1.
Leiden
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Leiden is a city and municipality in the Dutch province of South Holland. Leiden is located on the Oude Rijn, at a distance of some 20 kilometres from The Hague to its south, the recreational area of the Kaag Lakes lies just to the northeast of Leiden. A university city since 1575, Leiden houses Leiden University, the oldest university of the Netherlands, Leiden is a city with a rich cultural heritage, not only in science, but also in the arts. One of the worlds most famous painters, Rembrandt, was born, other famous Leiden painters include Lucas van Leyden, Jan van Goyen and Jan van Steen. The city has one of Europes most prominent scientific centres for more than four centuries. Modern scientific medical research and teaching started in the early 18th century in Leiden with Boerhaave, many important scientific discoveries have been made here, giving rise to Leiden’s motto, ‘City of Discoveries’. It is twinned with Oxford, the location of the United Kingdoms oldest university, Leiden University and Leiden University of Applied Sciences together have around 35,000 students. Leiden is a university city, university buildings are scattered throughout the city. Leiden was formed on a hill at the confluence of the rivers Oude. In the oldest reference to this, from circa 860, the settlement was called Leithon, the name is said to be from Germanic *leitha- canal. Leiden has in the past erroneously been associated with the Roman outpost Lugdunum Batavorum and this particular castellum was thought to be located at the Burcht of Leiden, and the citys name was thought to be derived of the Latin name Lugdunum. However the castellum was in closer to the town of Katwijk. The landlord of Leiden, situated in a stronghold on the hill, was subject to the Bishop of Utrecht. This county got its name in 1101 from a domain near the stronghold, Leiden was sacked in 1047 by Emperor Henry III. Early 13th century, Ada, Countess of Holland took refuge here when she was fighting in a war against her uncle, William I. He besieged the stronghold and captured Ada, Leiden received city rights in 1266. In 1389, its population had grown to about 4,000 persons, burgrave Filips of Wassenaar and the other local noblemen of the Hook faction assumed that the duke would besiege Leiden first and send small units out to conquer the surrounding citadels. But John of Bavaria chose to attack the citadels first and he rolled the cannons with his army but one which was too heavy went by ship
2.
Haarlem
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Haarlem is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland and is situated at the edge of the Randstad. Haarlem had a population of 155,758 in 2014 and it is a 15-minute train ride from Amsterdam, and many residents commute to the countrys capital for work. Haarlem was granted city status or stadsrechten in 1245, although the first city walls were not built until 1270, the modern city encompasses the former municipality of Schoten as well as parts that previously belonged to Bloemendaal and Heemstede. Apart from the city, the municipality of Haarlem also includes the part of the village of Spaarndam. Newer sections of Spaarndam lie within the municipality of Haarlemmerliede en Spaarnwoude. The city is located on the river Spaarne, about 20 km west of Amsterdam and it has been the historical centre of the tulip bulb-growing district for centuries and bears the nickname Bloemenstad, for this reason. Haarlem has a history dating back to pre-medieval times, as it lies on a thin strip of land above sea level known as the strandwal. The people on this strip of land struggled against the waters of the North Sea from the west, and the waters of the IJ. Haarlem became wealthy with toll revenues that it collected from ships, however, as shipping became increasingly important economically, the city of Amsterdam became the main Dutch city of North Holland during the Dutch Golden Age. The town of Halfweg became a suburb, and Haarlem became a bedroom community. Nowadays many of them are on the Dutch Heritage register known as Rijksmonuments, the list of Rijksmonuments in Haarlem gives an overview of these per neighbourhood, with the majority in the old city centre. The oldest mentioning of Haarlem dates from the 10th century, the name probably comes from Haarlo-heim. This name is composed of three elements, haar, lo and heim, there is not much dispute about the meaning of lo and heim, in Old Dutch toponyms lo always refers to forest and heim to home or house. Haar, however, has several meanings, one of them corresponding with the location of Haarlem on a sand dune, the name Haarlem or Haarloheim would therefore mean home on a forested dune. There was a stream called De Beek, dug from the peat grounds west of the river Spaarne as a drainage canal, over the centuries the Beek was turned into an underground canal, as the city grew larger and the space was needed for construction. Over time it began to silt up and in the 19th century it was filled in, the location of the village was a good one, by the river Spaarne, and by a major road going south to north. By the 12th century it was a town, and Haarlem became the residence of the Counts of Holland
3.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
4.
