In 1842, the Messager des Sciences Historiques de Belgique used the word 'primitive' in a broader context of the Ecole primitive flamande in an enthousiastic reference to the Museé Van Ertborn in Antwerp. And, in 1846, the term first was used by the Académie Royale de Belgique in reference to the painting school école flamande de peinture. A new, appreciative attitude towards this style of painting came out of the Romantic movement and writers such as Gustave Planche (1851) and the great romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (1854) mark an important shift in the comprehension of the old painting school. For even though the arts of this period in Flanders had been greatly appreciated in their own time and had been written about and lauded as early as the 16th Century, during the following centuries this particular style of paintings had fallen into oblivion. It wasn't until the 19th Century that the panel paintings that had been produced at the end of the late-Middle Ages were rediscovered, collected, analysed and interpreted.
These scholarly interpretations were divided into two types of discourse: one that considered this art as the very last stage of medieval art, and another that described its technical advances as an introduction to the early-modern art. In part, as a result of placing this art within a historical, geographical as well as stylistic context, a variety of nomenclature was used to denote it. As such, the 'Flemish primitives' were also called Les peintres des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux, or their art in German Altniederländische Malerei, while in English it was considered Early Netherlandish painting or, when comprising more than the area of Flanders, Northern Renaissance painting.
With so many different labels, what then unifies this art of the late-Middle Ages and /or early Renaissance in Flanders? In defining a research area, three aspects can be considered as determiners: stylistic characteristics, geography and chronology.
Stylistic characteristics
The paintings of the Flemish primitives share some very distinct stylistic characteristics. In 1548, Francisco de Hollanda recorded a conversation in his De Pinture Antigua between Vittoria Colonna and the well-known painter Michelangelo in which they were discussing the art from the north. Michelangelo expressed his viewpoint on Flemish painting as follows:
"Flemish painting will generally speaking, Signora, please the devout better than any painting of Italy, which will never cause him to shed a tear, whereas that of Flanders will cause him to shed many; and that not through the vigour and goodness of the painting, but owing to the goodness of the devout person."
The painter continues:
"In Flanders they paint with a view to external precision or such things as may cheer you and of which you cannot speak ill, as for example, saints and prophets. They paint objects and masonry, the green grass of the fields, the shadows of trees, and rivers and bridges, which they call landscapes, with many figures on this side and many figures on that one. And all this, though it pleases some persons, is done without skilful choice of boldness and, finally, without substance or vigour."
