Early Netherlandish art, also called Early Flemish art, sculpture, painting, architecture, and other visual arts created in the several domains that in the late 14th and 15th centuries were under the rule of the dukes of Burgundy, coincidentally counts of Flanders. As the terms “Burgundian” and “Flemish” describe only parts of the phenomenon, neither can posit for the whole. In 1363 John II of France titled his son Philip, surnamed the Bold, duke of Burgundy. By marriage to the heiress of Flanders, Philip added to his duchy, on the death of his father-in-law in 1384, the countship of Flanders. The
Flemish art, art of the 15th, 16th, and early 17th centuries in Flanders and in the surrounding regions including Brabant, Hainaut, Picardy, and Artois, known for its vibrant materialism and unsurpassed technical skill. From Hubert and Jan van Eyck through Pieter Bruegel the Elder to Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish painters were masters of the oil medium and used it primarily to portray a robust and realistically detailed vision of the world around them. Their paintings reflect clearly the changes in fortune of this narrow slice of country between France, Germany, and the Low Countries: first came the peaceful, pious,