*Fifteenth century Europe saw the emergence of wealthy merchants whose rise to power was fueled by individual accomplishment, rather than hereditary succession within nobel families
*Giovanni earned the right to have himself and his wife recorded by renowned artist Jan van Eyck
*Patron and painter are identified with conspicuous clarity
*The precise identity of the couple is still open to scholarly debate.
*No one is sure if it is a wedding, betrothal, or security for a shady financial deal?
*Recently has been interpreted as "loved and lost to death"
*All surrounded by luxury items like bed hangings, rare oranges, oriental carpet, very wonderful clothing, dog, mirror, and ability to pay for a portrait.
*A figure of St. Margaret- the protector of women in childbirth- is carved at the top of a post in the high-backed chair beside the bed, and the perky Affenpinscher in the foreground may be more than a pet
*Dogs back then, served as symbols of fidelity. As well as funerary associations but by having such a rare breed, it was most likely to show wealth.
*A major manifestation of the Renaissance in northern Europe was a growing and newly intense interest in the natural world manifested in the close observation and detailed recording of nature
*Artists depicted birds, plants, and animals with such accuracy.
*These carefully described subjects were situated into spatial settings, applying an intuitive perspective system by diminishing their scale as they receded into the distance.
*In the portrayal of landscapes--which became a northern specialty--artists used atmospheric or aerial perspective in which distant elements appear increasingly indistinct and less colorful as they approach the background.
*More names of artists survive from the fifteenth century, for example, than in the entire span from the beginning of the Common Era to the year 1400, and some artists begin regulary to sign their work.
*New power of cities in Flanders and the greater Netherlands provided a critical tension and balance with the traditional powers of royalty and the Church.
*The dukes of Burgundy were the most powerful rulers in northern Europe for most of the fifteenth century.
*They controlled not only Burgundy itself but also the Flemish and Netherlandish centers of finance and trade, including the thriving cities of Ghent, Burges, Tournai, and Brussels.
*The dukes of Burgundy and Berry (central France), not the king in Paris, were the real arbiters of taste.
*This new, composite style emerged in the late fourteenth century from the multicultural papal court in Acignon in Southern France, where artists from Italy, France and Flanders worked side by side
*The International Gothic style became the prevailing manner of late fourteenth-century Europe.
*One of Philip the Bold's most lavish projects was the Carthusian monastery, orchartreuse at Champmol, near Dijon, his Burgundian capital city.
*Land was acquired in 1377 and 1383, and construction began in 1385.
*The duke ordered a magnificent carved and painted alterpiece for the Chartreuse de Champmol.
*The exteriors of the protective shutters of this triptych were covered not by carvings but by two paintings by Melchior Broederlam showing scenes from the life of the Virgin and the infancy of Christ.
*His lavish use of brilliantly seductive colors foregrounds one of the features that made International Gothic so proud.
*According to legend, Mary was an attendant in the Temple prior to her marriage to Joseph. The tiny enclosed garden and conspicuous pot of lilies are symbols of Mary's virginity.
