Speaker: Dr Paula Nuttall
6 October 2015
Internationally regarded as the greatest painter of his day, Jan van Eyck (d.1441) was an innovative and technically brilliant observer of reality in an era when naturalism was becoming the goal of every artist.
His paintings still astonish on account of their dazzling evocations of textiles, metalwork and distant landscapes, and their sophisticated illusionism, as well as for their sheer ingenuity and virtuosity.
This lecture discusses Van Eyck’s achievements, his career at the Burgundian court and his clientele in Bruges, and surveys his works, including the celebrated Ghent Altarpiece and the Arnolfini Portrait in the National Gallery.
Profile
Dr Paula Nuttall studied at the Courtauld Institute. She specialises in artistic relations between the Netherlands and Italy and is the author of “From Flanders to Florence: the impact of Netherlandish painting 1400-1500” (Yale University Press, 2004).
She began lecturing at the British Institute of Florence and is now an independent scholar based in London. She is a Director of the V&A’s Medieval and Renaissance Year Course, and teaches for a number of other institutions and organisations, including the Courtauld Institute, Christie’s Education and NADFAS.
She has participated in numerous international symposia, including the 1998 Van Eyck conference at the National Gallery and ‘The Age of Van Eyck: the Mediterranean world and early Netherlandish painting’ (Bruges 2002). Her publications also include articles in the Burlington Magazine and Apollo.