The Image of the City in Early Netherlandish Painting (1400-1550)
By (author) Jelle De Rock
Throughout the book a variety of questions are addressed, ranging from the religious conception of the city, the theatrical dimension of urban space, the extent to which Early Netherlandish painting depicted the city as an economic space, how images of city and countryside functioned as identity markers of the donor, and how technica
Painted cityscapes have always captivated the viewers of medieval works of art. To this day scholars are mesmerised by their capacity to mirror the urban context from which they sprang, combined with their ability to symbolize a more abstract world view, religious idea or social ideal. Especially oil painting, which thrived in the fifteenth-century Low Countries among a heterogeneous elite and the well-off urban middling groups, succeeded as no other medium in capturing the urban landscape in its finest details. In order to gain an insight into how late medieval citizens, clerics and noblemen conceived of urban society and space, this book combines a serial analysis of a large corpus of painted city views with a critical discussion of some well-documented and revealing works of art. Throughout the book a variety of questions are addressed, ranging from the religious conception of the city, the theatrical dimension of urban space, the extent to which Early Netherlandish painting depicted the city as an economic space, how images of city and countryside functioned as identity markers of the donor, and how technical advances in the field of cartography impacted the portrayal of towns in the sixteenth century. In doing so, this study explores the duality of some of the major interpretive schemes that have determined the last few decades of historiography on late medieval Netherlandish culture, oscillating between bourgeois and courtly, realistic and symbolic profane and religious, and innovative versus traditional.
- By (author) Jelle De Rock
Other Titles in this Series
Le pouvoir en ville
Gestion urbaine et pratiques politiques a Geneve (fin XIIIe - debut XVIe siecles)
Volume 25
Civilites et incivilites urbaines
Urbanite, rituels et ceremonies dans la ville du XVIIe siecle
Volume 62
Technologies of Learning
Apprenticeship in Antwerp from the 15th Century to the End of the Ancien Regime
Volume 11
Emotions in the Heart of the City (14th-16th century) / Les emotions au coeur de la ville (XIVe-XVIe siecle)
Les emotions au coeur de la ville (XIVe-XVIe siecle)
Volume 5
Urban Elites and Aristocratic Behaviour in the Spanish Kingdoms at the End of the Middle Ages
Volume 27
The Rise of Cities Revisited
Reflections on Adriaan Verhulst's Vision of Urban Genesis and Developments in the Medieval Low Countries
Volume 61
Woven into the Urban Fabric
Cloth Manufacture and Economic Development in the Flemish West-Quarter (1300-1600)
Volume 54
The Power of Space in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
The cities of Italy, Northern France and the Low Countries
Volume 30
Des amities ciblees
Concours de tir et diplomatie urbaine dans le Saint-Empire, XVe-XVIe siecle
Volume 51
The city, the duke and their banker
The Rapondi family and the formation of the Burgundian state (1384-1430)
Volume 7
Usuriers publics et banquiers du Prince
Le role economique des financiers piemontais dans les villes du duche de Brabant (XIIIe-XIVe siecle)
Volume 28
Sixteenth-century Antwerp and its Rural Surroundings
Social and Economic Changes in the Hinterland of a Commercial Metropolis (ca. 1450 - ca. 1570)
Volume 14
Subaltern City?
Alternative and Peripheral Urban Spaces in the Pre-modern Period (13th-18th Centuries)
Volume 46
Epitomes of Evil
Representations of Executioners in Northern France and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages
Volume 8
La police de Bruxelles entre reformes et revolutions (1748-1814)
Police urbaine et modernite
Volume 29
For the Common Good
State Power and Urban Revolts in the Reign of Mary of Burgundy, 1477-1482
Volume 17
Message in a Bottle
Merchants' letters, merchants' marks and conflict management in 1533-34. A source edition
Volume 57
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