Northern Renaissance Research Articles

Bruegel's peasants: art and audience in the northern renaissance

Folkloristic interpretations dominate the study of Peter Bruegel the Elder's art, and art historians generally assume that the “sayings of the folk” are the only ones relevant for understanding his paintings and prints. In contrast, this study examines Bruegel's proverb paintings and prints from the perspective of the audience most important to the artist. Using this new approach, it is concluded that folkloristic interpretations are inadequate since Bruegel's proverb art was in the mainstream of Renaissance interests and suited the enthusiasms of a humanist audience in the Low Countries in the 1550s and 1560s. The relationship between Bruegel's proverbs and the classical past was highly salient for his original audience, and any interpretation that adequately reflects their views must consider Latin and Greek proverbs as well as those in the vernacular.

:Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel Van Mander's "Schilder-Boeck."

A treatise on Dutch art on par with Vasari's critical history of Italian art, Karel van Mander's Schilder-Boeck (or Book on Picturing) has long been recognized for its critical and historical influence--and yet, until now, no comprehensive account of the book's conception, aims, and impact has been available. In this in-depth analysis of the content and context of Van Mander's work, Walter S. Melion reveals the Schilder-Boeck's central importance to an understanding of northern Renaissance and Baroque art. By interpreting the terminology employed in the Schilder-Boeck, Melion establishes the text's relationship to past and contemporary art theory. Van Mander is seen here developing his critical categories and then applying them to Ancient, Italian, and Netherlandish artists in order to mark changes within a culture and to characterize excellence for each region. Thus Melion demonstrates how Van Mander revised both the structure and critical language of Vasari's Lives to refute the Italian's claims for the superiority of the Tuscan style, and to clarify northern artistic traditions and the concerns of Netherlandish artists. A much needed corrective to the view that Dutch art of the period was lacking in theory, Melion's work offers a compelling account of a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theoretical and critical perspective and shows how this perspective suggests a rereading of northern art. Walter S. Melion is assistant professor of art history at The Johns Hopkins University.

Shaping Reality through the Fictive: Images of Women Spinning in the Northern Renaissance

Cet article voudrait montrer comment le motif récurrent des fileuses servait à véhiculer les idées des humanistes et des réformateurs du Nord de l’Europe. Les artistes utilisaient le thème des fileuses à la fois pour sa valeur symbolique et pour sa grande ancienneté. Le motif leur permettait d’exprimer les nouvelles valeurs morales et les transformations du rôle de la femme. L’usage de la gravure sur bois et de la gravure en taille douce permettait une plus grande diffusion des idées nouvelles qui étaient liées à l’urbanisation des pays transalpins, à une vision plus favorable de la famille et au fait que les femmes étaient exclues du milieu du travail. Les artistes visaient surtout la classe bourgeoise urbaine qui partageait avec les humanistes et les réformateurs l’idéal de la famille nucléaire. Le motif permettait aux artistes de séparer la « sphère officielle ou mondaine » de l’époux de la « sphère privée ou domestique » de l’épouse. Dans ce contexte, le motif était utilisé de deux façons différentes : dans un contexte domestique il mettait en scène une épouse vertueuse, chaste et obéissante, tandis que hors du domaine familial, il indiquait la prostitution et son comportement immoral. Le thème de la fileuse servait donc à propager un nouveau sens de la famille bourgeoise tout en distinguant très fortement les classes supérieures des classes inférieures où la femme devait travailler pour subvenir aux besoins de la famille.

Bruegel's Proverbs: Art and Audience in the Northern Renaissance

Bruegel's Proverbs: Art and Audience in the Northern Renaissance

Second-Annual Phillips Lecture

[27] Second-Annual Phillips Lecture: The Private Prayers of Erasmus and Vives: A View of Lay Piety in the Northern Renaissance 1 by Alice Tobriner, S.N.J.M. his survey of lay piety in sixteenth-century northern Europe bears a double responsibility. The first is to honor the memory of the scholar in whose name this lecture has been instituted. Margaret Mann Phillips was an extraordinary person: an insightful scholar of seven tumultuous decades, a crafter of narrative with an inbred ability to instill excitement, and an Eras- mian who may have made some writings of Erasmus clearer to us than did Erasmus himself.

The Devil at Isenheim: Reflections of Popular Belief in Grunewald's Altarpiece

Matthias Grunwald's world-famous Isenheim Altarpiece ranks among the most powerful expressionistic works of the Northern Renaissance. Characterized by great emotional force, exquisite handling of color and brilliantly interwoven subtleties of Christian iconography, the multi-paneled altarpiece has remained the object of intense scholarly interest and the main attraction of the Musee d'Unterlinden in Colmar, France. Ruth Mellinkoff offers an original analysis of the altarpiece, uncovering the late medieval popular beliefs that underlie its unusual visual content. She places its rich imagery within a tradition of Christian art, and stunningly, discovers Lucifer among the angels observing the Nativity.

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

Richard Mackenney, Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds of Venice and Europe, c. 1250 ‐ c. 1650.James Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575.P. P. Bober and R. O. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and the Antique. A Handbook of Sources.Lorenzo Valla, De professione religiosomm, edited by Mariarosa Cortesi.Elizabeth Armstrong, Robert Estienne Royal Printer. An Historical Study of the Elder Stephanus.H. A. Mason, Sir Thomas Wyatt: A Literary Portrait. Rewriting the Renaissance. The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, edited by Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan and Nancy J. Vickers.Patrick Collinson, From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: The Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation.Jerzy Limon, Dangerous Matter: English Drama and Politics in 1623/24.

