Representing Nature in Northern European Art, 1500-1750

Overview

What you will study

By the sixteenth century, the depiction of landscapes, plants, animals and other subjects drawn from nature was widely recognized as a strength of northern European artists – one admired by patrons and collectors on both sides of the Alps. Nature is a vital presence in the work of celebrated figures such as Dürer, Bruegel, Albrecht Altdorfer, Rubens and Rembrandt, and also features strongly in the work of innovative female artists, such as the intrepid German traveller and watercolourist Maria Sibylla Merian. A fundamental question of the Representing Nature in Northern European Art, 1500-1750 course offered by The Courtauld Institute of Art is why lifelike depictions of natural entities were so highly valued in the period, and how artists sought to convey to their audiences the impression that their works were truthful, reliable or made ‘from life’.