International Gothic: 14th - 15th century AD

Skilled immigrants
The Europe of the Middle Ages, dominated by a powerful
church and criss-crossed by pilgrim routes, has enjoyed a
culture which largely transcends geographical regions. It is
appropriate therefore that the final style of medieval art should
also be common to much of the continent. This style,
flourishing between about 1375 and 1425, is known to art
historians as International Gothic - or sometimes simply the
International Style. It is characterized by figures of a slender
and even winsome elegance, painted with great confidence but
looking somewhat ill-equipped for the hurly-burly of everyday
life.
England is exceptionally late, among the wealthier regions of
Western Europe, in developing a native school of artists of
sufficient distinction for their names to survive.
From the period when the great Renaissance masters are at
work in Italy, the Netherlands or Germany, there is no English
artist whose name survives. When English kings and nobles
want their portrait painted, they look to continental Europe for
someone with the necessary skills
The exquisite Wilton Diptych (c. 139599) is a small portable
diptych of two hinged panels, painted on both sides. It is an
extremely rare survival of a late Medieval religious panel
painting from England. The diptych was painted for King
Richard II who is depicted kneeling before the Virgin and
Child in what is known as a votive portrait. The painting is an
outstanding example of the International Gothic style, and the
nationality of the unknown artist is probably French or
English.

illuminated manuscripts = manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition

of decoration:

decorated initials,
borders (marginalia) and

miniature illustrations

The earliest surviving substantive illuminated manuscripts are from the period AD 400 to
600, initially produced in Italy and the Eastern Roman Empire.

The majority of surviving manuscripts are from the Middle Ages. The majority of these
manuscripts are of a religious nature. A very few illuminated manuscript fragments
survive on

papyrus,
vellum or

parchment (most commonly of calf, sheep, or goat skin)

paper (Late Middle Ages)

The introduction of printing rapidly led to the decline of illumination.

Miniature of Christ in Majesty from the Aberdeen Bestiary

The Book of Kells/ Book of Columba (Irish: Leabhar
Cheanannais) (Dublin, Trinity College Library): an illuminated
manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels
of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and
tables. It was created by Celtic monks ca. 800 or slightly
earlier.

The books of Kells (Durham Cathedral)

JOHN BETTES the elder

- by far the most distinguished painter to fulfill the function of the Royal Court painter
between 1526 and 1543
-nothing is known of his life life. According to a documented court case, he is first
recorded as working for Henry VIII at Whitehall Palace and paid for "lymning" (painting
in miniature) the king's and queen's portraits, and for six other portraits.
-He provides the images by which we know members of the Tudor court, and in
particular Henry VIII himself.

Man in a Black Cap, by John Bettes the Elder, 1545. Oil on oak, Tate
Gallery, London

English aristocrats now like to be depicted

in sumptuous clothes and jewellery,
half- or full-length (thus showing more of a spectacular
costume) and
frequently with pale faces and distant, reserved expressions

Portrait of Thomas Wentworth 1549, attributed to John Bettes the

Elder

John Bettes the Younger (died 1616) = an English portrait painter

-

his father, John Bettes the Elder died in, or before 1570
lived in London on Grub Street in St Giles Cripplegate

he is thought to have made a number of portraits of Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I of England attributed to John Bettes the Younger or his studio

Hans Holbein the Younger (1498-1543) - German artist and

printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style; he is
called "the Younger" to distinguish him from his father, Hans
Holbein the Elder, an accomplished painter of the Late Gothic
school

Self-portrait, c. 154243. Coloured chalks and pen, heightened with gold,

Uffizi Gallery, Florence

- the greatest portraitists of the 16th century

- religious art, satire and Reformation propaganda
-

book design

- designs for stained glass windows

He made his international mark with portraits of the humanist
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
-

When the Reformation reached Basel, Holbein worked for reformist

clients while continuing to serve traditional religious patrons
His Late Gothic style was enriched by artistic trends in Italy, France, and
the Netherlands, as well as by Renaissance Humanism. The result was a
combined aesthetic uniquely his own.

Holbein travelled to England in 1526 in search of work,

with a recommendation from Erasmus
He was welcomed into the humanist circle of Thomas
More, where he quickly built a high reputation.

After returning to Basel for four years, he resumed his

career in England in 1532.

This time he worked for the twin founts of patronage:

Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell

By 1535, he was King's Painter to King Henry VIII.

