Beyond Italy

In my last post from the Cleveland Museum of Art, I showed some of the works in the museum's collection of art from the Italian Renaissance.  From Italy, the Renaissance spread to other parts of Europe. 

Leaving the gallery of Italian Renaissance Art, you next enter a room of art from the Low Countries (the modern nations of the Netherlands and Belgium) during the 1400s and 1500s.  This work is known as "early Netherlandish", and it represents a transition between the late medieval period and the Northern Renaissance.

This painting of St. John the Baptist from around 1440 is attributed to Petrus Christus, a pupil of the more famous artist Jan van Eyck.  He was active in the city of Bruges (in modern day Belgium), and is noted for his innovations in perspective.

"The Adoration of the Magi" from the 1480s is by an obscure Dutch painter by the name of Geertgen tot Sint Jans.  Only around a dozen of his paintings are known to exist, and he died in his late twenties.  Assuming that the figure lurking in the background is Joseph, there are only two magi shown.  Of course the Bible never says that there were three magi, it simply mentions three gifts.

"The Nativity" was painted around 1485 by Gerard David.  David was born in Utrecht (present day Netherlands), but he did most of his work in the city of Bruges.  In his day he was considered one of the leading painters in Bruges.  However his reputation had fallen, and he was considered just another late medieval artist.  In recent times he has been reevaluated by scholars as a master colorist who was casting off the traditions of the Middle Ages. 

The city in the background is supposed to be Jerusalem, but it looks like a typical northern European city of his time.

This portrait of a monk dates from the early 1500s and was done by an unknown artist who was probably a follower of Gerard David.  In the background are the towers of the city of Bruges.

Not all stained glass is for churches.  This window from the Dutch city of Nijmegan shows the legendary story of the Roman noblewoman Lucretia who was raped by Tarquin, the son of the last Etruscan king of Rome.  The characters are portrayed in the attire of the 1500s rather than ancient Rome.

The next gallery deals with the Renaissance in France and Germany.  

In France, King Francis I had a taste for Italian culture.  He bought many pieces of Italian art for his palaces and brought Italian architects, scholars and artists to France.   One of the artists was the Florentine painter Andrea di Sarto.  This portrait was done my one of his followers in 1518.

 

Corneille de Lyon was actually Dutch, but he lived and worked for much of his life in the French city of Lyon.  There he painted portraits of nobles and wealthy nobles.  This one was done in 1540.

These ornate pieces of French pottery show Italian influence.

One of the most important painters of the German Renaissance was Lucas Cranach.  This painting from 1540, "Hunting near Hartenfels Castle" is one of my favorite pieces in the museum.  It's not that I am a fan of hunting, but that there is so much going on in this large painting.

Here are a few details...

The painting was commissioned by the ruler of Saxony, Elector John Frederick the Magnanimous.   In the detail below, he is the center figure.  Next to him is his son.

His wife, the one drawing her bow, is also participating in the hunt.

And in the background, Cranach meticulously rendered the rulers' castle.

This miniature clock, dating from around 1600, is made of gilded copper, steel and rock crystal.

The sculptor Daniel Mauch straddled the medieval and Renaissance worlds, but these wooden carvings of Adam and Eve from 1535 definitely show Italian influence with their attention to human anatomy.

 

Hans Mielich was a native of Munich, and he did portraits of that city's leading citizens.  The painting below is of Maria von Freyburg, a member of the court of Albert V, the Duke of Bavaria.  

The artist painted the woman's jewelry with great detail.  Some years later he would be commissioned by Duke Albert to do an illustrated inventory of his wife's collection of jewelry.

Finally, because I am partially of Swiss ancestry, and because I have some cousins who live in or near Zurich, I had to take a picture of this stained glass window.  It shows the coat of arms of the Swiss canton of Zurich.

There is much more to come from the Cleveland Museum of Art.