he received numerous orders from the church for both altar painting and the creation of stained glass windows and wall tapestries. He was one of the leading members of the Guild of Saint Luke. From 1550 until his death in 1574, Marten van Heemskerk served as church warden in the church of St. Bavo in Haarlem. Among other works, van Heemskerk is known for his series of paintings Seven Wonders of the World.

(Portrait of Anna Codde 1529)

(St Luke Painting the Virgin and Child 1532)

(Man of Sorrows 1532)

(The Unhappy Lot of the Rich 1560)

(Self-Portrait in Rome with the Colosseum1553)

Joachim Patinir (1475/1480, Dinant in the province of Namur, Wallonia, Belgium - October 5, 1524, Antwerp, Belgium)

Flemish painter, one of the founders of European landscape painting. Worked in Antwerp. He made nature the main component of the image in compositions on religious subjects, in which, following the tradition of the Van Eyck brothers, Gerard David and Bosch, he created a majestic panoramic space.

Worked with Quentin Masseys. Presumably, many of the works now attributed to Patinir or Masseys are in fact their joint works.

(Battle of Pavia)

(Miracle of St. Catherine)

(Landscape with The Flight into Egypt)

Herri met de Bles (1500/1510, Bouvignes-sur-Meuse - around 1555)

Flemish artist, along with Joachim Patinir, one of the founders of European landscape painting.

Almost nothing is reliably known about the life of the artist. In particular, his name is unknown. The nickname "met de Bles" - "with a white spot" - he probably received a white curl in his hair. He also bore the Italian nickname "Civetta" (Italian Civetta) - "owl" - as his monogram, which he used as a signature to his paintings, was a small figurine of an owl.

(Landscape with a scene of flight to Egypt)

Herri met de Bles spent most of his career in Antwerp. It is assumed that he was the nephew of Joachim Patinir, and the real name of the artist was Herry de Patinir (Dutch. Herry de Patinir). In any case, in 1535 a certain Herri de Patinier joined the Antwerp guild of Saint Luke. Herri met de Bles is also included in the group of South Netherlandish artists - followers of Hieronymus Bosch, along with Jan Mandijn, Jan Wellens de Kock and Peter Geis. These masters continued the tradition of Bosch's fantastic painting, and their work is sometimes called "Northern Mannerism" (as opposed to Italian Mannerism). According to some sources, the artist died in Antwerp, according to others - in Ferrara, at the court of the Duke del Este. Neither the year of his death nor the very fact that he ever visited Italy is known.
Herri met de Bles painted mainly, following the model of Patinir, landscapes, which also depict multi-figured compositions. The atmosphere is carefully conveyed in the landscapes. Typical for him, as well as for Patinir, is a stylized image of rocks.

Lucas van Leiden (Luke of Leiden, Lucas Huygens) (Leiden 1494 - Leiden 1533)

He studied painting with Cornelis Engelbrekts. He mastered the art of engraving very early and worked in Leiden and Middelburg. In 1522 he joined the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp, then returned to Leiden, where he died in 1533.

(Triptych with dances around the golden calf. 1525-1535. Rijksmuseum)

In genre scenes, he took a bold step towards a sharply realistic depiction of reality.
In terms of his skill, Luke of Leiden is not inferior to Dürer. He was one of the first Dutch graphic artists to demonstrate an understanding of the laws of light-air perspective. Although, to a greater extent, he was interested in the problems of composition and technique, rather than fidelity to tradition or the emotional sounding of scenes on religious themes. In 1521, in Antwerp, he met Albrecht Dürer. The influence of the work of the great German master was manifested in more rigid modeling and in a more expressive interpretation of the figures, but Luke of Leiden never lost the features inherent only in his style: tall, well-built figures in somewhat mannered poses and tired faces. In the late 1520s, the influence of the Italian engraver Marcantonio Raimondi manifested itself in his work. Almost all of the engravings of Luke of Leiden are signed with the initial "L", and about half of his works are dated, including the famous Passion of the Christ series (1521). About a dozen of his woodcuts survive, mostly depicting scenes from Old Testament. Of the small number of surviving paintings by Luke of Leiden, one of the most famous is the Last Judgment triptych (1526).

