[Gothic Art (2) (continued (5)):][The Flemish School: The Discovery of Light (2a)][13th March 1991]

[Redbook8:320][19910313:1000e][Gothic Art (2) (continued (5)):][The Flemish School: The Discovery of Light (2a)][13th March 1991]

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‘The founder of the Flemish school of painting seems to have been Robert Campin of Tournai. The works of Campin, his pupil Rogier van de Weyden, and Jan van Eyck remained influential for the whole century. One of the most significant discoveries of the period c[irca] 1430 – especially in the works of Van Eyck – was the multifarious effects a painter can achieve by observing the action of light (Plate 8). These early Flemish artists found that light can define form, shape and texture, and, captured in a landscape, it can help to convey a mood. Rogier van der Weyden also explored the problems of conveying emotion (Plate 8). A development in the rendering of the drapery – the so-called crumpled style of hard angular folds – is particularly clear in the paintings of Campin. Portraiture made dramatic progress during this period. Portraits were obviously not new; sculptors were already experimenting in the 14^th century with life – and death – masks. But the brilliant use of lighting gives the portraits of Jan van Eyck, for instance, a vivid life hitherto quite unknown.’*

At last! – names I know; but I never realised that Jan van Eyck was considered to be a Gothic painter.

*– ibid [Encyclopaedia Britannica 25]: 343

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