Northern Renaissance

[1] Universities and the printed book helped spread the spirit of the age through France, the Low Countries and the Holy Roman Empire, and then to Scandinavia and Britain in the early 16th century – a process halted by the religious schism caused by Henry VIII who had earlier extensively employed Italian artisans at Nonsuch Palace and Hampton Court under Thomas Wolsey.

Writers and humanists such as Rabelais, Pierre de Ronsard and Desiderius Erasmus were greatly influenced by the Italian Renaissance model and were part of the same intellectual movement.

During the English Renaissance (which overlapped with the Elizabethan era) writers such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe composed works of lasting influence.

The slow demise of feudalism also weakened a long-established policy in which church officials helped keep the population of the manor under control in return for tribute.

Its power to disseminate information enhanced scientific research, spread political ideas and generally impacted the course of the Renaissance in northern Europe.

As in Italy, the printing press increased the availability of books written in both vernacular languages and the publication of new and ancient classical texts in Greek and Latin.

Early Netherlandish painting often included complicated iconography, and art historians have debated the "hidden symbolism" of works by artists like Hubert and Jan van Eyck.

Renaissance humanism and the large number of surviving classical artworks and monuments encouraged many Italian painters to explore Greco-Roman themes more prominently than northern artists, and likewise the famous 15th-century German and Dutch paintings tend to be religious.

By the end of the 16th century, artists such as Karel van Mander and Hendrik Goltzius collected in Haarlem in a brief but intense phase of Northern Mannerism that also spread to Flanders.