Keenly anticipated by art historians throughout the world, this comprehensive study is dedicated to the work of Robert Campin, the great Flemish artist first known as the Master of Flemalle, who, along with van Eyck, is considered the founder of the Netherlandish painting of the Early Renaissance.
Robert Campin, the teacher of Rogier van der Weyden, was among the first European painters to break with the more artificial International Gothic style, focusing instead on the connection between religious and secular life. In his comprehensive study of Campin, Felix Thürlemann sheds new light on this important era of European painting, a period when the depiction of supernatural shifted to everyday settings, the fascinating use of symbolic messages first appeared, and the use of oils opened up a new world of subtlety and differentiation in the artist's palette. Based on years of intensive research and marvelously illustrated with full color plates and details of his works, this study enables the art world to examine an artist whose superior talent, despite his long-lasting anonymity, was never itself in doubt.