INTRODUCTION

Since Erwin Panofsky published his classic Early Netherlandish Painting in 1953, an enormous amount of new data has come to light which has greatly deepened our knowledge of fifteenth-century art from the Low Countries. It would not be easy, however, and might prove impossible to write another synthetic study. Although some of Panofsky's views are outdated, for example those on the development of the individual artistic personalities, no alternative basis has been found for a comprehensive survey. Research into the artistic production of the early Netherlands takes place nowadays primarily within subdisciplines such as technical examination, archival research, and iconology.

The new technical and archival information has caused a positivist momentum which seems unmatched by the apparently less strict methods of iconological interpretation. While some scholars study paintings with infrared reflectography and other technical procedures, and archivists repeat the work of their nineteenthcentury precursors more completely or pounce upon documents previously ignored, the iconologists stand somewhat indecisively on the sidelines. But it is precisely from this side that a breakthrough could open the way, if not to new syntheses, at least to more collaboration between the subdisciplines. To this end iconology must study symbolic meanings in ways that consider not only the religious or intellectual content of a picture, but also its artistic and material form, and its historical function.

Even though these subdisciplines have not yet worked together in a new synthesis, collaboration has not been utterly lacking; they have been combined in the study of individual works of art, an interconnectedness manifest in the present chapter. The search for answers to the questions raised by the confrontation with the works of art inevitable crosses the boundaries of the subdisciplines, as the results of the various kinds of research are weighed against one another.

The following selection of individual works and their questions is limited to the most important masters: Robert Campin, alias the Master of Flémalle, Rogier van der Weyden, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, Dirk Bouts, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling, Geertgen tot Sint Jans, and Gerard David. In this musée imaginaire the reader is guided from one picture to the next, so that at the end of that route he will have gained an idea of both the character of early Netherlandish paintings and the manner in which they have been studied.