- portraits of the royal family and nobles = vivid

record of a brilliant court
- festive decorations
- designs for jewellery,
- plate, and other precious objects
- frescoes
Holbein's art

- realist (rare precision)

- layers of symbolism, allusion, and paradox
- art of sureness and economy of statement,
- penetration into character,
- richness and purity of style"

Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1523. Oil and tempera on wood,

National Gallery, London

Portrait of Sir Thomas More, 1527. Oil and tempera on oak, Frick
Collection, New York City

Henry the VIII

Portrait of the Merchant Georg Gisze, 1532. Oil and tempera on oak,
Berlin State museum

TRAINING AND INFLUENCES

-

The first influence on Holbein was his father. Hans Holbein: an

accomplished religious artist and portraitist (Augsburg)
Italian element to his stylistic vocabulary:
- (Leonardo da Vinci's "sfumato" (smoky) technique on his
work
- the art of single-point perspective and the use of antique
motifs and architectural forms (Andrea Mantegna)
- drawing with coloured chalks on a plain ground: Jean
Clouet, which he may have seen during his visit to France in
1524

Double portrait of Double portrait of jean de Dinteville and Georges de

Selve, 1533. Oil and tempera on oak, National Gallery, London

Commentary
influence of Early Netherlandish painters (the use of oil paint on
wood panels; meticulous details that are mainly symbolic:
extensive imagery to link their subjects to divinity, Holbein used
symbols to link his figures to the age of exploration)
- scientific instruments including two globes (one terrestrial
and one celestial),
- a quadrant, a torquetum (astronomical instrument), and a
polyhedral sundial
- various textiles including the floor mosaic, based on a design
from Westminster Abbey
- the carpet on the upper shelf, which is most notably oriental
highly fashionable in Renaissance painting
- open books (symbol of religious knowledge and education
(symbolic link to the Virgin, is therefore believed by some
critics to be symbolic of a unification of capitalism and the
Church)
- The figure on the left is in secular attire while
- the figure on the right is dressed in clerical clothes Their
displayed open books on the table symbolize religious
knowledge
- the lute with a broken string: symbol of discord, suggesting
strife between scholars and clergy
- The terrestrial globe refers to the Ambassadors' Globe

- the skewed skull, placed in the bottom centre of the

composition (in anamorphic perspective, typical for Early
Renaissance a visual puzzle = vanitas or memento mori)
The painting represents three levels, encouraging contemplation of
one's impending death and the resurrection

- the heavens (as portrayed by the astrolabe and other

objects on the upper shelf),
- the living world (as evidenced by books and a musical
instrument on the lower shelf), and
- death (signified by the skull)

Nicholas Hilliard (1547 1619) English goldsmith and limner

best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of
Elisabeth I and James I of England
He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger
cabinet miniatures
Technically he was very conservative by European standards
his paintings are superbly executed and have a freshness and
charm (the central artistic figure of the Elizabethan age)
the only English painter whose work reflects, in its delicate
microcosm, the world of Shakespeare earlier plays
He was appointment as miniaturist to the
he was commissioned to decorate important documents, such
as the founding charter of Emmanuel College, Cambridge
(1584
The esteem of his contemporaries for Hilliard is testified to
by John Donne (The Storm 1597))
the largest collection of his work is in the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London

Nicholas Hilliard: self portrait

Nicholas Hilliard: Miniature of Elisabeth 1572

Anthony Van Dyck: 1618-1641

- Antoon Van Dyck was born to prosperous parents in Antwerp
- His talent was evident very early, so he became an independent
painter around 1615, setting up a workshop with his even younger
friend Jan Breugel the Younger. (Self-portrait, 161314)
- admitted to the Antwerp painters' Guild of Saint Luke as a free
master;
- chief assistant to the dominant master of Antwerp, and the whole of
Northern Europe, Peter Paul Rubens ("the best of my pupils")
- In 1620 the Duke of Buckingham instigated van Dyck to go to
England to work for King James I and James VI.
- It was in London that he first saw the work of Titian whose use of
colour and subtle modeling of form would influence his stylistic
- Van Dyck spends most of the 1620s in Italy. In Genoa he makes an
extremely successful career as a portrait painter, providing elegant and
darkly dramatic full-length portraits of the city's aristocracy
- His elegant painting style with a lighter palette made van Dyck the
favourite portrait painter in English court circles. He moves to London
in 1632 and is immediately encouraged by Charles I who makes him a
knight
- Van Dyck helped King Charles' agents in their search for pictures (the
king was the most passionate and generous collector of art among the
British monarchs, and saw art as a way of promoting his grandiose
view of the monarchy)
- Van Dyck painted many portraits of men with the short, pointed
beards then in fashion; consequently this particular kind of beard was
much later (probably first in America in the 19th century) named a
vandyke or Van dyke beard (which is the anglicized version of his
name)
During the reign of George III, a generic "Cavalier" fancy-dress
costume called a Van Dyke was popular; Gainsborough's 'Blue Boy' is
wearing such a Van Dyke outfit

