BBC - The High Art of the Low Countries (2013) Part 1 Dream of Plenty

The High Art of the Low Countries

Series in which Andrew Graham-Dixon tours the Low Countries, exploring how history has influenced the area's art, architecture and culture. A history of the ground-breaking works that emanated from The Netherlands and Belgium. Van Eyck, Vermeer, Rubens, Franz Hals, Rembrandt, Hieronymus Bosch, Van Gogh, Mondrian and Magritte; it's a shifting culture of early adopters, new technology, piety cut through with hellish visions, portraits of friendship and madness and new ways of seeing.

Part 1: Dream of Plenty

Andrew Graham-Dixon shows how the art of Renaissance Flanders evolved from the craft of precious tapestries within the Duchy of Burgundy into a leading painting school in its own right. Starting his journey at the magnificent altarpiece of Ghent Cathedral created by the Van Eyck brothers, Andrew explains their groundbreaking innovation in oil painting and marvels at how the colours they obtained can still remain so vibrant today. Andrew describes how, in the early Renaissance, the most urgent preoccupation was not the advancement of learning, humanist or otherwise, but the Last Judgment. People believed they were living in the end of days; a subject popular with preachers and artists and intensely realised in swarming microscopic detail by Hieronymus Bosch.

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