The Flemish Primitives
In Bruges, Ghent and Brussels, painters turned oil paint into a tool for rendering the world in the smallest detail.
In the 1420s something happened in Flanders that changed painting throughout Europe. Jan van Eyck, Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden began to paint with a precision no one had achieved before. Fabrics, metal, glass, skin and landscape were rendered so that one can almost feel them. Today these painters are called the Flemish Primitives. The word primitive is misleading; it dates from the 19th century, when it meant early or original, not simple.
This art grew up in the wealthy towns under the Burgundian dukes. The dukes, the nobility of the court, the Church and prosperous burghers commissioned altarpieces, portraits and devotional images. Foreign merchants in Bruges, especially Italians, took the paintings home with them. This is why Flemish masterpieces are found today in Florence, Madrid and Gdańsk. In Italy they were admired for their fidelity to nature and their luminous oil paint. Duke Philip the Good even sent his court painter on diplomatic missions. Art was part of the prestige of the state.
In the second half of the century Dieric Bouts, Hugo van der Goes and Hans Memling carried the tradition forward. Around 1500 Hieronymus Bosch, in 's-Hertogenbosch, painted his enigmatic visions of sin and punishment. At the same time Antwerp grew into a commercial metropolis and art market. Paintings and carved altarpieces were exported from there in large numbers, among other places to Sweden, where they still stand in several churches. Flemish art was now known and sought after across most of Europe.