Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Painting, Museo del Prado

Early Netherlandish painting is celebrated for its technical refinement and narrative intensity, but it is also notoriously hard to study: the subjects can be difficult to interpret, documents on the artists are scarce, and the identity of many masters is still unknown. This volume, a new entry in the Museo del Prado‘s series of catalogues raisonnés after El Greco, Dutch painting, miniatures and Luca Giordano, examines the museum’s holdings of fifteenth-century painting from the Low Countries, including works by artists active in the sixteenth century but rooted in the practice of the previous one.

It covers a decisive moment for Western art, from the revolutionary creators Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden and the Master of Flémalle to the masters who followed in their wake, such as Dirk Bouts, Hans Memling and Hugo van der Goes, and to lesser-known painters of equally notable production.

Written by José Juan Pérez Preciado, the catalog is an indispensable reference for scholars, libraries and collectors of the Flemish Primitives.