- The oil paint pigment van Dyck brown is named after him, and Van
dyke brown is an early photographic printing process using the same
colour

Anthony van Dyck: Self Portrait with a Sunflower (the gold collar and medal
were the awards that King Charles I gave him in 1633. The sunflower may represent the
king, or royal patronage)

Anthony van Dyck: King Charles I

Anthony van Dyck: Samson and Delilah, ca. 1630. (a strenuous history painting
in the manner of Rubens; the saturated use of color reveals van Dyck's study of Titian)

Anthony Van Dyck: Amor and Psyche, 1638

Danil Mijtens (Delft, c. 1590 The Hague, 1647/48), known in England as

Daniel Mytens the Elder (Dutch portrait painter who spent the central years
of his career working in England
- introduced a new naturalism into the English court portrait,
but after the arrival in England of the far more distinguished
Anthony Van Dyck in 1632 he was superseded as the leading
court portraitist, and around 1634 he appears to have returned
to the Netherlands permanently

Daniel Mytens: James Hamilton in 1629

Sir Peter Lely (1618 1680)-Dutch origin (Pieter van der Faes)
His early paintings were
mythological,
religious or
portraits set in a pastoral landscape
influences from Anthony van Dyck and the Dutch baroque
He succeeded Anthony van Dyck as the most fashionable
portrait artist in England
his career was not interrupted by Charles's I execution, and
he served Oliver Cromwell
After the English Restauration in 1660, Lely was appointed
as Charles II's principal Painter
naturalised English subject in 1662
Among his most famous paintings are:
a series of 10 portraits of ladies the "Windsor beauties now
mostly owned by the National Maritime museum in
Greenwich;
Susannah and the Elders at Burghley House
Lely was knighted in 1680. He was buried at St. Pauls Church,
Covent garden

Sir Peter Lely: Self Portrait

Sir Peter Lely: Windsor Beauties

Sir Peter Lely: Windsor Beauties

Sir Peter Lely: Windsor Beauties

Sir Peter Lely: Windsor Beauties

Sir Godfrey Kneller (1st Baronet ) (1646 1723)

leading portrait painter in England during the late 17th and early 18th centuries
court painter to British monarchs from Charles II to George I
major works include
o The Chinese Convert (1687);
o a series of four portraits of Isaac Newton painted at various junctures of
the latter's life;
o a series of ten reigning European monarchs, including King Louis XIV of
France;
o over 40 "Kit-cat portraits" of members of the Kit-Cat Club;
o ten "beauties" of the court of William III

In England, Kneller concentrated almost entirely on portraiture

He founded a studio which churned out portraits on an almost industrial scale, relying on
a brief sketch of the face with details added to a formulaic model, aided by the fashion for
gentlemen to wear full wigs.
appointed Principal Painter to the Crown by Charles II.
He founded Kneller Academy of Painting and Drawing 1711-1716
His paintings were praised by Whig luminaries such as John Dryden, Joseph Addison,
Richard Steele, and Alexander Pope

Sir Godfrey Kneller: self portrait

Sir Godfrey Kneller: Isaac Newton

Godfrey Kneller: Kit-cat portrait: Sir John Vanbrugh in considered one of Kneller's finest
portraits

Sir Godfrey Kneller: Michael Alphonsius Shen Fu-Tsung, "The Chinese

Convert"

William Dobson (1610 1646) portraitist and one of the first

notable English painters
Van Dyck himself discovered Dobson when he noticed one of
the young artist's pictures in a London shop window
When Van Dyck died in 1641, Dobson probably succeeded
him as sergeant-painter to the King
After Oxford fell to the Parliamentarians, in June 1646,
Dobson returned to London. Now without patronage, he was
briefly imprisoned for debt and died in poverty at the age of
thirty-six.
There are examples of Dobson's work at Tate Britain and the
National portrait Gallery in London and at the Dunedin
public Art Gallery in New Zealand

William Dobson: The Painter with Sir Charles Cottrell and Sir Balthasar Gerbier,
1645

William Dobson: Charles II when Prince of Wales, circa 1642 or 1643

William Hogarth (1697 1764)

English painter printmaker,
pictorial satirist,
social critic and
editorial cartoonist (pioneered western sequential art)
realistic portraiture, comic strip-like series of pictures ("modern
moral subjects")
his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this
style are often referred to as "Hogarthian"
Early satirical works included
Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme (c.1721): (the disastrous stock market crash
of 1720 known as the South Sea Buble, in which many English people lost a great deal of
money.

