1.
Early Netherlandish painting
–
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
2.
Jan van Eyck
–
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish/Netherlandish painter active in Bruges. He is often considered one of the founders of Early Netherlandish painting school, the few surviving records of his early life indicate that he was born c. After Johns death in 1425 he was employed in Lille as court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, until 1429 before moving to Bruges, where he lived until his death. Apart from the Ghent Altarpiece and the miniatures of the Turin-Milan Hours, about 20 surviving paintings are confidently attributed to him. Ten, including the Ghent altarpiece, are dated and signed with a variation of his motto, ALS IK KAN always written in Greek characters, Van Eyck painted both secular and religious subject matter, including altarpieces, single panel religious figures and commissioned portraits. His work includes single panels, diptychs, triptychs, and polyptych panels and he was well paid by Philip, who sought that the painter was secure financially and had artistic freedom and could paint whenever he pleased. Van Eycks work comes from the International Gothic style, but he soon eclipsed it, through his developments in the use of oil paint he achieved a new level of virtuosity. Van Eyck was highly influential and his techniques and style were adopted and refined by the Early Netherlandish painters, little is known of Jan van Eycks early life and neither the date nor place of his birth is documented. This suggests a date of birth of 1395 at the latest, however, his apparent age in the London probable self-portrait of 1433 suggests to most scholars a date closer to 1380. He was identified in the late 1500s as having been born in Maaseik and this claim is still considered credible on etymological grounds, considering that Van Eyck means of Eyck which is an old variant spelling of eik. He had a sister Margareta, and at least two brothers, Hubert and Lambert, both painters, but the order of their births has not been established. Another significant, and rather younger, painter who worked in Southern France and it is not known where Jan was educated, but he had knowledge of Latin and used the Greek and Hebrew alphabets in his inscriptions, indicating that he was schooled in the classics. This level of education was rare among painters, and would have made him attractive to the cultivated Philip. Van Eyck served John of Bavaria-Straubing, ruler of Holland, Hainault, by this time van Eyck had assembled a small workshop and was involved in redecorating the Binnenhof palace in The Hague. After Johns death in 1425 he moved to Bruges and came to the attention of Philip the Good c and his emergence as a collectable painter generally follows his appointment to Philips court, and from this point his activity in the court is comparatively well documented. He served as court artist and diplomat, and a was a member of the Tournai painters guild. On 18 October 1427, the Feast of St. Luke, he travelled to Tournai to attend a banquet in his honour, also attended by Robert Campin, a court salary freed him from commissioned work, and allowed a large degree of artistic freedom. Over the following decade van Eycks reputation and technical ability grew, unlike most of his peers his reputation never diminished and he remained well regarded over the following centuries
3.
Maaseik
–
Maaseik is a town and municipality in the Belgian province of Limburg. Both in size as in population, it is the 8th largest municipality in Limburg, the town is the seat of the administrative arrondissement of Maaseik. Internationally, Maaseik is known as the birthplace of the famous Flemish painters Jan. The town of Maaseik is located on the bank of the river Meuse. For this reason the river is called Grensmaas here, two smaller rivers, the Bosbeek and the Zanderbeek, flow into the Meuse near Maaseik. Because of its location in the Meuse valley, Maaseik has mostly fertile soils, the northwestern part of the municipality is situated on the plain of Bocholt and has less fertile soils. The Meuse valley at Maaseik is about 4 kilometers wide, Maaseik has mostly been safeguarded of floods by its slightly elevated position on a fluvial terrace. The riverbed has moved eastwards considerably over the centuries and has left several anabranches, meanders, an old anabranche of the Meuse can be seen in Heppeneert, a hamlet south of Maaseik. Deposition of sediments occurred on the edges of the meanders. For many decades gravel has been extracted from the area, resulting in a multitude of disused gravel pits, the Maaseik municipality includes the town of Maaseik and the sub-municipalities of Neeroeteren and Opoeteren. Smaller villages and hamlets include Aldeneik, Heppeneert, Wurfeld, t Ven, Gremelslo, Berg, Schootsheide, Voorshoven, Waterloos, De Riet, as its name would suggest, Aldeneik is older than Maaseik. Although most toponyms with the affix -eik refer to a landscape with oaks, it is possible that it is derived from the German word Ecke. Old corner or bend may in that case be linked to the fact that historically, an oaktree, however, is present in the towns coat of arms, which includes three crosses and a fish. According to tradition, Aldeneik Abbey was established by Adelard, a local Frankish lord, around 700 AD and his two daughters, Herlindis and Relindis, both became abbesses of the monastery and eventually became saints. The abbey at Aldeneik soon became the center of a village community. The abbey probably suffered destruction by the Vikings in the 9th century, around 950, emperor Otto I gave the restored monastery to the bishop of Liège, who turned it into a religious chapter for canons. The reason for this reform may have been that there were several religious institutions for noble women in the area, Susteren Abbey, Thorn Abbey. Aldeneik Abbey was abandoned at the beginning of the 80-Year War but the chapter continued in Nieuw-Eycke, the town of Maaseik was probably founded around 1000, perhaps by the canons of nearby Aldeneik
4.
