Northern Europe was torn apart by religious sectarianism. But in spite of upheaval brought on by religious reform, monarchies consolidated their power over emerging nations. Reformation and Italian Humanism were both spread across Northern Europe. In art, it is a period of conflicting styles, diverse influences and countless regional variants. Artists in the service of the Catholic Reformation produced intensely mystical paintings whose expressive distortions reflect the fervent spirituality of the era. In the Netherlands, iconoclasts destroyed religious images; here and elsewhere in Protestant Europe, as religious patronage of art declined, secular patronage and subject matter became more prominent, and pictures were commodities in a booming market economy. In different ways and in varying degrees, most artists of this period absorbed the theories and principles of the Italian Renaissance, and local traditions were synthesized with Italian models. Although some patrons continued to favor Gothic, this synthesis is apparent in much of the architecture, painting, and graphic arts of the North.

Your goals for this chapter are as follows:

• Understand which artists were responsible for bringing the Italian Renaissance to the North.

• Identify the works of individual artists.

• Define the role played by the Reformation in the works of some sixteenth century artists.

• Recognize how the Renaissance spread throughout Europe.