Jan Steen, Die verkehrte Welt, 1663

Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, 791

This image: https://www.khm.at/objektdb/detail/1833/?offset=10&lv=list

During the fifteenth century, the art of northern Europe underwent changes every bit as dynamic as those in Italy. The early masters, using oils rather than tempera, achieved a breath-taking realism and emotional impact in both religious painting and portraiture. Visible even then, often in the background, was an obsession with the minutiae of everyday life: small details of fabrics and furnishings; the scene out of the window; the landscape and the light.

In the century that followed, religious and political conflict fractured the most artistically productive of these regions – the Low Countries. In the Protestant Netherlands, in spite of eighty years of war and threatened invasion, the obsession with painting intensified. The small details in the background made their way into the foreground, and a new more diverse art-buying public revelled in the depictions of everyday life. Recognizing themselves, as well as their social betters and inferiors, they developed a passion for what is now referred to as genre painting.

Some paintings told a story; others were full of comical references; still more were filled with moral warnings. Yet all were vivid, varied, and fascinating. We shall explore these paintings all the way from Breugel’s peasants to Vermeer’s calm interiors.

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