All right. Today we're going to talk about actual history of art, the early Renaissance in the north of Europe. Now, those of you who have taken art history survey one, particularly if you took my um version of it, um you will already be familiar with this material. Um but, uh traditionally, the survey 2 begins with the Renaissance. Uh and in any event, I don't think there's anything wrong with a little bit of a refresher course. So, we're going to talk about the Renaissance again this uh next few days of class. The Renaissance or rebirth period refers to a period after the um after the first and worst of all the waves of the bubanic plague hit Europe in 1347. And in the wake of that catastrophe in which fully a third of the population of the continent of Europe died of this horrific bacteriological disease. Um there was an unexpected um result, a kind of um revival and expansion of interest in learning and um expressive uh work by a larger percentage of the population than had had the opportunity to express itself through work resulting in a new expansion of literature, literary output. by people who formerly would have had no voice in Western culture and in the expansion of the marketplace for art and architecture, resulting in unprecedented new advances both in the techniques and technologies relating to the arts and in the range of topics, themes. um the um the ambition uh and um daring even of artworks and above all the revival of the principles of classicism in the art world. Now you're looking at a map of Europe down here and the emphasis is obviously on this little piece of it. An inset here shows you that we're looking at the nation modern-day nation of Belgium. But this is back in the 15th century when it was called Flanders. Now the the borders do not correspond exactly with the modern-day borders of Belgium. Belgium is a small but important national uh sovereign state north of France, which is this big area here. And back then it was a bit larger and encompassed uh enclosed part of what became the Netherlands north of Flanders or Belgium. The Netherlands now is a modern nation nation. uh Belgium also, but they represent in a general way the schism that occurred within the borders of Flanders in the fifth well not until the 16th century and officially not till the 17th when in the wake of uh disturbance within the Catholic Church down here in Rome in central Italy, this is the cowboy bootshaped state of Italy where the deep pockets of the Christian church of western of Europe um allowed for the support of great many projects in building and uh art in Flanders and many other places. um came under attack from uh from various Christian leaders in other parts of Europe who questioned the authority of the Catholic Church and believed they had a more accurate interpretation of Jesus teachings in the Gospels resulting in a a movement Europewide movement which we refer to as Protestantism because these people were protesting against the leadership of the Catholic church. And with that challenge to the authority of the richest employer of artists, architects in Europe um came also the establishment of new sovereign nations, particularly the Netherlands in the north, which broke away from the um the the wealthy coattales, so to speak, of the Catholic Church, established its own Protestant nation here, and distinguished itself in many other ways. We're going to look now at a period before that happened in the early Renaissance in Flanders. Now, to begin with, I want to show you just a few examples of what's happening in the uh years preceding this extraordinary period called the Renaissance. here about a thousand years sorry not excuse me about a hundred years before the plague hit Europe in the Middle Ages as we call them not a very nice name for a whole period of time some 4 or 500 years which we call the middle ages even now even though that sounds like we're sort of relegating the whole period of world of European history to a kind of I don't know uh a short pause between two much more important ages. Um I'm sure if you lived in the 12th century, you wouldn't have thought that your whole world was just a sort of um little uh intermission period between two more significant times. But uh we use the term still with greater insight into uh the period of course than we had before. The the picture you're seeing on the left is an a painting on a piece of calf skin that was part of a page of a book. And as a result, we refer to it as an illuminated manuscript. Illuminated manuscripts were illustrated frequently by the monks who were copying out sacred Christian texts. And this is one such work. It shows Adam and Eve looking mighty ashamed of themselves as they must do if the illustration is to accompany the story from the first book of the Old Testament of the Jewish Bible, the Torah, which tells the story of Adam and Eve's their uh mistakes and their punishment. They are expelled from the Garden of Eden. Now the second image shows the same scene in a different style from about oh about 200 years later. Both of them however show only a slight interest on the part of the artist in mimisis. Mimisis is the making of something to resemble something else. It is imitation. When we think of drawing or painting or sculpting a human figure in a mimemetic way, we are talking about the intention of the artist to make their work of art resemble the actual person. Let's say it's a figurative work as closely as possible. Whether they succeed in that effort is a different issue. That has to do with how good they are as artists at mimemetic art. We're not really discussing the question of who's more talented than whom. We're simply talking about the intention of the artist from the outset to make a work of art that really convinces people they're looking at actual people. Not happening in the first two of these images. Well, three because I brought these two separate paintings here