He was court painter to the Duke of Burgundy, but his religious subjects and portraits were also in great demand among the merchants and bankers of Bruges. One of the most renowned Netherlandish artists, Jan van Eyck, revolutionized painting by substituting the oil medium for tempera.

Rich patrons - foremost among them the ruling house of Burgundy but also religious orders and private citizens of the prosperous towns of Ghent, Bruges, Brussels, and Tournai - commissioned paintings, sculpture, tapestries, vessels of precious metal, jewelry, and illuminated books. Artists here rivaled even famous Italian masters. For artists, an innovation of equally far-reaching importance was the perfection of oil paints in the Netherlands, also known as the Low Countries, which allowed northern painters to depict the world with unprecedented precision.Īt the end of the Middle Ages, some of the most active centers of painting were in an area comprising present-day Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of France. The 15th and 16th centuries saw the rise of capitalism and a burgeoning middle class, the creation of modern nation states, and the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation. View all 15th- and 16th-Century Northern European paintings

Famous reformation portrait painter