Early Netherlandish painting
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Their work follows the International Gothic style and begins approximately with Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck in the early 1420s. It lasts at least until the death of Gerard David in 1523, the major Netherlandish painters include Campin, van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes and Hieronymus Bosch. These artists made significant advances in natural representation and illusionism, and their subjects are usually religious scenes or small portraits, with narrative painting or mythological subjects being relatively rare. Landscape is often richly described but relegated as a background detail before the early 16th century, the painted works are generally oil on panel, either as single works or more complex portable or fixed altarpieces in the form of diptychs, triptychs or polyptychs. The period is noted for its sculpture, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass. Assisted by the system, panels and a variety of crafts were sold to foreign princes or merchants through private engagement or market stalls. A majority were destroyed during waves of iconoclasm in the 16th and 17th centuries, Early northern art in general was not well regarded from the early 17th to the mid-19th century, and the painters and their works were not well documented until the mid-19th century. Art historians spent almost another century determining attributions, studying iconography, attribution of some of the most significant works is still debated. These artists became a driving force behind the Northern Renaissance. In this political and art-historical context, the north follows the Burgundian lands which straddled areas that encompass parts of modern France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlandish artists have been known by a variety of terms. Late Gothic is a designation which emphasises continuity with the art of the Middle Ages. In the early 20th century, the artists were variously referred to in English as the Ghent-Bruges school or the Old Netherlandish school. In this context, primitive does not refer to a lack of sophistication. When the Burgundian dukes established centres of power in the Netherlands, in the 19th century the Early Netherlandish artists were classified by nationality, with Jan van Eyck identified as German and van der Weyden as French. Scholars were at times preoccupied as to whether the schools genesis was in France or Germany, in the 14th century, as Gothic art gave way to the International Gothic era, a number of schools developed in northern Europe. Early Netherlandish art originated in French courtly art, and is tied to the tradition. Modern art historians see the era as beginning with 14th-century manuscript illuminators and this patronage continued in the low countries with the Burgundian dukes, Philip the Good and his son Charles the Bold. The demand for illuminated manuscripts declined towards the end of the century, following van Eycks innovations, the first generation of Netherlandish painters emphasised light and shadow, elements usually absent from 14th-century illuminated manuscripts
5.
Holy Roman Empire
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The Holy Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806. On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as Emperor, reviving the title in Western Europe, more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The title was revived in 962 when Otto I was crowned emperor, fashioning himself as the successor of Charlemagne, some historians refer to the coronation of Charlemagne as the origin of the empire, while others prefer the coronation of Otto I as its beginning. Scholars generally concur, however, in relating an evolution of the institutions and principles constituting the empire, the office of Holy Roman Emperor was traditionally elective, although frequently controlled by dynasties. Emperor Francis II dissolved the empire on 6 August 1806, after the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon, before 1157, the realm was merely referred to as the Roman Empire. In a decree following the 1512 Diet of Cologne, the name was changed to Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, by the end of the 18th century, the term Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had fallen out of official use. As Roman power in Gaul declined during the 5th century, local Germanic tribes assumed control, by the middle of the 8th century, however, the Merovingians had been reduced to figureheads, and the Carolingians, led by Charles Martel, had become the de facto rulers. In 751, Martel’s son Pepin became King of the Franks, the Carolingians would maintain a close alliance with the Papacy. In 768 Pepin’s son Charlemagne became King of the Franks and began an expansion of the realm. He eventually incorporated the territories of present-day France, Germany, northern Italy, on Christmas Day of 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, restoring the title in the west for the first time in over three centuries. After the death of Charles the Fat in 888, however, the Carolingian Empire broke apart, according to Regino of Prüm, the parts of the realm spewed forth kinglets, and each part elected a kinglet from its own bowels. After the death of Charles the Fat, those crowned emperor by the pope controlled only territories in Italy, the last such emperor was Berengar I of Italy, who died in 924. Around 900, autonomous stem duchies reemerged in East Francia, on his deathbed, Conrad yielded the crown to his main rival, Henry the Fowler of Saxony, who was elected king at the Diet of Fritzlar in 919. Henry reached a truce with the raiding Magyars, and in 933 he won a first victory against them in the Battle of Riade, Henry died in 936, but his descendants, the Liudolfing dynasty, would continue to rule the Eastern kingdom for roughly a century. Upon Henry the Fowlers death, Otto, his son and designated successor, was elected King in Aachen in 936 and he overcame a series of revolts from an elder brother and from several dukes. After that, the managed to control the appointment of dukes. In 951, Otto came to the aid of Adelaide, the queen of Italy, defeating her enemies, marrying her. In 955, Otto won a victory over the Magyars in the Battle of Lechfeld
6.