together so that you can see Adam and Eve. They're separated in the original by other imagery. But you see what I'm saying? We see Adam and Eve because we can recognize just barely that these are human figures or humanlike figures that look kind of embarrassed or mortified and publicly ashamed and who are clutching at fig leaves to cover their nudity because they're ashamed of having human bodies. apparently this being part of the uh uh Christian teaching of the west in that period and although there are some token references to human anatomy like a knee sort of and some muscles here and there basically the whole image reflects the same lesson that is to be taught by the Bible's story which is that good Christians are for some reason supposed to be embarrassed by their bodies and ashamed of their sexuality. This also tells that story with a similar kind of strange approach toward the depiction of the human figure. And it is not surprising, in fact very very common to see a a variety of distortions in the representation of the human body throughout different periods of the Middle Ages. As we approach the 14th century, however, we start to see anomalies where some artists make a serious effort at mimisis. Um, and by the way, I'm focusing on Adam and Eve subjects just because we want consistency in the subject so we don't think about that so much. And also because it is one of the few subjects where the nude human figure is represented even in periods when there is a kind of taboo attached to the representation of the nude human figure. And that's because the story of Adam and Eve is considered in the middle ages to be very instructive in moral conduct and principles. And it must be told by showing two naked people because otherwise the story isn't told. about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. So this represents those figures in a style which is not intended to celebrate the body and is not intended to mimic the appearance of the human figure. The purpose is to tell a moral story and you know induce the viewer to behave in a way that is considered appropriate. That's not the purpose of mimisis. Mimisis is intended to represent what people see as they see it. Of course, they may they may improve on as in their view the image. They may generalize the view or not, but the primary purpose behind mimisis is for it to look like actual people. And that's not happening in these first two Adam and Eve images. It might arguably be part of the purpose in this image, which is considerably later. We're now talking about the period directly after the first wave of the Black Death in Europe, the beginning of what will become known as the Renaissance. The figures, however, are still awkward. They don't look quite fully understood by the viewer by by the artist and they represent as much the symbol imagery associated with Adam and Eve as they do the human figures. All of which perfectly fine. It's just not mimisis. I'm not saying it's good or bad or worse or better. Only that it is not really strictly speaking what we would call mimisis. Now on the far right we have genuine mimisis also expertly handled by an artist of great skill and talent. No question actually a pair of artists the brothers Yan and Hubert Van Ike. This screen you're looking at of four sets of Adam and Eve representations between the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance is meant to show you how extraordinary and radical is the sudden relatively sudden shift from a symbol image-based art tradition in which mimises has little part to play but symbolic image making is Paramount to the Renaissance mimemetic tradition that is just beginning with the works of Van Ike. Here there you can see that the primary effort of the artist is to create images of a man and a woman with their clothes off that really look like real people in front of us. It's as if we are looking at the people themselves and that is the hope and dream of the artists of the early northern Renaissance. Okay. Now this is also happening in the south of Europe. The southern early southern renaissance is for our purposes limited to Italy. in Italy in the south where the Vatican the center of the Catholic Church is located in the great city of Rome. Um this is an area where tremendous uh achievements in art are are um commissioned by the leading uh patrons of the arts and they're doing so in a kind of partnership with the most skillful and accomplished professional artists of their day. They also are motivated by the prospect of making it like to make a work of art look like the subject it represents as closely as possible. But there are important differences. They're summarized in this paragraph of text I've written on the top right. I'm going to talk about all of that in much more detail next class. Today I'm going to move on to talk ex exclusively about northern European art in the Renaissance. So we'll begin with a single well it's not a single it's a tptic of paintings. It's a a single work of art painted by the man we think is representing himself in a self-portrait in that little inset on the left you can see here. Robert Compa is his name. Roberta was a a master painter. He had basically credentials and a reputation to ensure regular commissions from people who could pay for artworks. Most of which, not all, but most of which were probably commissioned by the church up in the north of Europe, which had the deepest pockets and could afford for the best works from the best artists on what were mostly Christian religious subjects. Now, I am not, in other words, procilitizing the Christian faith in any way at all. That is certainly not my intention. I'm talking a lot about Christian art because we're beginning our course with the early Renaissance in Europe and most of the best trained and technically proficient professional artists were making works that were commissioned by one or another branch of the Christian church