The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Renaissance in the North [Paperback]

The seventeenth century in Europe rings with the names of the great sovereigns who had succeeded in creating nations by subjugating the feudal aristocracy and at whose courts power and wealth were concentrated and the arts flourished.Elizabeth I of England secured for her heirs the Protestant succession and for her country mastery of the seas; Louis XIV of France assembled his defeated vassals at Versailles; Gustavus II Adolphus and Christina of Sweden were for a time the most powerful Protestant monarchs on the Continent; Philip III and Philip IV of Spain ruled a vast empire in the New World and intrigued to maintain Habsburg power in the old; and Peter the Great of Russia consolidated the power of the House of Romanov and used it to push his country into the mainstream of European political, intellectual, and artistic life.Challenges to national unification and the absolutist principle, of course, were frequently successful: Italy remained largely a group of city-states, though the papal court resembled in power and prestige those of the great monarchs. The Netherlands secured its freedom from Catholic Spain and established a Protestant republic; while Belgium remained Catholic and subject to Habsburg domination. Germany was merely a conglomeration of principalities and, like Italy, would achieve national unity only late in the nineteenth century. But despite these exceptions, the political complexion of Europe indeed changed irrevocably during the seventeenth century, and in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, the once universal Church was now asunder.Europe in the Age of Monarchy reproduces over 125 works of art in every genre and medium from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum. They give a breathtaking picture of a turbulent and exciting epoch, which was at once the Age of Monarchy and a Golden Age of art. Just as its kings and queens are still exemplars of glorious majesty and shrewd statesmanship, so the artists of that century remain for us t At roughly the same time that Italian art was beginning to reflect a reawakening of the classical spiritan epoch and style we call the Renaissancethe arts of Northern Europe were experiencing their own efflorescence. Painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts were pursued with a new vigor in the Netherlands, in Germany, in France, and in England, and resulted in a vast body of work that constitutes one of the glories of Western civilization. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the masters of the North developed styles quite distinct from those in the South: an attention to minute detail, particularly with regard to landscape, but also in domestic interiors; and an emotive piety that dramatized the sorrow and suffering of the Passion. Jan van Eyck's Crucifixion and Last Judgment present a horrific vision of the death of Christ and the damnation of sinners, set against a deep and distant landscape, sensitively and realistically rendered. The Lamentation by Petrus Christus addresses the agony of the Passion with unflinching clarity. By the end of the fifteenth century, artists in Italy and in the regions north of the Alps were becoming more thoroughly aware of each other's work, and during the sixteenth century a truly "Renaissance" spirit infused art throughout Europe. The work of Drer, Cranach, Holbein, and Massys is informed by the same revival of classical learning that had characterized Italian art for more than a century. In The Renaissance in the North , the work of the German, Dutch, Flemish, French, and English masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is explored in more than one hundred reproductions. In addition to such well-known masterpieces as Van Eyck's Crucifixion and Last Judgment , Memling's Tommaso Portinari and Maria Baroncelli , Bruegel's Harvesters , Drer's woodcut The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse , Cranach's Judgment of Paris , and Holbein's Erasmus of Rotterdam , this volume includes many lesser-known works in oil and on paper, as well as sculpture, decorative arts, and armor from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Treasures of the decorative arts of Northern Europe include a series of stained-glass panels from Belgium illustrating the Gospels, a Flemish tapestry with allegorical representations of the Twelve Ages of Man, and an example of the famous hafnerware from Germany. A sumptuously painted double virginal, made in Antwerp in 1581, is one of many examples of musical instruments created in the North that are reproduced in this book. The strikingly decorated armor of the period is illustrated by a German parade helmet, an elaborate backplate and hoguine, and two full suits of armorone from France, the other from England. James Snyder, professor of art history at Bryn Mawr College and author of Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575 , provides an introduction to this volume. Professor Snyder explores the distinctive nature of the Northern Renaissance and explains the circumstances in which it flourished. He points out how the north and south of Europe came to share many of the same techniques and styles, and how, during the sixteenth century, a new art emerged in Europe that reflected the individuality of the nations in which it was created and the cross-cultural influences that made it distinctively Renaissance. Europe in the Age of Monarchy reproduces over 125 works of art in every genre and medium from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum. They give a breathtaking picture of a turbulent and exciting epoch, which was at once the Age of Monarchy and a Golden Age of art. Just as its kings and queens are still exemplars of glorious majesty and shrewd statesmanship, so the artists of that century remain for us the Old Masters of European art: Caravaggio, Bernini, Tiepolo, Guardi El Greco, Velázquez Rubens, van Dyck Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer, van Ruisdael de La Tour, Poussin, Claude, Watteau, Boucher, Chardin. In every medium, the clash and complicity of the traditional Classical style and the newer Baroque vision bequeathed us a rich treasure. "In this volume, the work of the German, Dutch, Flemish, French, and English masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is explored in more than one hundred reproductions. In addition to such well-known masterpieces as Van Eyck's Crucifixion and Last Judgment, Memling's Tommaso Portinari and Maria Baroncelli, Bruegel's Harvesters, Durer's woodcut The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Cranach's Judgment of Paris, and Holbein's Erasmus of Rotterdam, this volume includes many lesser-known works in oil and on paper, as well as sculpture, decorative arts, and armor from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art."--Page [2] of cover