Northern Renaissance Art

The Netherlands, Germany, and France, Early 1400 - 1550

Claus Sluter (also Claes de Slutere van Herlam, Haarlem, Holland c. 1350 - Dijon, Burgundy 1406)

In 1379 he is listed in the records of the stonemasons' guild in Brussels. From ducal archives he is known to have entered in 1385 the service of Philip II the Bold, duke of Burgundy, who was ruler of the Netherlands.
Philip founded the Carthusian monastery of Champmol at Dijon in 1383 and made its chapel a dynastic mausoleum adorned with sculptures by Sluter. In 1389 Sluter succeeded as chief sculptor to the duke, and in that year he began carving the portal sculptures. In 1396 he brought to Dijon his nephew Claus de Werve and more sculptors from Flanders to assist in his numerous ducal commissions.

Sluter, an innovator in art, moved beyond the prevailing French taste for graceful figures, delicate and elegant movement, and fluid falls of drapery. In his handling of mass, he also moved beyond the concern with expressive volumes visible in the sculptures of André Beauneveu, an eminent contemporary who worked for Philip's brother Jean, Duke de Berry. The grandeur of Sluter's forms can only be paralleled in Flemish painting by the van Eycks and Robert Campin or in Italian sculpture several decades later. Spiritualist and naturalist in one, Sluter epitomized in sculpture the growing awareness of an individualized nature with discoverable laws and an enduring grandeur.

Well of Moses, 1405-1406, Height of figures 6', Chartreuse de Champmol, Dijon

Pleurant, from the Tomb of Philip the Bold, Alabaster, 16" (1414 completed)

Limbourg Brothers, Flemish painters (b. 1370-80, Nijmegen, d. 1416, Nijmegen) (1385-1416) Three Brother artists working under the duc de Berry. Tres Riches Heures. Initiated direct observational study. First really to successfully portray peasant life of the north. All died together, presumed by epidemic.LIMBOURG brothers (Herman, Jean, Paul)

The February Page, Among the first snowscapes.

Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry: Fevrier (February) 1412-16
Illumination on vellum, 22,5 x 13,6 cm, Musée Condé, Chantilly

Limbourg brothers, Hell

Limbourg brothers, Zodiac Page