(Charles V, Cardinal Wolsley, Margaret of Austria)

Jos van Cleve (date of birth unknown, presumably Wesel - 1540-41, Antwerp)

The first mention of Jos van Cleve refers to 1511, when he was admitted to the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke. Prior to this, Jos van Cleve studied under Jan Joost van Kalkar together with Bartholomeus Brein the Elder. He is considered one of the most active artists of his time. His paintings and position as an artist at the court of Francis I testify to his stay in France. There are facts confirming Jos's trip to Italy.
The main works of Jos van Cleve are two altars depicting the Assumption of the Virgin (currently in Cologne and Munich), which were previously attributed to an unknown artist, the Master of the Life of Mary.

(Adoration of the Magi. 1st third of the 16th century. Art Gallery, Dresden)

Jos van Cleve is classified as a novelist. In his methods of soft modeling of volumes, he feels an echo of the influence of Leonardo da Vinci's sfumato. Nevertheless, he is closely connected with the Dutch tradition in many essential aspects of his work.

The “Assumption of the Virgin” from the Alte Pinakothek was once in the Cologne Church of the Virgin Mary and was commissioned by representatives of several wealthy, related Cologne families. The altarpiece has two side wings depicting the patron saints of the patrons. The central sash is of the greatest interest. Van Mander wrote about the artist: “He was the best colorist of his time, he knew how to convey very beautiful relief to his works and conveyed the color of the body extremely close to nature, using only one skin color. His works were highly valued by art lovers, which they well deserved.

Jos van Cleve's son Cornelis also became an artist.

Flemish painter of the Northern Renaissance. He studied painting with Bernard van Orley, who initiated his visit to the Italian peninsula. (Coxcie is sometimes spelled Coxie, as in Mechelen on a street dedicated to the artist). In Rome in 1532 he painted the chapel of the Cardinal Enckenvoirt in the church of Santa Maria Delle "Anima and Giorgio Vasari, his work is done in the Italian manner. But the main work of Coxey was the development for engravers and the fable of Psyche on thirty-two sheets by Agostino Veneziano and the master in Daia good examples of their craft.

Returning to the Netherlands, Coxey significantly developed his practice in this area of ​​art. Coxey returned to Mechelen, where he designed the altar in the chapel of the Guild of St. Luke. In the center of this altar, St. Luke the Evangelist, the patron saint of artists, is depicted with the image of the Virgin, on the side parts there is a scene of the martyrdom of St. Vitus and the Vision of St. John the Evangelist in Patmos. He was patronized by Charles V, the Roman Emperor. His masterpieces of 1587 - 1588 are stored in the cathedral in Mechelen, in the cathedral in Brussels, museums in Brussels and Antwerp. He was known as the Flemish Raphael. He died at Mechelen on 5 Mat 1592, falling down a flight of stairs.

(Christina of Denmark)

(Killing of Abel)

Marinus van Reimerswale (c. 1490, Reimerswaal - after 1567)

Marinus' father was a member of the Antwerp Artists' Guild. Marinus is considered a student of Quentin Masseys, or at least was influenced by him in his work. However, van Reimerswale did not only paint. After leaving his native Reimerswal, he moved to Middelburg, where he participated in the robbery of the church, was punished and expelled from the city.

Marinus van Reimerswale has remained in the history of painting thanks to his images of St. Jerome and portraits of bankers, usurers and tax collectors in elaborate clothes carefully painted by the artist. Such portraits were very popular in those days as the personification of greed.

South Dutch painter and graphic artist, the most famous and significant of the artists who bore this name. Master of landscape and genre scenes. Father of painters Pieter Brueghel the Younger (Hellish) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (Paradise).