Tour: The Netherlands and France in the 1500s

Overview | Start Tour
7	8

«	previous
«	back to Northern European painting of the 15th-16th centuries

Overview

Much of this tour is made up of paintings that are disassembled parts of church altarpieces. Altarpieces began to appear in the twelfth century. After priests in the Latin church of western Europe began to stand in front of the altar when saying mass, a space was created on the altar for elaborate reliquaries or, lacking important relics to display, for a dramatic painted backdrop. Large assemblages of painted and gilded wooden panels, some more than twenty-feet high, became the focus of church decoration. Altarpieces, and with them the art of painting on wooden panels, gained new prominence and began to attract the greatest artists.

(continue)

Captions

1.
1	Master of Saint Giles, The Baptism of Clovis, c. 1500
2	Master of Frankfurt, Saint Anne with the Virgin and the Christ Child, c. 1511/1515
3	Gerard David, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, c. 1510
4	Gerard David and Workshop, The Saint Anne Altarpiece: Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child [middle panel], c. 1500/1520
5	Bernard van Orley, The Marriage of the Virgin, c. 1513
6	Adriaen Isenbrant, The Adoration of the Shepherds, probably 1520/1540
2.
7	Corneille de Lyon, Portrait of a Man, c. 1536/1540
8	François Clouet, A Lady in Her Bath, c. 1571