in the West, what will become known as the Catholic Church. And those people are naturally going to be the focus of any history of art. The ones who did it best or at least were seen as doing it best by those who made such a judgment at the time. This is the central panel we're looking at of a tptic. A tptic. T r i p ty c is an odd sounding word. It means a three-fold literally from the Greek words. The three-fold painting is actually two folds for three panels. So that tells you right from the beginning of our course students that art people are not very good at math. It should be called a diptick because it has two folds for the three panels. But we call it a tripic because there are three panels and we don't really know how to count to three. Okay, this is the central panel. It is twice the width of the two side panels which are hinged to the main panel. They can fold over and close the hole and make it easy to transport. That's the purpose of a tptic. You're making artworks that fit inside the interior of a church or small chapel, but which can be folded up to some extent so that you can move it more easily from place to place within the space. Now a tptic in this case which is devoted to the representation of an important moment in the Christian teachings of the early Renaissance from about the time of maybe 1200 or so about 228 years before this particular painting was made in Europe a grassroots movement among the increasing population of Christians in Europe began to have an influence on the policy of the church leadership. The grassroots movement found greater and greater interest and attraction in the persona of the Virgin Mary, not Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ had been promoted of course as the uh founder of the faith of Christianity uh and its godhead you might say u partly by his being represented as a stern teacher to the uneducated but vast population of devout followers in early medieval Europe. And this worked for a time in converting the masses of Europe to the new faith of Christianity. But eventually people found that the tough uh and forbidding persona of Christos Panto, the teacher version of Jesus, you might call him, um didn't have as much sway with people as the uh largely sidelined theme that was represented by his mother, the Virgin Mary, in the Gospels. That sidelined message was one of genuine compassion by a mother for her son which could be extrapolated to refer to Mary's love of all people who suffer. And that was a very appealing message. By the time we get to the later Middle Ages, that message has been adopted by the Christian church, which sees a great advantage in it. And we see a greater and greater focus on the life of Mary and the moments of miracles surrounding her life. Notably, of course, the announcement to her by the Holy Spirit that she will bear the child of the Lord above and the birth and life and resurrection uh death and resurrection of Jesus too. She is a witness at the crucifixion after all. Here you see the first of those events. It's actually one split second before the event itself. And what is that event? It is the moment when an angel announces to this young woman, Mary, that she will bear the child of God above. Obviously, a pretty important moment in somebody's life. You can tell by her total cluelessness here reading a book that she hasn't yet got the word. It is literally a split second away. There it is basically the embodiment of uh uh God or Jesus coming down with the cross as a symbol image identifying them in the direction of her soul where she will then learn this destiny. The angel also is just at the point of telling her. In fact, you can see if you look at the angel here that the angel Gabriel is saying, "Hey, hey, hey, over over here, over here. Take a look. I'm here in your room." Right? So, in the very next moment, we can understand that she will be told this good news. She's wearing red with blue around her. This is indicative of the of the symbolic colors that have associated been associated with Mary's persona for hundreds of years already by this time but which are basically strewn around her because she's relaxing at home literally she is chilling reading a book no doubt of sacred texts but still just reading a book by herself in the main room of the house and meanwhile out in the garage is her husband a much older man than she who is basically spending most of his life in the garage doing woodworking just as old folks like him tend to do in America now. That's the story. On the left side, this panel of the tptic, we see two randos, a man and a woman. What are they compared with this story? Well, they're basically nothing, but they're in the painting nevertheless peeking in through the open doorway because they helped pay for the picture. They were the ones who donated money to the local church in Flemal in in Flanders. Um, in exchange for which they got their picture with Mary basically, except not quite with Mary cuz she's way too important. So she's inside, they're outside, they're praying on their knees. Nevertheless, they do get the honor of that portrait. Here you see a detail in which as much attention is being paid by the artist whose name is Robert Compa um to the brass uh vessel hanging by a chain behind and above the head of the angel. and to this uh earthnware vase and to this brass candlestick as is given to the depiction of the angel and Mary the mother of God. How can there be so much attention paid to these inanimate objects that look at first glance to be completely unimportant little details of the interior space in which Mary lives and only the same amount of attention given over to these extremely important figures? Well, it can be summed up by a familiar phrase many of you have probably heard before at some point in your lifetimes. God is in the details. The whole aesthetic foundation of early Northern European Renaissance art is summarized