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Semester 2

The Detailed Imagination: Netherlandish Painting in the Age of Jan van Eyck (HIAR10013)

Course Website

http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/fineart

Subject

History of Art

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 3 History of Art courses at grade B or above, and please note that we will not consider History courses unrelated to Art, or practical Art courses, towards these pre-requisites. We will only consider University/College level courses. Please see Additional Restrictions below.

Course Summary

The course will consider the work of the leading Netherlandish painters of the fifteenth century, in particular the Van Eyck brothers, Robert Campin, Petrus Christus, Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling and Bosch. It aims to introduce students to the principal surviving paintings of the period and the main issues art historians have addressed in relation to their study. The work of Jan van Eyck (d. 1441), his contemporaries and followers, is distinguished by an extraordinary attention to detailed naturalism of the most microscopic kind, unprecedented in the history of Western painting, and rarely employed by artists in subsequent periods. The rapid rise of this detailed naturalism is an artistic phenomenon that presents those who study it with many problems of historical interpretation. To what extent can these paintings be understood as reflections of the world as viewed by their artists directly from life? Or are they essentially works of the imagination, contrived to appear 'real' because of their attention to detail? Despite having been the subject of considerable study, art historians remain unclear about why this brand of naturalism appeared where and when it did. The course will engage with this issue throughout, investigating the historical contexts of the paintings, and asking what legacy this detailed vision bequeathed to the ensuing development of Western Visual culture, from Dutch painting of the seventeenth century to the advent of photography and its impact. Other issues addressed include: developments in patronage from the court to the marketplace; the theological social implications of naturalistic painting; the introduction of new genres and their function; problems in iconographic interpretation; the eye of the spectator and changes in viewing habits; and distinctions between devotional and secular purposes of painting. The social position of artists and the development of new techniques of painting will also be investigated.

Course Description

Assessment Information

Written Exam 50%, Coursework 50%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a History of Art exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one 3rd year History of Art course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the January Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the extremely limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

view the timetable and further details for this course