Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research

Edited by Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne van Buren, and Henk van Veen

In the fifteenth century, a number of master painters, including Jan van Eyck and Roger Campin, flourished in the Netherlands. However, by the early nineteenth century many of their works had been dispersed by the upheavals of the French Revolution.

Rather than offering a chronological discussion, this book presents Early Netherlandish paintings as individual objects that have confronted scholars with countless interpretive challenges. The first part of the book analyzes the style and provenance of each work, the insights gained from it, and the questions that remain; the second part is devoted to the history of collecting and of art-historical research and interpretation during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. The third part addresses how three fields of modern art-historical research—technical examination, archival research into patronage, and iconology—have produced analyses of these artworks.

Early Netherlandish Paintings advances the scholarly dialogue about an important period in European art by assembling the current scholarly research in the field and underscoring the common ground among scholars from different disciplines.

Bernhard Ridderbos and Henk van Veen teach art history at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands; Anne van Buren previously taught at Tufts University.