Today was a fun class, we saw some nice pieces from the early Flemish masters before touching a bit on printing.
We learned that the Dutch were the first to master oil painting. I wonder though, did Dutch painters’ obsession with detail and realism come before their breakthroughs in oil painting or after? Anyway, it was cool to see just how technically talented painters like Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling were, and how they packed so much information into tiny paintings made for domestic spaces.
I thought Rogier van der Weyden was alright, not quite as good as Memling or van Eyck. I noticed though that Rogier’s St. Luke was a mix of tempera and oil. Was that because it was a larger work meant to be publically displayed? Was oil reserved only for smaller paintings? How does one mix oil and tempera?
We also talked about Witz’s Draught of the Fishes, which I liked because it continued this idea of the altarpiece being a visual aid allowing the lay-people to better relate their lives to biblical stories.