by that statement. God is in the details. Essentially the Flemish artists of the early 15th century are guided by that principle that we are not here to pick and choose to edit nature to edit our visual world. We are here to record what is before us with open, receptive and willing eyes using all of our technical skill, all of our vision, our imagination perhaps to depict what we see without favorite favorites. We don't pay special attention to one thing over another. Now, the selection of the objects is strategic. These are objects that have long-standing symbolic significance in the Christian faith as symbol images that represent either an episode in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ who has not yet been born in this particular scene or to the life of the Virgin Mary herself. And so they have their place in this image. But I want you to notice the extraordinary respect paid by the artist Robert Compa to every tiny detail that his eye can possibly be seeing as he looks at the scene. either largely in his mind's eye because it probably didn't look much like this in reality in his studio or in reality in as much as he was able to gather the objects before him on tables where he could study them individually before integrating them into his image. You can also see here I have a better image than that. There we go. Much sharper image here. You can also see that he is looking at every part of every object with the same interest. So each hair on the angels and on Mary's head is depicted not just individually as a line drawn with a a line brush or a point brush, but literally rendered in three dimensions. hair after hair, each of which is catching a little bit of the light and showing a half shadow on its opposite side and casting a shadow on the gap between it and the next hair. Each tiny tiny detail has been given that kind of extreme attention. God is in the details. So, this image is intended to be as convincing an illusion of actual people in a real room as it possibly can be. It doesn't quite succeed for most of us in the 21st century as we look at this. It feels awkward in terms of illusions of space and objects in the space. It's a little offkilter somehow a little strained. a little uh cluttered and a little twisted. And that's because although the artist Robert Compan is doing his darnest to create on a flat surface a wooden panel painted on with oil paint. an illusion of a real three-dimensional space with a ceiling and a back wall and a window and this bench that comes out towards us into the foreground where Mary is chilling. All of that is compromised at its root by his his I don't mean this in a critical way. His ignorance of an invention which is just at that very moment coming into existence in the world. The invention of single vanishing point linear perspective with a with converging lines. That's an invention happening at that very moment in 1427428 but not in the north of Europe. It is an invention credited to a group of men in Florence, Italy at this point. Only a few years later, some artists in the north of Europe will become aware of this invention and start to adjust some of their own efforts in flat arts like painting to create the illusion, the mimemetic image of a three-dimensional deep space like a room. It's not quite there yet. And so you get that strange sense of the bench kind of climbing up the wall as it moves into the background, for example, or the the impression one can't help getting that the table that supports the brass candlestick and the picture with the flowers is at the point of tipping over in front of us with all of the objects on it sliding onto the floor at Mary's feet. It isn't intended that it look that way. This is an inevitable result of the absence of a single unifying vanishing point that will govern the rate at which objects seem to diminish in size as they recede into the background. Without knowledge of that system, the image is doomed to at least some measure of failure as an illusion of deep space created on a flat surface. Still, it comes pretty darn close to a convincing image, doesn't it? If you look at just the scene here of Joseph in in fact, it's almost correct. This wooden workbench doesn't quite fit. It looks like someone's got it propped up from behind. Someone's there in the shadows who's tilting it up. So, it's not quite right, but one can kind of almost live with it, if you see what I mean. making up more than making up for this one arguable flaw in the project that Robert Compa has undertaken to create a truly mimemetic image, a truly successful illusion of reality um with its miraculous subject matter as well. Um is the amazing devotion to the depiction of every single thing he can see. So, if you look at this little detail from Joseph in the carpenters shop over in the garage there, you look at these little nails that have been painted individually, each casting its own shadow, different from the others depending on its position in space. All of which the whole group here, this takes up about an inch and a half of space. Understand that this tptic here is only 10 and 1/2 in wide on the right side. 10 and 1/2 in of which maybe a third at most is this bench and its contents. This is at most 3 in or so. These little details are a/4 of an inch, an eighth of an inch, a 16th of an inch in size. Painted by hand over many, many, many, many successive days of hard work. All in celebration of the principle that God is in the details. Here are the portraits of the two donors. This was the perk they got for giving their money to the church. They got their picture in the scene and behind them you see a man, a guard who is dressed in a uniform and who is at the doorway to the garden behind the visitors. They are in front of this man who I began by showing you in detail the possible self-portrait of the artist. Understand that that representation here, this is about an eighth of an inch in