Dutch and Flemish

About

In the 1400s painters in Flemish cities such as Bruges and Ghent refined oil painting in thin, glowing layers. Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait (1434) renders fur, brass and a convex mirror with astonishing exactness, and around 1500 Hieronymus Bosch, in 's-Hertogenbosch, filled triptychs such as The Garden of Earthly Delights with fantastical hybrids. In the next century Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted peasants, proverbs and the seasons, as in The Hunters in the Snow (1565).

After the Dutch Revolt split the region around 1580, two traditions emerged. The Catholic, Spanish-ruled south produced the surging Baroque of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, and the still lifes of Clara Peeters and Jan Brueghel the Elder. The Protestant Dutch Republic favoured portraits, landscapes, still lifes and domestic scenes for private homes. Rembrandt van Rijn's portraits and Johannes Vermeer's quiet interiors, such as The Milkmaid (around 1658), belong to this world.