Discover the History Of Art

This autumn, Chepstow Museum has arranged a series of classes exploring the art of the fifteenth century, when artists began to seek new truths: to reproduce the truth of nature and to celebrate the reality of Man’s world and his relationship with the divine. As the city states of Italy grew in power and the northern trading nations poured money into commissioning art, the mysteries of medieval images gave way to a new clarity. How could artists make the real world and real people come alive on a two-dimensional surface? How would art reflect the new obsession with the learning of the ancient classical world of Rome?

In ten classes, popular lecturer, Eleanor Bird, will explore how the work of the pioneering figures of the early fifteenth century, such as Masaccio and Donatello, built on the artistic breakthroughs made a century before by Giotto. In northern painting, you will look at the work of Jan Van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and how the manuscript tradition and exploitation of new techniques with oil paint created a magically real world which amazed contemporary viewers. You will go on to see how the new art became established in the mid century through artists such as Gentileschi and Piero della Francesca, becoming increasingly sophisticated and influential as the century drew to its close and exponents such as Botticelli were already breaking the new rules.