The Discovery of Nature: Art of the Netherlands & Low Countries. 1

A Note on Landscape in Northern European Art.

“They paint in Flanders only to deceive the external eye, things that gladden you and of which you cannot speak ill. Their painting is of stuff, bricks and mortar, the grass of the fields, the shadows of trees, and bridges and rivers, which they call landscapes, and little figures here and there.¹ And all this, though it may appear good to some eyes, is in truth done without reason, without symmetry or proportion, without care in selecting and rejecting.” (Michelangelo)

The word landscape (landschaft) was first used in the art context in German literature when Albrecht Dürer described his visit to Joachim Patinir, “the good landscape painter,” in Antwerp in 1520. This is significant for it certifies the growing awareness of the fact that artists at this time were specialising; they were becoming recognised professionals in certain branches of secular art (such as landscape, portrait and still life).”² Despite Michelangelo’s famous dismissal of Flemish landscape painting, it would be a mistake to believe that northern and southern European artists had radically different views of the natural world. Though northern renaissance artists didn’t aspire to Michelangelo’s ideal art, they still exercised selection in some of their landscapes. However, there is still a degree of contrivance in northern landscape, like the Italians. This problem of contrivance and the “landscape of fact”, a type of painting that mixed artistic skill through drawings with accurate observation of a place is at the heart of northern landscape art. Paintings like Konrad Witz’s Miraculous Draught of Fishes (above) may be based on the countryside around Lake Geneva, but it is still a carefully constructed picture that uses natural features to symbolise religious ideas, all under the orders of a Cardinal. Then there is the problem of identifying methods and technique in landscape. Did artists like Hubert van Eyck make studies directly from nature using watercolours; or did his brother Jan’s views of towns and the landscape derive from silverpoint drawings like the magnificent St Barbara, which almost seems to anticipate Breughel’s populated wintry landscapes.³

1Craig Harbison, Art of Northern Renaissance, (Everyman Art Library, 1995), 138.

2 Ibid.

3Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art, (Penguin, London, 1949), 33-4.