Inventors of Oil Painting - Eck Brothers
From the elegance of Venus, but Picasso's unconventional entry into the modernist confusion, a master of virus-like art, listen to the original text of Western art history by Wen Ping Plains. The inventor of oil painting, in the Western art history, especially in the history of painting during the Renaissance, there are two centers, one is Italy, and the other is yours. In terms of the content and form of art, Dutch art and Italian art have completely different characteristics. Before we talk about the inventor of oil painting today, let's first introduce some geographical knowledge. Netherlands is actually Holland. In the language of Nederland, the Holland we usually say is just another name for Nederland. Related to Holland, there are Flanders and Holland, Netherlands, and Flanders are three interesting concepts, with deep historical origins in their names. Among them, Nederland is the oldest name and the largest range, covering Holland and Flanders. These three parts have a significant position in Western art history. For example, the brothers Van Eyck, who invented oil painting, represent Dutch art and the inventor of oil painting. This famous Rubens is called Flanders. Rubens, on the other hand, was a Dutch painter. However, these concepts are not strictly defined, just like the regions they belong to often overlap. Artists sometimes belong to one region, and sometimes they belong to another. So, an artist like the Van Eyck brothers can be said to be a Dutch artist, or they can be said to be a Flemish artist. Dutch art was given a loud title in terms of content, Realism, which is different from the religious subjects, mythological subjects, or aristocratic painting subjects of Italian art. Dutch artists focused more on common people. In terms of form, Dutch artists' works do not have the vibrant colors of the Venetian school or the perfect composition and thunderous force of Michelangelo and Da Vinci, but compared to their works, they do have a distinct feature. This feature can be expressed with a seemingly unrelated term, warmth, which integrates their neither strong nor weak colors with simple and clear compositions, and a simple and natural comparative. The greatest contribution of the Van Eyck brothers to art is that they invented the oil painting technique. Before this, the methods used were mostly tempera paint, egg tempera dries too quickly, which was a fatal weakness for Western painters who valued meticulous work. So they wanted to find a new method that had the advantages of egg tempera and could eliminate its disadvantages. Many people made this effort, but none were successful until the Van Eyck brothers finally found a great way to mix a very ideal medium, using this medium with pigments to be able to have the rich color expression of egg tempera painting style. One of the most famous paintings is the Arnolfini Portrait. Van Eyck's works are characterized by two things, realism and meticulousness. The people depicted in the painting are not like religious figures such as Venus or Apollo but rather ordinary people. And these two people are named individuals. The couple in the Arnolfini Portrait is very impressive, not because the composition is very intricate, but because of the mirror between the two figures. If you look carefully at the mirror, you can see all the details on the other side, such as the window, the backs of the couple, and even the painter himself. How do we know that this person is the painter himself? Because there is a clear inscription on the mirror, including the year of the work and the painter's signature. This work is very vivid, giving the impression of a scene from everyday life where a husband and wife, with the wife pregnant, are interacting in a domestic setting. The husband appears both happy and worried, happy to become a father but worried about the future of the child. The painting is very three-dimensional and gives a clear picture of the story being told. To see the high-definition image of the story, please follow the WeChat public account for the next installment of the content.