Karel van Mander
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Karel van Mander or Carel van Mander I was a Flemish painter, poet, art historian and art theoretician, who established himself in the Dutch Republic in the latter part of his life. He is mainly remembered as a biographer of Early Netherlandish painters, as an artist and art theoretician he played a significant role in the spread and development of Northern Mannerism in the Dutch Republic. It is not certain who wrote this sketch and various candidates have been proposed. Most recently it has argued that it was written by his son Karel van Mander the Younger. His son would have relied on information that Karel van Mander had written himself as well as on his own recollections. The information in the sketch is not entirely reliable but is still regarded as the best source of information on van Manders life. Van Mander was born into a family in Meulebeke, in the County of Flanders. He studied under Lucas de Heere in Ghent, and in 1568-1569 under Pieter Vlerick in Kortrijk, the next five years he devoted to the writing of religious plays for which he also painted the scenery. Then followed three years in Rome and his biographical sketch refers to van Mander as the discoverer of caves in Rome. This may be a reference to the Catacombs of Rome although the meaning of the reference is unclear. In Rome he may also have come into contact with fellow Fleming Bartholomeus Spranger and his patrons in Rome included several cardinals. On his return journey he passed through Vienna, where, together with Spranger, van Mander settled in Meulebeke in 1578 where he was active as a painter and writer. He married an 18-year-old local girl, with whom he had a son, in 1580 he left for Kortrijk due to religious troubles caused by Catholic zealots in Meulebeke. Karel van Mander had at some point become a Mennonite and was therefore a target of these zealots. In Kortrijk he got a commission for an altar piece, in Kortrijk another son was born. He left Kortrijk for Bruges in 1582 because of an outbreak of the plague, in Bruges, he worked with the painter Paul Weyts. Here he worked for 20 years on a commission by the Haarlem city fathers to inventory their art collection, the city of Haarlem had confiscated all Catholic religious art after the satisfactie van Haarlem, which gave Catholics equal rights to Protestants, had been overturned in 1578. Van Mander used his work on the commission in his Schilder-boeck, while in Haarlem he continued to paint, concentrating his energy on his favourite genre, historical allegories
7.
