Tag: Netherlands

Beguines
Articles

Herb-workers and Heretics: Beguines, Bakhtin and the Basques

During the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the word beguine was used by women to identify themselves as members of a wide-spread and influential women’s movement. The same term was used by their detractors and overt opponents, with the highly charged negative meaning of “heretic.” The etymology of the term “beguine” and ultimate origins of the movement have never been satisfactorily explained.

Van Eyck - Arnolfini Marriage (1434)
Articles

The Art of the Science of Renaissance Painting

During this study we began to examine paintings for the presence of optical artifacts that could serve as supporting scientific evidence for these visual observations. Here we briefly describe some of the scientific evidence contained within three paintings that demonstrate lenses were in use by certain artists to project images as early as c1425. We present only a general discussion here, and refer interested readers to previous publications for details.