Sir William Petty: modern epidemiologist (1623-1687).

William Petty, physician, epidemiologist, political economist, demographer, cartographer, and administrator was an intellectual product of the seventeenth century. Petty was born in the year 1623 in Romsey, England of lower middle class parents; however, by the time of his death in 1687 he had become a knight of the realm, founder of the Royal Society, and friend of kings. Petty's life reflected the northern renaissance which induced such dramatic changes in science, technology, politics, and entrepreneurship. His education was eclectic, nonetheless he took his Doctor of Physic degree from Oxford in 1649 and became an Oxford don, where he spent the next few years as an academic before undertaking a definitive survey of Ireland on behalf of the Cromwell government. Ireland changed Petty's destiny and he became a man of the world and entrepreneur which stimulated his interest in public policy formulation and economics. It was Petty's peculiar genius to be innovative in the application of measurement, statistics, and mathematics to socioeconomic and demographic phenomena. As a physician he related his knowledge of health and disease to these phenomena in what in the modern context would be called human ecology or social epidemiology. These relationships and their measurement were employed to establish an objective set of data which could be analyzed for the purpose of rational public policy planning by the state. This scientific approach to public policy places Petty squarely in the context of modern epidemiologic and public health practice and marks the initiation of a major use of the epidemiologic method.

Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575

Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575

James Snyder. Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1985. 85 color pls.+ 597 ill.+ 560 pp. $28.95.

James Snyder. Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1985. 85 color pls.+ 597 ill.+ 560 pp. $28.95. - Volume 39 Issue 1

Reviews

Reviews Get access Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance . By MARGARET MANN PHILLIPS . Pp. vii + 173 . Woodbridge : The Boydell Press ; Totowa, NJ : Rowman and Littlefield , 1981 . Hardbound £12.00 MICHAEL J. HEATH MICHAEL J. HEATH Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 31, Issue 2, June 1984, Pages 260–261, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/31-2-260 Published: 01 June 1984

"Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance," by Margaret Mann Phillips; and "Pascal, Adversary and Advocate," by Robert J. Nelson

"Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance," by Margaret Mann Phillips; and "Pascal, Adversary and Advocate," by Robert J. Nelson

Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance

Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance

Anthony Levi, Pagan Virtue and the Humanism of the Northern Renaissance

Anthony Levi, Pagan Virtue and the Humanism of the Northern Renaissance

Pagan Virtue and the Humanism of the Northern Renaissance

Pagan Virtue and the Humanism of the Northern Renaissance

Correspondence: Stringed instruments on the Eglantine table

Journal Article Correspondence: Stringed instruments on the Eglantine table Get access EPHRAIM SEGERMAN, EPHRAIM SEGERMAN Northern Renaissance Instruments18 Moorfield Road, Manchester M20 8UY Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar DJILDA ABBOTT DJILDA ABBOTT Northern Renaissance Instruments18 Moorfield Road, Manchester M20 8UY Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Early Music, Volume 4, Issue 4, October 1976, Pages 485–486, https://doi.org/10.1093/earlyj/4.4.485 Published: 01 October 1976

The Northern Renaissance, Edited by Lewis W. Spitz, Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1972, 179 pages

"The Northern Renaissance, Edited by Lewis W. Spitz, Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1972, 179 pages." Moreana, 12 (Number 46)(2), pp. 71–72

:The Northern Renaissance

:<i>The Northern Renaissance</i>

The Northern Renaissance. Edited by Lewis W. Spitz. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972. 179 pp. $5.95.

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Etymology in Tradition and in the Northern Renaissance

What Mr. Eliot has succeeded in expressing most economically-the vast importance of names-has been the object of scholarly investigation for many years. Ernst Cassirer's Sprache und Mythos: ein Beitrag zum Problem der Gotternamen describes the mythical-magical importance of names in general and of divine names in particular.2 His observations have a less speculative counterpart in Ernst Robert Curtius' Etymology as a Category of Thought, an excursus to his European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages.3 Curtius describes the practical rhetorical uses to which names were put, or more properly, the discipline which employed all words, names included, as the primary object of study. Cassirer explains the belief in the intrinsic connection between name and essence, a belief with great implications in magic and mysticism, and one to which we shall return below. With Cassirer's approach one may evaluate the problems of names as they appear in religion and philosophy. Curtius explains name-study in terms of etymology, the reduction of words to their original semantic elements, and surveys the sources and course of etymology from antiquity through the Middle Ages and on to Calder6n. With Curtius' approach one may evaluate the problems of names as they appear in oratory and literature. Both the problems and the approaches are rarely so simple as not to overlap substantially. One needs both Cassirer and Curtius to confront the many kinds of problems arising from names in written tradition. The considerable variety of name-studies and name-uses suggests a series of categories conforming to Cassirer's and Curtius' approaches. Names seem to have played influential and distinguishable roles in mystical, exegetical, rhetorical, and historical pursuits. The mystical and rhetorical uses of name-study are those most properly explained by Cassirer and Curtius respectively. The exegetical use falls into a category between these two. It is a rhetorical convention in the service of religious experience, in