Limburg (Belgium)
–
Limburg is a province in Belgium. It is the easternmost of the five Dutch-speaking provinces that form the Region of Flanders. Limburg is located west of the river Meuse, upon which it borders the similarly named Dutch province Limburg and it also borders on the Wallonian province of Liège to the south, with which it also has historical ties. To the north and west are the old territories of the Duchy of Brabant, the Flemish provinces of Flemish Brabant and Antwerp to the west, the province of Limburg takes up an area of 2,414 km² which comprises three arrondissements containing 44 municipalities. The municipality of Voeren is geographically detached from Limburg and the rest of Flanders, with the Netherlands to the north and this municipality was established by the municipal reform of 1977 and on 1 January 2008 with its six villages had a total population of 4,207. Its total area is 50.63 km², Belgian Limburg was not called Limburg until the 19th century, when this province, like the rest of Belgium, was part of the Netherlands for some decades, after the fall of Napoleon. Like the name Belgium itself, the name Limburg was chosen from the regions history, in fact the historical name for the territory of Belgian Limburg was Loon. The medieval Duchy of Limburg, although it was nearby, did not contain any part of the county of Loon, a later wave from central Europe, the Michelsburg culture arrived about 3500 BC and shared a similar fate. Pottery technology had however apparently been taken up by local tribes of the Swifterbant culture, the area became permanently agricultural only with the Urnfield culture, followed by the possibly related Halstatt and La Tène material cultures, which are generally associated with Celts. Under these cultures the population increased in the region, and it is also during this period that Indo European languages are thought to have arrived. Caesar gave the first surviving description of the area and described its people as the Germani cisrhenani. Amongst these Germani, Belgian Limburg contained at least part of the country of the Eburones who fought against Julius Caesar under their leaders Ambiorix, under the Romans, the area was home to the Tungri. Notably, the Tungri participated on the Roman side in the Revolt of the Batavi against Roman rule, in the north of Limburg during Roman times lived the Toxandri. The site of the fort which the Romans encamped in was called Aduatuca and this was possibly a general word for a fort, associated not only with the Eburones, but also the Aduatuci, and the Tungri. The Roman city established in Belgian Limburg was referred to as Aduatuca Tungrorum meaning Aduatuca of the Tungri, today this has become Tongeren, in the southeast of Belgian Limburg, and it was the capital of a Roman administrative region called the Civitas Tungrorum. In late Roman and early times, the northern or Kempen part of Belgian Limburg became virtually empty because of Germanic plundering. This area, still known then by its Roman name as Toxandria, was settled by incoming Salian Franks from the north. The southern or Haspengouw part of Belgian Limburg remained more heavily Romanised, by the 9th century, the Frankish Carolingian dynasty, based in and around Belgian Limburg, had turned Gaul in to Francia and ruled an empire that included much of Western Europe
5.
