Oxford University

Van Eyck to Memling: Northern Renaissance Art c.1430-1480

The work of Northern Renaissance artists is often incredibly beautiful, with marvellous colours and textures conjured up from their hallmark technique of oil painting.
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Length 1 to 3 months
Effort 10 hours per week
Price £ 280 - £ 300
Subject Art, Design
Level Intermediate
Languages English
Video Transcripts None

The work of Northern Renaissance artists is often incredibly beautiful, with marvellous colours and textures conjured up from their hallmark technique of oil painting. Yet there is much more to the work of Jan van Eyck, his contemporaries and their followers, than simple aesthetics, for it evolved from, and reflected, an intriguing range of religious and cultural beliefs. This online course will explore some of the fascination of these images and their meanings.

Fifteenth-century artists working in Flanders and the Netherlands seem to have suddenly developed a new way of seeing along with new techniques of representation. Their art can be breathtakingly realistic, with glowing colours and tangible textures conjured up magically from oil paint, and credible interiors and landscapes which strongly evoke Northern Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. Yet the apparent realism of artists such as Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden and their followers is more than mere imitation of the world they saw around them: it embodied a whole wealth of religious and cultural symbolism, and pushed back the boundaries of what it meant to be an artist, a patron or a viewer. Although it is generally counted among the lesser known branches of art history, the work of these artists was hugely influential on their Italian contemporaries, and in turn helped to shape the history of art in Western Europe and beyond up to the present day. This online course will explore some of the fascination of these images and their meanings.

What you'll learn

By the end of this course you will be able to understand:

  • The artistic, religious and social context in which the artists of the Northern Renaissance worked.

  • The types of meanings which these images seem to embody.

  • The role of patrons and audience in the formulation of these works.

You will have gained the following skills:

  • The ability to recognise common motifs used by Northern Renaissance artists and to identify their points of origin.

  • The ability to describe and debate important concepts in late medieval religious belief which influenced artistic production and reception.

  • The ability to recognise and interpret common types of symbolism in Northern Renaissance art.

Course syllabus

Introduction and a starting point Realism and the Depiction of Space Production and Location Religious Ideals and Behaviour Artistic Specialisms Italy and the North

Meet the instructors

Mrs Emma Rose Barber
Emma Rose Barber is an art historian who has been teaching and lecturing for over twenty years. She specialises in the art of the Renaissance: the Italian Renaissance and the northern Renaissance. Latterly, she has become a specialist in medieval art and culture, in particular illuminated manuscripts, as part of her PhD studies. She was the head of the art history department at the British Institute in Florence between 2002-2006. Currently she teaches at the Open University and SOAS as well as the University of Oxford's Department for Continuing Education. She has also recently started a blog called The Shy Churchgoer, dedicated to celebrating the art and history of churches.