International Gothic style and characteristics

International Gothic Style continued the movement began by the trecento Italian artists who discovered how to render space and the perspective on a bidimentional support. Artists like Master Theoderic from Prague and Master Bertam von Minden, from Hamburg, were two of the painters who along with others from France and other parts of Europe adopted and developed the style of the International Gothic that flourished by the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century.

Painting, along with the other arts developed during the Middle Ages under the strong impressions and rules of the romanticism, dominated by the religious philosophy of the time. The International Gothic marked a transition from the expression of human suffering and the general idea of sin, punishment and penitence toward "a vision of pure and naive beauty, of religious fervour and profound mystic peace"(Huizinga, 222).

The international Gothic, added to the old Gothic style a different perspective. Naturalistic elements combined with non-naturalistic ones gave the religiously dominating subjects the chance to evolve into ways of expression closer related to the dawn of humanism. Material and organic forms are strictly separated in the imagistic arts of the International Gothic. The human emotions, reflections of the soul in the human form of the body replaced the rigid lifeless portraits of the Middle Ages and placed them closer to realistic expressions. Konrad von Soest's Crucifixion contains one naturalistic element: John's dramatic expression of suffering at the terrible sight of the crucified Christ. On the other hand, the position of the crosses, the boneless human bodies of Christ and the two thieves, the Roman soldiers that are dressed like knights, the Virgin and those around her who are rather serene than contorted by suffering, the decorations, plants and animal are non-naturalistic. The artist combined these two elements in a painting that was no statement of radical change from the Medieval Gothic, but a compromise between the decorative arts of the Middle Ages and the new art styles developed by the Italians during the first half of the fourteenth century.

Book illumination and panel painting are two painting milieus that developed the International Gothic style in France. "Book illumination, on the other hand, developed so rapidly in the direction of perspective naturalism that it finally ceased to be book illumination" (Panofsky, 1971, p. 28). "During the fourteenth century, however, the miniatures assumed more and more the character of independent paintings and about 1400 many a book illustration, entirely defying the restrictions of a decorative principle, more closely approximated the modern ideal of a "prospect through a window" than did the most progressive panels. Developed into full-fledged landscapes or realistic interiors, the miniatures produced at the beginning of the fifteenth century seem ready to step out of the vellum page and to become in esse what they already were in posse: "pictures" in the Albertian or "modern" sense of the term" (idem).

The painting on vellum, called "Lament over the Dead Christ" is another example of a combination between classic and International Gothic style. The dead bleeding body of Christ, positioned at the bottom of the painting, the Virgin who is almost collapsing over him and has the face of a very old woman, John whose face is facing God, God himself who blesses those three figures above while holding his hand above his head, all these are naturalistic elements that are placed in a frame and a background of ornamental non-naturalistic elements like the golden wings of the angels that surround them. The strong tension coming from the strong emotions expressed in the picture are however framed in a strict harmony rendered by the proportions and the positions of bodies and faces as a result of lessening the tension. Gradually, the ornaments and the classical background in the pictures with religious themes and in portraits tend to become elements that are no longer essential to the subject, but remain more like adjacent elements that are placed there along with naturalistic elements that emerged from the realist sources.