Gentry
–
Gentry are well-born, genteel and well-bred people of high social class, especially in the past. In the United Kingdom, the term refers to the social class of the landed aristocracy or to the minor aristocracy whose income derives from their large landholdings. The idea of gentry in the sense of noblesse is extinct in common parlance in modern day Britain. Though the untitled nobility in modern day Britain are normally termed gentry, the older sense of nobility is that of a quality identical to gentry. The fundamental social division in most parts of Europe in the Middle Ages was between the nobiles, i. e. the tenants in chivalry, and the ignobles, i. e. the villeins, citizens and burgesses. The division into nobles and ignobles in smaller regions of Europe in the Middle Ages was less due to a more rudimentary feudal order. After the Reformation, intermingling between the class and the often hereditary clerical upper class became a distinctive feature in several Nordic countries. Besides the gentry there have been other analogous traditional elites, the Indo-Europeans who settled Europe, Western Asia and the Indian subcontinent conceived their societies to be ordered in a tripartite fashion, the three parts being castes. Castes came to be divided, perhaps as a result of greater specialisation. The classic formulation of the system as largely described by Georges Dumézil was that of a priestly or religiously occupied caste, a warrior caste. Dumézil divided the Proto-Indo-Europeans into three categories, sovereignty, military, and productivity and he further subdivided sovereignty into two distinct and complementary sub-parts. One part was formal, juridical, and priestly, but rooted in this world, the other was powerful, unpredictable, and also priestly, but rooted in the other, the supernatural and spiritual world. The second main division was connected with the use of force, the military, finally, there was a third group, ruled by the other two, whose role was productivity, herding, farming, and crafts. This system of roles can be seen in the castes which flourished on the Indian subcontinent. Emperor Constantine convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325 whose Nicene Creed included belief in one holy catholic and apostolic Church, emperor Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire with the Edict of Thessalonica of 380. In this power vacuum, the Church rose to become the dominant power in the West, the classical heritage flourished throughout the Middle Ages in both the Byzantine Greek East and Latin West. During the Middle Ages it was customary to classify the population of Christendom into laboratores, bellatores, the last group, though small in number, monopolized the instruments and opportunities of culture, and ruled with almost unlimited sway half of the most powerful continent on the globe. The clergy, like Platos guardians, were placed in authority, in the latter half of the period in which they ruled, the clergy were as free from family cares as even Plato could desire
6.
Tongeren
–
Tongeren is a city and municipality located in the Belgian province of Limburg, in the southeastern corner of the Flemish region of Belgium. Tongeren is the oldest town in Belgium, as the only Roman administrative capital within the countrys borders, as a Roman city, it was inhabited by the Tungri, and known as Atuatuca Tungrorum, it was the administrative centre of the Civitas Tungrorum district. The city is a member of the Most Ancient European Towns Network, before the Roman conquests, this area was inhabited by the group of Belgic tribes known as the Germani cisrhenani. Specifically the Eburones were the largest of these tribes and the one living around Tongeren, Caesar referred to the fort of the Eburones as Aduatuca, and this has led to a widely accepted proposal that this can be equated to Tongeren. There was also a tribe in the area known as the Aduatuci. On the other hand, it has the name and function as a local capital. If it is not Tongeren itself, the Aduatuca of the Eburones might be the ancient fortification of Caestert in nearby Riemst, during Julius Caesar’s campaigns in this part of Gaul in the first century BC, the Belgae revolted against the campaign of Caesar, led by the Eburones. They destroyed a legion that had demanded the right to winter among them in 54 BC, instead of risking Roman lives to pursue them he invited tribes from over the Rhine, such as the Sigambri to come and plunder. This back-fired when Eburones pointed out to the Sigambri that the Romans had all the booty at Aduatuca, the Tungri, not mentioned by Caesar, came to dominate this area in the Roman era, and are the reason for the name of the modern name Tongeren. Tacitus says that Tungri was a new name for the tribes who had previously been called the Germani. But many modern writers believe that the Gallo-Roman population of the area contained a significant amount of more recent Germanic immigrants from across the Rhine and it suffered from a destructive fire during the Batavian siege in 70 AD, which was part of the Batavian revolt. In the second century, it erected a wall, portions of which can still be seen today. Typical Roman buildings were built in town, while villas and mound graves dotted the surrounding area, in 358 the future emperor Julian met, in Tongeren, a delegation of Salian Franks who had recently settled in Toxandria, to the north of Tongeren. They wanted peace but spoke as if the ground they had seized were rightfully their own and they became increasingly important after this time. Zosimus reports that Julian used them as part of his forces in fights against other Germanic tribes. In the meantime, the Franks to the north and east were pagan and so many areas had to be reconverted over the course of the following centuries, with several missionaries becoming martyrs. The seat of the Tungrian bishopric however eventually moved to nearby Maastricht, much later, Liège became the seat of what would become the Roman Catholic Diocese of Liège, the church equivalent to the Civitas Tungrorum. This was the place of Saint Lambert of Maastricht, one of the last missionaries in the area
7.