The print shows a London scene, with the Guildhall and its monumental statue of the
giant Gog (or Magog) to the left, a classical column based on The Monument to the Great
Fire of London to the right, and the dome of St Paul's Cathedral rising behind the
buildings in the background. The base of the column bears an inscription which states:
"This monument was erected in memory of the destruction of the city by the South Sea
in 1720".

- the monument= a symbol of the City's greed,

- dwarves St Paul's= a symbol of Christian charity

DESCRIPTION
The centre of the print is occupied by a financial wheel of fortune or merry-go-round
ridden by figures representative of the broad section of society taken in by the scheme,
including a whore and a clergyman on the left, then a boot black and a hag, and a Scottish
nobleman to the right, on a fat-faced horse. The ride is surmounted by a goat and the
slogan "Who'l Ride" and surrounded by a jostling crowd below. To the front of the crowd,
a short pickpocket rifles through the pockets of a larger gentleman. Paulson identifies the
first as a caricature of Alexander Pope, who profited from the South Sea Scheme; and
speculates that the other is John Gay, who, refusing to cash in enough of his stock to
enable himself to have "a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day for life", lost his
investment and all his imagined profits. The image of the wheel is a parody of Jacques
Callot's La Pendaison from the series The Miseries and Misfortunes of War, and the
crowd has elements taken from his La Roue. Women line a balcony to the upper left,
queuing to enter a building surmounted by stag's antlers, under a sign which offers
"Raffleing for Husbands with Lottery Fortunes In Here".
The six picture series of Marriage a-la-mode (National Gallery, London)= moralistic
warning on the upper class 18th century society showing the miserable tragedy of the illconsidered marriage for money
It shows the story of the fashionable marriage of the son of bankrupt Earl Squanderfield
to the daughter of a wealthy but miserly city merchant, starting with the signing of a
marriage contract at the Earl's mansion and ending with the murder of the son by his
wife's lover and the suicide of the daughter after her lover is hanged at Tyburn for
murdering her husband

The marriage Settlement

In the first of the series, he shows an arranged marriage between the son of bankrupt Earl
Squanderfield and the daughter of a wealthy but miserly city merchant. The son looks
indifferent while the merchant's daughter is distraught and has to be consoled by the
lawyer Silvertongue

The tete-a-tete
there are signs that the marriage has already begun to break down. The husband and wife
appear uninterested in one another, amidst evidence of their separate overindulgences the
night before

The Inspection
the Viscount visiting a quack ("fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill") with a
young prostitute. The viscount, unhappy with the mercury pills meant to cure his syphilis,
demands a refund while the young prostitute next to him dabs an open sore on her mouth,
an early sign of syphilis

The toilette
the old Earl has died and the son is now the new Earl and his wife, the Countess. As was
the very height of fashion at the time, the Countess is holding a "Toilette", or reception, in
her bedroom. The lawyer Silvertongue from the first painting is reclining next to the
Countess, suggesting the existence of an affair. This point is furthered by the child in
front of the pair, pointing to the horns on the statue of Actaeon, a symbol of cuckoldry.
Paintings in the background include the biblical story of Lot and his daughters, Jupiter
and Io, and the rape of Ganymede

The Bagnio
The new Earl catches his wife in a bagnio with her lover, the lawyer, and is fatally
wounded by the lawyer. As she begs forgiveness from the stricken man, the murderer
in his nightshirt makes a hasty exit through the window. A picture of a woman with a
squirrel on her hand hanging behind the countess contains lewd undertones.

The ladys death

the Countess poisons herself in her grief and poverty-stricken widowhood, after her
lover is hanged at Tyburn for murdering her husband. An old woman carrying her
baby allows the child to give her a kiss, but the mark on her cheek and the caliper on
her leg suggest that disease has been passed onto the next generation.