width. It is a tiny detail in a small painting painted with extreme care and patience and dedication to the process. That's where he gave himself perhaps. We only speculate it's a self-portrait. That moment of attention. I'm the guy who painted this thing. And in the background, still farther back, you can see even more details of what you should understand is modernday urban life in Flanders in the early 15th century. This is a depiction of real people presumably seen by the artist through a doorway at a distance and painted in almost microscopic scale. Here on the right side, where Joseph is in his woodworking shop, you can see even more details of a modern-day city. This is state-of-the-art modern urban architecture for people living in Flanders in the 15th century. The purpose of that, of course, is to bring home to the viewer in the church admiring this painting the relevance of the Christian faith to modern Europeans. They though they may live in a different time than Jesus or Mary are nevertheless the inheritors of the same message and see how they thrive. Here's another example of northern European Renaissance art in the early period of the Renaissance. It's one of the most famous works of art in the world. It is the so-called Arnoldi marriage portrait. It shows a man, his last name is Arnoldi, an Italian name, a man from Italy who is living up in the north of Europe. He's far from his homeland. He represents his country or at least some of the country now as we understand it as a kind of diplomatic businessman. He has a good business. He makes a lot of money. He can afford to marry well into a a a Flemish family. And the young woman there who is holding hands with him uh is his new wife. Now this is not thought of as a wedding painting but rather as a marriage painting. It represents perhaps an anniversary after the wedding has taken place which would help to explain the possibility that the young Mrs. Arnotini is pregnant. It's also however I need to caution my viewers possible that she is simply following a fashion of the day what was literally called in England at the time in the English language the belly bustle. I didn't make this up for a brief period anyway and you can understand it might have been rather brief. uh women actually sought out uh a belly bustle to place under their dress to suggest the possibility of uh their being with child. Now it's also of course symbolically important that the wife in the 14th in the 15th century um uh be performing her sacred duty as a wife in holy matrimony by helping to perpetuate the species uh and bring in another child. Right now behind them is uh a mirror. I'm just focusing on a couple of details for lack of time. Uh, the mirror is a convex one of much earlier date than the rest of the interior spaces decorative objects. Everything in the room is supposed to show a modern aesthetic indulged in by a very prosperous commissioner of this portrait, Mr. Arnorfini who has paid the artist Yan Van Ike the co-painter of this famous Adam and Eve picture we were looking at. Oops. Oh well, there we go. On the right with his brother Hubert who is painting this picture of the Arnoldenis on commission. And the one anomaly is the convex mirror, which as a result we think is probably the object representing the old custom that at a wedding or in a marriage ceremony, there should be something old and something new, something borrowed, something blue. And we have those objects. If we look for them in this scene, the old object would be this convex mirror. And we know that it's meant to look old. archaic, even out of fashion, old-fashioned, out of date. Because if you look at the detail, you can see that the artist has taken the trouble to paint each of these little roundles with their respective episodes illustrating moments in the life and death of Jesus Christ. At the top, we see Jesus on the cross. But the style of figuration that is shown here in these tiny details is a pre- Renaissance style. These figures are look they look a bit like stiff wooden mannequins. This is characteristic of the art of the middle ages during the period we would call Romanesque in style now. And that's all deliberate. The artist himself has a obviously a sense of his own graduation to a vastly more enlightened vision of art and its potential to literally reproduce for our eyes sake a scene of people and objects in a real space. Mimisis has taken charge. But in honor of the tradition, these tiny images are throwbacks to the pre-mimetic period of the Middle Ages with its romanesque figurative style. Also visible in this image is the view of the people who are occupying the space of us, the viewers of the painting in the gallery. Here you see Mr. Mrs. Arnoffi, excuse me, from behind who are looking presumably at the painter of their portrait, who is this man in blue with the great big floppy blue beret to match. And that's telling you that we are occupying that space with a doorway directly behind us. And there actually is a view into a window in a room behind the room we're in. and two people, a man you can't really see from my crummy reproduction, and a woman who is closing or I think closing the door most likely to give this couple privacy with the artist, but is stopping to bend down and peek into the room before closing it. Can you see that? All of this occupies this whole area in fact occupies only about an inch of space. Each of these is about an eighth of an inch and this is about a 16th of an inch. Look nevertheless at the astonishing degree of mimemetic illusionism in this hanging uh rosary in glass. Is that not a remarkable illusion of objects in space lit from within almost by their own Christian light? And here what I would normally want to spend even more time on than on these other objects, the little doggy at the bottom of the picture. Notice first the extraordinary convincing illusion of wood panled flooring with the actual nails not