Knights Hospitaller
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It was headquartered variously in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, until it became known by its current name. Some scholars, however, consider that the Amalfitan order and hospital were different from Gerard Thoms order and it regained strength during the early 19th century as it redirected itself toward religious and humanitarian causes. In 1834, the order, by this time known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, acquired new headquarters in Rome, in 800, Emperor Charlemagne enlarged Probus hospital and added a library to it. About 200 years later, in 1005, Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah destroyed the hospital, in 1023, merchants from Amalfi and Salerno in Italy were given permission by the Caliph Ali az-Zahir of Egypt to rebuild the hospital in Jerusalem. The hospital, which was built on the site of the monastery of Saint John the Baptist and it was served by the Order of Saint Benedict. Gerard acquired territory and revenues for his order throughout the Kingdom of Jerusalem, under his successor, Raymond du Puy de Provence, the original hospice was expanded to an infirmary near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Initially the group cared for pilgrims in Jerusalem, but the order extended to providing pilgrims with an armed escort. Thus the Order of St. John imperceptibly became military without losing its charitable character. Raymond du Puy, who succeeded Gerard as Master of the Hospital in 1118, organised a militia from the orders members, in 1130, Pope Innocent II gave the order its coat of arms, a silver cross in a field of red. The Hospitallers and the Knights Templar became the most formidable military orders in the Holy Land, frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor, pledged his protection to the Knights of St. John in a charter of privileges granted in 1185. The statutes of Roger de Moulins deal only with the service of the sick, the order numbered three distinct classes of membership, the military brothers, the brothers infirmarians, and the brothers chaplains, to whom was entrusted the divine service. In 1248 Pope Innocent IV approved a military dress for the Hospitallers to be worn during battle. Instead of a closed cape over their armour, they wore a red surcoat with a cross emblazoned on it. Many of the more substantial Christian fortifications in the Holy Land were built by the Templars, at the height of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Hospitallers held seven great forts and 140 other estates in the area. The two largest of these, their bases of power in the Kingdom and in the Principality of Antioch, were the Krak des Chevaliers, the property of the Order was divided into priories, subdivided into bailiwicks, which in turn were divided into commanderies. As early as the late 12th century the order had begun to achieve recognition in the Kingdom of England, as a result, buildings such as St Johns Jerusalem and the Knights Gate, Quenington in England were built on land donated to the order by local nobility. An Irish house was established at Kilmainham, near Dublin, after the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291, the Knights were confined to the County of Tripoli and, when Acre was captured in 1291, the order sought refuge in the Kingdom of Cyprus. His successor, Foulques de Villaret, executed the plan, and on 15 August 1310, after four years of campaigning
8.
Christ Child
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The Christ Child, also known as Divine Infant, Baby Jesus, Infant Jesus, Child Jesus, the Holy Child, and Santo Niño, refers to Jesus Christ from his nativity to age 12. Upon reaching 13 years-old he was considered to be an adult in accordance with Jewish custom, the canonical Gospels lack any narration of the years between Jesus infancy and the Finding in the Temple when he was twelve. Commonly these are nativity scenes showing the birth of Jesus, with his mother, Mary, depictions as a baby with the Virgin Mary, known as Madonna and Child, are iconographical types in Eastern and Western traditions. Other scenes from his time as a baby, of his circumcision, presentation at the temple, the adoration of the Magi, scenes showing his developing years are more rare but not unknown. Saint Joseph, Anthony of Padua, and Saint Christopher are often depicted holding the Christ Child, the Christ Child was a popular subject in European wood sculpture beginning in the 1300s. The popularity of the Christ child was known in Spain under the title Montanesino after the santero sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés who began the trend. The growth of images being made were quite popular among nobility, while images were also used to colonize kingdoms such of Spain. The symbolism of the Child Jesus in art reached its apex during the Renaissance, tàladh Chrìosda is a Scottish carol from Moidart, Scotland. The Catholic priest Father Ranald Rankin, wrote the lyrics for Midnight Mass around the year 1855 and he originally wrote 29 verses in Scottish Gaelic, but the popular English translation is limited to five. The melody, Cumha Mhic Arois, is from the Hebrides and was a sung as a charm for the fisherman away at sea. The rhythm mirrors the rhythm of the surf and it is sung in the Hebrides at Midnight Mass of Christmas Eve. A number of texts, the Infancy Gospels grew up with legendary accounts of the intervening period. These stories were intended to show Jesus as having extraordinary gifts of power and knowledge, one common pious tale has the young Jesus animating sparrows out of clay belonging to his playmates. When admonished for doing so on the Sabbath, he causes the birds to fly away, in the seventeenth century veneration of the Christ Child under the title the Little King of Beaune was promoted by French Carmelites. In the late nineteenth century devotion to the Holy Child of Remedy developed in Madrid
9.
