Northern Schools in Louvre Paintings (Flanders, Netherlands, Germany)

(The Virgin of chancellor Rolin, by Jan van Eyck (circa 1390–1441), oil on panel)

The Louvre Museum has one of the largest collections of paintings from the Northern Europe, with 1130 paintings (Flanders, the Netherlands and Germany).

The Flemish and Dutch schools are the best represented. For the Flemish primitives, there are prominent works such as The Virgin of the Chancellor Rolin by Jan van Eyck, the Triptych of the Braque family of Rogier van der Weyden, the Nave of the Fools of Jerome Bosch, The Marriage of Cana by Gerard David and The Lender and his wife of Quentin Metsys. Works by Dirk Bouts, Hans Memling, Joos van Cleve, Joachim Patinier, Bernard van Orley, Jan Gossaert dit Mabuse, Lucas de Leyde and Pieter Brueghel the Elder are also on display. The Dutch and Flemish golden age (17th century) is illustrated with fifteen paintings by Rembrandt, including Bathsheba in Bath holding the letter of David and The Pilgrims of Emmaus, several Frans Hals (including The Bohemian and The lute player), nineteen of Van Dyck, fifty-one of Rubens, including the twenty-one paintings of the Cycle of Marie de Medici, as well as two canvases from the hand of Vermeer, The Lacemaker and The Astronomer. The landscapes swarming with Jan Brueghel the Elder characters, the intimate interior scenes of Pieter de Hooch and Gerard Ter Borch, the paintings of Pieter Saenredam’s church interiors, the genre scenes by Jan Steen and David Teniers on Young as well as the landscapes of Jacob van Ruisdael are also represented.

For the German painting, there are works of the fifteenth century as the Pietà of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, paintings by Albrecht Dürer (Portrait of the artist holding a thistle, the first of his self-portraits), Lucas Cranach the Elder or several portraits of Hans Holbein the Younger (including that of Erasmus), as well as, for the nineteenth century, paintings by the romantic Caspar David Friedrich. Finally, one room exhibits Austrian Baroque paintings from the 18th century while another exhibits Scandinavian paintings from the first half of the 19th century, including landscapes treated in the romantic vein.