Translated from German by Heinz Norden
Comments and notes by Henri Pauwels, assisted by Anne-Marie Hess
With Index

Conditie: wat vlekjes op de zijkant, omslag vertoont stootplekjes, restant van een sticker op de achterkant.

This new edition of Friedländer's work 'Die Altniederländische Malerei' is based on the following principles:
Friedländer's text stands unchanged in this english translation.
The catalogues are brought up-to-date, especially in respect of the location of the paintings.
The total of 1260 illustrations in the original edition has been brought up to more than 3600.
The original German edition 'Die Altniederländische Malerei' was published between 1924 and 1937 by Paul Cassirer, Berlin (Vol. I-XI) and A.W. Sijthoff, Leyden (Vol. XII-XIV)


Early Netherlandish Painting (German: Die altniederländische Malerei) is a pioneering 14-volume series of illustrated books by the German art historian Max Jakob Friedländer (1867–1958). The first volume was published in 1924, and the series ran until 1937. It was the first comprehensive modern art-historical survey of Early Netherlandish painting, a term often used in art history to describe artists of the Low Countries during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance.
Friedländer developed an interest in northern art of the period while director of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The collection included a large selection of Flemish paintings, including Jan van Eyck's Madonna in the Church, Rogier van der Weyden's Miraflores Altarpiece and Altar of Saint John, and Hugo van der Goes' Adoration of the Maji. Friedländer was struck by the lack of biographical detail on even the most accomplished of the artists, some of whom were still identified by notnames, the sometimes poorly supported attributions, and general historical neglect.
The book focuses on establishing biographical details for the painters, attributing individual works, and detailing their major stylistic themes and techniques. The undertaking was extremely difficult, given the scant historical record of even the most significant artists.
The series was a major influence on Erwin Panofsky's equally seminal Early Netherlandish Painting, which expanded on Friedländer's biographical and stylistic analysis to focus on iconography and historical context.

Antwerp Mannerism is the name given to the style of a group of largely anonymous painters active in the Southern Netherlands and principally in Antwerp in roughly the first three decades of the 16th century, a movement marking the tail end of Early Netherlandish painting, and an early phase within Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting. The style bore no relation to Italian Mannerism, which it mostly predates by a few years, but the name suggests that it was a reaction to the "classic" style of the earlier Flemish painters, just as the Italian Mannerists were reacting to, or trying to go beyond, the classicism of High Renaissance art.
The Antwerp Mannerists' style is certainly "mannered", and "characterized by an artificial elegance. Their paintings typically feature elongated figures posed in affected, twisting, postures, colorful ornate costumes, fluttering drapery, Italianate architecture decorated with grotesque ornament, and crowded groups of figures...". Joseph Koerner notes "a diffuse sense of outlandishness in Antwerp art, of an exoticism both of subject and means ... evoking a non-localized elsewhere".
Adoration of the Magi by Anonymous Antwerp Mannerist
The subject of the Adoration of the Magi was a particular favourite, as it allowed the artists to give free rein to their preoccupation with ornament and the simulation and imitation of luxury products. The Biblical Magi were also regarded as the patron saints of travellers and merchants, which was relevant for the painters' clientele in what had become Europe's main centre for international trade, in a "meteoric rise" after 1501, when the first Asian cargos were landed by Portuguese ships. The theme of rich commodities arriving from distant and exotic parts of the world had a natural appeal to Antwerp merchant buyers, a large proportion themselves foreign. Many artists from around the Netherlands and further afield moved to the city to benefit from the boom, which saw large workshops "that grew into assembly lines", and a great increase in the quantity of art produced, but also some fall in quality; this is especially seen among the minor figures grouped under this term. Many smaller works were produced without commissions, for sale from shop windows, at fairs, or to dealers, rather than for an individual commission, an indication of a growing trend in Netherlandish painting. The Antwerp Pand was a trade fair lasting six weeks, where many painters sold works, and the latest ideas were exchanged and diffused.
Although sometimes spoken of as the "subterm “Antwerp Mannerism” as part of "Northern Mannerism in the early sixteenth century", the movement is better distinguished from the Northern Mannerism of later in the century, which developed from Italian Mannerism. There was very little continuity between the two, with Northern Mannerism proper developing in the Netherlands only after a gap of about fifty years after Antwerp Mannerism declined in the 1530s, and after the next stylistic wave of Romanism, heavily influenced by Italian painting, as seen in the later works of Gossaert.

Max Jakob Friedländer (1867 in Berlin – 1958 in Amsterdam) was a German museum curator and art historian. He was a specialist in Early Netherlandish painting and the Northern Renaissance, who volunteered at the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin in 1891 under Friedrich Lippmann. On Lippmann's recommendation, Wilhelm von Bode took him on as his assistant in 1896 for the paintings division. He was appointed deputy director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum (then containing the Berlin State Museums' old master paintings and sculpture) under Bode in 1904 and became director himself from 1924 to 1932, working on his history From Van Eyck to Bruegel and the 14-volume (printed in 16, with supplements) survey Early Netherlandish Painting. In 1933 he was dismissed as a "non-Aryan" and in 1939 had to move to Amsterdam as a result of being a Jew. He attained the rank and title of geheimrat (privy councillor) under the German Empire. He also donated several works to the collection and worked in the art trade as an advisor, to Hermann Göring among others.
He invented the style term Antwerp Mannerism, and created many of the notnames for undocumented artists in this style, and others of the period.
(bron: Wikipedia)

Volumes Early Netherlandish Painting:
I. The van Eycks - Petrus Christus
II. Rogier van der Weyden and the Master of Flémalle
III. Dieric Bouts and Joos van Gent
IV. Hugo van der Goes
V. Geertgen tot Sint Jans and Jerome Bosch
VI. Memlinc and Gerard David
VII. Quentin Massys
VIII. Jan Gossart and Bernard van Orley
IX. Joos van Cleve, Jan Provost, Joachim Patenier
X. Lucas van Leyden and other Dutch Masters of the Time
XI. The Antwerp Mannerists, Adriaen Ysenbrant
XII. Jan van Scorel and Pieter Coeck van Aelst
XIII. Antonis Mor and his Contemporaries
XIV. Pieter Bruegel. General Index

Jan de Beer - Pseudo Bles - Goswin van der Weyden - Meester van 1518 - Jan Gossaert - Albert Cornelis - Ambrosius Benson - Lancelot Blondeel