Guild
–
A guild /ɡɪld/ is an association of artisans or merchants who control the practice of their craft in a particular town. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of tradesmen and they were organized in a manner something between a professional association, trade union, a cartel, and a secret society. A lasting legacy of traditional guilds are the guildhalls constructed and used as meeting places, an important result of the guild framework was the emergence of universities at Bologna, Oxford and Paris, they originated as guilds of students as at Bologna, or of masters as at Paris. Usually the founders were free independent master craftsmen who hired apprentices, there were several types of guilds, including the two main categories of merchant guilds and craft guilds but also the frith guild and religious guild. In many cases became the governing body of a town. The Freedom of the City, effective from the Middle Ages until 1835, gave the right to trade, Trade guilds arose in the 14th century as craftsmen united to protect their common interest. The occasion for these oaths were drunken banquets held on December 26, gregory of Tours tells a miraculous tale of a builder whose art and techniques suddenly left him, but were restored by an apparition of the Virgin Mary in a dream. Michel Rouche remarks that the story speaks for the importance of practically transmitted journeymanship, in France, guilds were called corps de métiers. According to Viktor Ivanovich Rutenburg, Within the guild itself there was little division of labour. Thus, according to Étienne Boileaus Book of Handicrafts, by the century there were no less than 100 guilds in Paris. In Catalan towns, specially at Barcelona, guilds or gremis were a basic agent in the society, a shoemakers guild is recorded in 1208. In England, specifically in the City of London Corporation, more than 110 guilds, referred to as companies, survive today. Other groups, such as the Worshipful Company of Tax Advisers, have been formed far more recently, membership in a livery company is expected for individuals participating in the governance of The City, as the Lord Mayor and the Remembrancer. The guild system reached a state in Germany circa 1300 and held on in German cities into the 19th century. In the 15th century, Hamburg had 100 guilds, Cologne 80, the latest guilds to develop in Western Europe were the gremios of Spain, e. g. Valencia or Toledo. Not all city economies were controlled by guilds, some cities were free, in order to become a Master, a Journeyman would have to go on a three-year voyage called Journeyman years. The practice of the Journeyman years still exists in Germany and France, in Ghent, as in Florence, the woolen textile industry developed as a congeries of specialized guilds. The appearance of the European guilds was tied to the emergent money economy, before this time it was not possible to run a money-driven organization, as commodity money was the normal way of doing business
8.
St Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent
–
Not to be confused with the cathedral in Haarlem, Netherlands The Saint Bavo Cathedral an 89-meter-tall Gothic cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. It is the seat of the diocese of Ghent and it is named for Saint Bavo of Ghent. The building is built on the site of the former Chapel of St. John the Baptist, traces of this original structure are evident in the cathedrals crypt. The chapel was expanded in the Romanesque style in 1038. Some traces of this phase of expansion are still evident in the present day crypt, in the subsequent period from the 14th through 16th centuries, nearly continuous expansion projects in the Gothic style were executed on the structure. A new choir, radiating chapels, expansions of the transepts, a house, nave aisles. Construction was considered complete June 7,1569, in 1539, as a result of the rebellion against Charles V, the old Abbey of St. Bavo was dissolved. Its abbot and monks went on to become canons in a Chapter that was attached to what became the Church of Saint Bavo. When the Diocese of Ghent was founded in 1559, the church became its cathedral, the church of Saint Bavo was earlier the site of the baptism of Charles V. The cathedral has 4 organs at disposal for liturgical celebrations, most famous is the main organ in the Upper church, is the biggest organ in the benelux. In 1935 Mgr Coppieters commanded that the Klais organ from the world exheboition would be put inside the cathedral, the organ case dates from the 18th century and the complete organ has more than 6000 pipes inside. The cathedral is home to works of artists of note. It holds the painting Saint Bavo enters the Convent at Ghent by Peter Paul Rubens, there are also works by or after Lucas de Heere, one of which is a View of Gent. Frans Pourbus the Elder painted 14 panels representing the History of Saint Andrew, caspar de Crayer is represented by paintings of St Macarius of Gent, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist and The Martyrdom of Saint Barbara. The church also works by Antoon van den Heuvel including the Christ and the Adulterous Woman. There are also works by Lucas van Uden and Jan van Cleef, the cathedral is noted for the Ghent Altarpiece, originally in its Joost Vijd chapel. It is formally known as, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb by Hubert and this work is considered Van Eycks masterpiece and one of the most important works of the early Northern Renaissance, as well as one of the greatest artistic masterpieces of Belgium. The most impressive part is the choir with stables for the members of the Chapter of Saint-Bavon
_by_Edme_de_Boulonois.jpg)
