Hans Memling, Portrait of a Man with a Roman Coin, c. 1480.
Week One: Common Ground
It is now recognised that early Netherlandish painting was not only widely admired in Renaissance Italy, but that it had a transformative effect on Italian art itself. Learn about the reception of Netherlandish painting in Italy in this short course with V&A Course Director, Dr Paula Nuttall, an authority on the subject.
Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden were regarded by 15th-century Italian humanist writers as the greatest painters of their day. The naturalism of their paintings, made possible by their superb command of oils (as yet used to only a limited extent in Italy) chimed with artistic concerns in contemporary Italy, where painters such as Masaccio, Gentile da Fabriano and Fra Angelico were likewise interested in the representation of reality, from the human body to perspectival space and naturalistic light.
In this lecture, works by the first generation of Renaissance artists, north and south, are compared, shedding light on their shared aims and relative achievements, as well as viewing Netherlandish painting through the lens of contemporary Italian commentators.
This is an online event hosted on Zoom which can be watched live, or on-demand for three weeks. You will receive your link to access the event in your email confirmation and the on-demand link after the event ends. Bookings close one hour before the event.