The Renaissance in the North
I. Conditions in Northern Europe.
A. Slower
growth in the North, but trade and commerce eventually brought Italian ideas
northward.
B. The northern
merchant class prospered and became the primary source of artistic patronage,
not the nobles or the church (as in the case of the Medici family or the Papacy
in Italy)
C. Due to
remoteness of Rome/the Vatican and the Pope, anticlericalism was very strong in
Northern Europe.
D. Commercial
centers of Ghent and Bruges in the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands).
II. Technological and Scientific
Advancements.
A. The “age of exploration” and navigational techniques.
B. Francis Bacon and the “Scientific Method”
(cf.
Aristotle’s empiricism).
C. Nicholas
Copernicus and the heliocentric universe (as opposed to the geocentric or
anthropocentric). What does this do
to theological assumptions?
D. Guttenberg
and the printing press. Before
this, what did they do?
III. Theology and the Church.
A. Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.
B. John Calvin: Reformed theology and the Protestant Ethic.
C. Albrecht Zwingli and the Anabaptists.
D. Henry VIII of England and the Pope.
E. Iconoclasm, for good or for ill.
F. Erasmus and Humanism: “The Praise of Folly.”
IV.
All of these conditions and events set the stage in Northern Europe for a
strong spirit of individualism: the “trinity” of politics, economics and
religion.
A. Politics: the fragmentation of Europe in nation-states.
B. Economics: Protestantism as capitalism.
C. Theology: personal piety, not institutional allegiance.
V. Northern European Oil Painting and
Printmaking.
A. Robert Campin (ca. 1375-1444): Merode Altarpiece (1426)
B. Jan van Eyck
(ca. 1390-1441): Ghent Altarpiece (1425-32), Giovanni Arnolfini and
His Wife Giovanna Cenami (1434).
C. Hieronymus
Bosch (ca. 1450-1516): Death and the Miser (ca. 1485-90), Hay Wain
(ca. 1495-1500), Garden of Earthly Delights (ca. 1505-10).
D. Pieter
Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525-1569): Peasant Wedding (ca. 1566-67), The
Wedding Dance (ca. 1566-67), The Blind Leading the Blind (1568).
E. Mathias Grunewald (1460-1528): The Small Crucifixion
(ca. 1511-20).
F. Albrecht
Durer (1471-1528): Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1497-98), Adam and
Eve (1504), Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513).
VI. Literature: Shakespeare.
A. The Elizabethan Sonnet: Sonnet 130
B. Hamlet.
VII. Renaissance Music: The Madrigal.
A. Characteristics.
B. Thomas Morley (1557-1603): Now Is the Month of Maying
C. Orlandus Lassus (1532-1594): Matona Mia Cara