The Italian Renaissance in art was part of an unprecedented advancement in humanism. Along with the Roman Catholic Church, the principal sponsors of this intellectual activity were the ruling families in Europe, such as the Medici of Florence. In addition to supporting sculptors and artists, these families encouraged writers, musicians, and poets, created libraries to house their collections of manuscripts, built new buildings with architects whose designs are still marvels of engineering and beauty, and in general, laid the foundation for western humanism and culture.

The Renaissance was a unique period in history when many intellectual accomplishments were realized in a relatively short time span and relatively confined geographical area—primarily Italy, but also in northern Europe and France. Painters living and working in the north (the Flemish, Dutch and German) represent the Northern, as opposed to the Italian, Renaissance.

Renaissance painting was predominantly religious as the artists were commissioned to paint in and for churches and private chapels. However, mythological subjects and contemporary portraits were also revived from ancient precedents.

Painting that was done directly on walls or ceilings, usually in a church or palace is called fresco, which is represented in our European Gallery by Saint John the Baptist painted within a Gothic arch. This process used pigments that were mixed in water and painted onto wet plaster applied in small areas of the wall or ceiling. When the plaster dried, the colors and the design became permanent. Oil paints are believed to have been invented in northern Europe, specifically the Netherlands, perhaps by Jan van Eyck. Working with oils, artists were able to accord a striking realism to the minutest detail while conveying time-honored stories and images with a new warmth and human sentiment.

Biblical stories, especially events in the lives of the Virgin Mary, Jesus and the saints, were the general subjects for Renaissance masters. The single most frequent subject was the Madonna and Child, and every Renaissance artist/sculptor at one time or another seemed to paint or sculpt this subject. The early 14th Century ("Trecento") Virgin and Child is the earliest depiction of this subject in the Museum's collection. Its content and form is typical of the Byzantine style, which influenced Italian painting before the revolutionary changes of Giotto, Duccio and Cimabue. Marcellus Coffermans' Mother and Child is a remarkably natural representation of the subject done with the newly discovered oil paints in Flanders (Belgium) in the 15th Century. The heads of Saint Peter and Saint Paul by the great German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider are excellent portraits and delineators of Northern European religious expression.

During the Renaissance, the burgeoning medium of printmaking evolved rapidly in subject matter, technique, and style. In the early 1400s prints functioned as utilitarian objects for decoration and devotion such as Albrecht Dürer's woodcut scenes for The Great Passion.

Another typical Renaissance form is the tondo (round shape). When Renaissance families commissioned works that they planned to place in their homes rather than in a church, they preferred this round form. The only extant painting that Michelangelo ever created other than those in the Sistine Chapel is a tondo of the Holy Family that was commissioned by the wealthy Florentine, Angelo Doni. It is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

The Museum's tondo combines a marvelously inventive, fully developed polychromed sculptural configuration of the Madonna with Christ and John the Baptist set against a back panel "split screen" painting of a moody landscape.

There are also paintings in our European collection that were created by Flemish and Dutch painters in northern Europe, such as Cornelis De Vos, who needed help to accomplish all his work, so workshops were established. In keeping with earlier traditions, the workshops served as training for apprentices, who sometimes paid the Master, and the best and most accomplished of the apprentices helped to paint the commissions. Sometimes it is difficult to tell just exactly which parts of a painting were done by the Master and which parts were done by an apprentice under the Master's direction. That is the case with the Orpheus and Eurydice. There is little doubt that the painting was created in the Peter Paul Rubens' workshop, but there is some question as to how much of it, if any, was done by Rubens himself. What there is no doubt about is that the painting is of the highest quality. It reflects the grand manner, sensuousness, and immediacy of the Baroque style identified with Rubens. The collection also includes fine examples of 18th and 19th Century British portraiture with examples by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Henry Raeburn, among others. George Henry Harlow's Portrait of a Young Boy is particularly charming.

Of particular significance in the European Gallery is the integration of the arts. Examples are the Italian Renaissance Chairs, the Belgian 17th Century Press Cupboard, the William and Mary Chest, the Spanish and Italian ceramics and the Bristol Chandelier.

Please note, paintings, objects and artists represented on the website may not be on view at all times.

Ronald C. Roth Director & CEO