The World · 13

Netherlands & Belgium

Close observation, civic life, spiritual invention and radical abstraction run from the Northern Renaissance to modernism.

01Hieronymus BoschMoral imagination takes the form of impossible worlds.02Jan van EyckOil paint makes the visible world newly exact and mysterious.03Johannes VermeerLight turns private space into concentrated attention.04Peter Paul RubensPainting becomes bodily energy in motion.05Piet MondrianThe artist who reduced painting to its bones.06Pieter Bruegel The ElderCollective life fills the landscape.07RembrandtThe face as autobiography.08Vincent Van GoghColour becomes emotion.