Response to “Northern Renaissance: The Supreme Art.”

Joseph Leo Koerner argues that the Renaissance in Northern Europe laid foundations for modern art, calling the Italian influence during this time a "counterpart". Although both regions had significant influence within the emerging Renaissance, artists in Northern Europe tended to focus on a slightly different artistic style. Artists of the North were interested in the natural world and their works depicted plant and animal life with great detail. Focusing on details of light and shadow, pieces expressed an authentic feeling of three dimensionality within them. Other devices also used by artists in fifteenth century Northern Europe were intuitive perspective and aerial perspective.

Intuitive perspective was achieved by scaling certain aspects within a work of art, creating extremely accurate spatial representations. Aerial perspective was used by these artists as well, and specifically so in landscape portrayals. These artists were known to have highly developed this perspective, also called an atmospheric perpective, which reappears throughout many works of fifteenth century Northern Europe. Portrait artists of this time led the style into a new direction never before seen, developing a highly realistic style of portraiture.

For example, German painter Albrecht Durer would “lavish extreme attention” within his self-portraits, mostly concentrating on hair quality. So much so that when Koerner looks at Durer’s preserved hair, he claims right away how he recognizes the color from Durer’s works. Koerner also goes on to explain why Durer’s self portrait idealizes Christ, using a symmetrical and frontal view, rather then a pose where the head is at an angle. Although the painting is directed at the viewer, it is also directed inward toward “the self”. There was a large influence of Christ and the portrayal of Christ in portraits that went into Durer’s self-portrait.

Durer was the first known artist to accomplish many different styles of self-portraiture. He was also the first to publish and illustrate his own book, “ the definitive portrayal of the end of the world and a new beginning for art”. In which he is most famously known for, these drawings depict such exact detail and imaginative imagery. He also made woodcut prints, and was also the first artist to do so in this medium. Albrecht Durer was just one of many great artists of the fifteenth century Renaissance in Northern Europe. Jan Van Eyck and Hieronymus Bosch were other great artists that emerged from this time period.