just represented by a dot of color but actually rendered with the slightest degree of light and shadow here. But on the dog, well, I won't spend more time even though I've got a dog over here who's asking me to explain this to the students. Notice that this dog is rendered in the extremist detail. Not just every hair given its proper space, but every hair actually rendered as a three-dimensional object. Plus, it's a cute dog, isn't it? All right. And the dog is also serving its symbolic traditional role. It is the symbol and has been for hundreds of years in European cultural tradition by this time the symbol of loyalty and fidelity traits or virtues which are much admired and of great importance in the context of a wedding and marriage. Right? So it's not just for the cuteness of dogs that the dog appears. Although I do think that Van Ike was able to appreciate the wonder of the dog. Let's move on to another painting by Yan Van Ike. This one another depiction of the enunciation. That's the moment when uh Gabriel the angel tells the Virgin Mary, you're going to bear the child of the Lord. Right? This is all from the Christian gospel. And by the way, I am not here to try to convert anyone to Christianity. Nothing could be further from my intentions. I am simply summarizing a little bit of the narrative so that you know what the context of this image is. So here we see a very long narrow oil painting on wood panel. Not particularly big. It's only one yard high and it's barely more than a foot wide. And yet look at the amount of devotion paid to the process of mimisis by the artist. Here the central subject of the image is made plain. You can see again the angel Gabriel smiling on the left with a very happy message. So they believe anyway. A or ae gracia plan in Latin. Hail Mary which is implied full plan of grace. Graci. So a gracia plan is what comes out of the mouth reading from left to right because the mouth is to the left of the words basically coming out like a like a word bubble in a comic strip. Hail Mary full of grace. And what does Mary reply famously in this moment? Ancilli behold the angel of the Lord. Not only is it coming out from her mouth reading from right to left because she's on the right side of the words, but it's upside down. Do you notice that the letters are upside down, students? That's so that God or his agent, the Holy Spirit, this white dove, which is basically in the process of impregnating Mary at this moment, can easily read the words without having to crane its neck. Isn't that thoughtful? I think it's very considerate of her. She is speaking upside down. Look at these details. I mean, just behold the level of commitment in one's life as a trained artist through the depiction of such extraordinary detail on a small scale. One other thing I need to mention before we run out of time. Central to the achievement of the early Renaissance in the north of Europe is a unprecedented levels of mimisis. That's very well shown now. But B the invention of oil paint as a primary medium for an artist that is also credited to this group of artists in Flanders in the early 15th century. Now there had been some use of oil particularly vegetable oils that will eventually dry. Not all vegetable oils will ever completely dry and hence they're not something you want to make a painting out of. But a few do eventually slowly come to a state of true dryness. And one of them, the most popular throughout the centuries is linseed oil. The oil of the flax plant that we get linen fibers from. Linseed oil was used here for the first time blended with the pigments in order to create paint. Now they did this for the first time ever with a particular technique associated with northern European mimemetic art. First, they used this new medium rather than water-based paints for the first time because oil doesn't evaporate. It oxidates. It will eventually dry with exposure to the air, but not at the speed at which water will diffuse into a vapor and dry, right? Evaporate. So this gives the artist suddenly the luxury of time. They have lots more time to paint a picture before it's dry than the artists in the south of Europe still have. The artists in the south do not yet have this brilliant northern European invention called oil paint. They will continue using tempera as their primary small painting media medium. This is egg yolkbased paint which is basically colored dirt pulverized into fine powders different colors blended together not together individually but blended with an egg yolk. Literally an egg is cracked during the painting phase. You blend it with a color and then you have a paint. But of course, egg yolk though it does dry, it dries quickly. So you've got to work much more quickly in the north. Now suddenly this devotion to depicting every single detail in the visible world as God would have it as precisely and accurately as possible is a practical aim because of the invention of oil paint. Also, we should mention that their technique for using oil paint is characteristic of the north and not so common at all in the south. And we call it the glazing technique. Glazing is the use of these paints. A little tiny bit of pulverized dirt of a certain color blended with a large amount of linseed oil creating basically a transparent tinted oil. Very little pigment versus a great deal of transparent nearly clear slightly yellow clear vegetable oil. And then you paint that where you want the color. You let that dry. That can take days. It can literally take up to six months until you're completely confident of the total dryness of the painting. Whatever time it takes, it's worth spending. You can take that time by painting in more details. And you then apply another coat of this transparent color or another and another and another. Sometimes, as in the case of the famous artist of the later Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, up to 60 layers of glaze.