Flemish school, ca. 1520. "Ecce Homo. Oil on panel. Mesurements:... Lot 7

Flemish school, ca. 1520. "Ecce Homo. Oil on panel. Mesurements: 38 x 29 cm; 58'5 x 51 cm (frame) The work in question, belonging to the Flemish school, is worked with the precise and meticulous brushstroke, of enormous realism, which characterised the Flemish artists since the 15th century. Against a dark neutral background, the snowy skin of Jesus stands out, bringing great luminosity to the scene, as do the columns that frame him, with their fluted shafts and arched tops. During the 15th century, the Netherlandish realist style had a strong influence abroad, especially in Italy, but in the 16th century the situation was reversed. The Italian Renaissance spread throughout Europe, and Antwerp became the centre of the Flemish school, supplanting Bruges and acting as a centre for the penetration of Italian influences. Mannerist influences thus arrived in the Low Countries, superimposed on the 15th-century style. Many painters continued the style of the Flemish primitives, but others were so open to Renaissance influences that they even stopped painting on panel, the traditional medium of Flemish painting, and began to paint on canvas like the Italians. The main introducers of the Renaissance in the Low Countries were Jan Gossaert (c.1478-1532) and Bernard Van Orley (c.1489-1541), painters who may have travelled to the Netherlands to paint on canvas like the Italians.), painters who may have travelled to Italy but who, in any case, may have become acquainted with the new style through other channels of penetration, such as Raphael's cartoons for the tapestry series of "The Acts of the Apostles", woven in Brussels, the work of Dürer, who made two trips to Italy and passed through the Low Countries, and the figure of Jacopo de Barbari (c.1445-1515), an Italian painter who travelled to Flanders.