Nativity at Night
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The Nativity at Night or Night Nativity is an Early Netherlandish painting of about 1490 by Geertgen tot Sint Jans in the National Gallery, London. It is a painting in oil on oak, measuring 34 ×25.3 cm. though it has been cut down in size on all four sides. The painting shows the Nativity of Jesus, attended by angels and it is a small painting presumably made for private devotional use, and Geertgens version, with significant changes, of a lost work by Hugo van der Goes of about 1470. Like many paintings of the Nativity, the depiction is influenced by the visions of Saint Bridget of Sweden, shortly before her death, she described a vision of the infant Jesus as lying on the ground, and emitting light himself. The virgin knelt down with great veneration in an attitude of prayer, joseph had put there, give any light at all, the divine light totally annihilating the material light of the candle. I saw the infant lying on the ground naked and shining. His body was pure from any kind of soil and impurity, then I heard also the singing of the angels, which was of miraculous sweetness and great beauty. Many depictions reduced other light sources in the scene to emphasize this effect, in fact this effect now goes beyond what was intended by the artist, as the painting was damaged in a fire in 1904, when it was in a private collection in Berlin. The different shades of blue given the upper and lower parts of the Virgins clothing and the sky outside now appear as murky dark browns or blacks, the painting had been cut down by 1901. There is a copy of the painting in the Diocesan Museum in Barcelona, in this the rays emanating from the Christ-Child are more evident, and the animals behind less so. The Geertgen painting reverses the main figures of the earlier work presumed to have been by van der Goes, only the main figures are reversed, and not the background of the building and the shepherds scene outside. The composition showed a view generally pulled back, without the intimate close-up effect of Geertgens version, which has the figures pushed closely together. Though the architectural details vary, both the Annaberg and Sittow paintings show rather grander buildings, in a state of repair, than Geertgen. Geertgen has simplified van der Goes composition to a design based on grid-like patterns. The van der Goes original was a complex, more ambitious and more solemn. The Geertgen is a painting, that has received much critical attention, not all of which has taken into account the earlier van der Goes work. The statement by Erwin Panofsky that the Geertgen was the earliest nocturne in the strict sense of the word is described in the National Gallery catalogue as a rash claim. In the Barcelona version the figure of the extreme left-hand angel is still cut off by the frame, Geertgen worked in Haarlem, and was the leading Netherlandish painter of his day who both came from and worked in the Northern Netherlands, rather than Flanders
10.
Triptych
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A triptych is a work of art that is divided into three sections, or three carved panels that are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works, the middle panel is typically the largest and it is flanked by two smaller related works, although there are triptychs of equal-sized panels. The form can also be used for pendant jewelry, despite its connection to an art format, the term is sometimes used more generally to connote anything with three parts, particularly if they are integrated into a single unit. The triptych form arises from early Christian art, and was a standard format for altar paintings from the Middle Ages onwards. Its geographical range was from the eastern Byzantine churches to the Celtic churches in the west, renaissance painters such as Hans Memling and Hieronymus Bosch used the form. Triptych forms also allow ease of transport, from the Gothic period onward, both in Europe and elsewhere, altarpieces in churches and cathedrals were often in triptych form. One such cathedral with an altarpiece triptych is Llandaff Cathedral, the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, Belgium, contains two examples by Rubens, and Notre Dame de Paris is another example of the use of triptych in architecture. One can also see the form echoed by the structure of many stained glass windows. Although strongly identified as a form, triptychs outside that context have been created, some of the best-known examples being works by Hieronymus Bosch, Max Beckmann. The then highest price paid for an artwork at auction was $142.4 million for a 1969 triptych, Three Studies of Lucian Freud. The record was broken in May 2015 by $179.4 million for Pablo Picassos 1955 painting Les Femmes d’Alger, the format has migrated and been used in other religions, including Islam and Buddhism. Likewise, Tibetan Buddhists have used it in traditional altars, a photographic triptych is a common style used in modern commercial artwork. The photographs are arranged with a plain border between them. The work may consist of images that are variants on a theme
