Foreshadowing the Reformation

If we are to fully understand and appreciate the late Medieval and Renaissance paintings of great Northern European artists, we need to investigate the religious and spiritual beliefs and practices of the time. It has been quite fashionable over recent decades largely to ignore the contemporary religious context and to concentrate instead on the part played by economics in the creation of works of art. This book argues that there was a symbiotic relationship between those artistic and spiritual worlds and that by bringing the insights from those worlds together we can get a much richer appreciation of medieval life.