In the fifteenth century, a number of master painters, including Jan van Eyck and Roger Campin, flourished in the Netherlands. However, by the early nineteenth century many of their works had been dispersed by the upheavals of the French Revolution. Any contemporary understanding of these artists and their paintings must take into account that historical data about them remains fragmentary and that art historians from different disciplines have approached them in varying ways. Rather than offering a chronological discussion, this book presents early Netherlandish paintings as individual objects that have confronted scholars with countless interpretive challenges. Part One analyzes the style and provenance of each work, the insights gained from it, and the questions that remain, while Part Two is devoted to the history of collecting and of art historical research and interpretation during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. Part Three addresses how three fields of modern art-historical research - technical examination, archival research into patronage, and iconology - have produced analyses of these artworks. "Early Netherlandish Painting" advances the scholarly dialogue about an important period in European art by assembling the current scholarly research in the field and underscoring the common ground among scholars from different disciplines.

New in the Eerdmans Classic Biblical Commentaries collection. In this commentary on John-originally published in Dutch in 1987 and translated into English a decade later-Herman Ridderbos engages the host of twentieth-century interpretations while also developing his own integral understanding of John in which the Gospel emerges as a profoundly theological work. Beginning with a theological introduction on "the peculiar character of the Fourth Gospel," Ridderbos uses verse-by-verse exposition to unpack John's distinctive apostolic character, offering expert literary and homiletical exegesis of the Fourth Gospel "as the Christian church adopted it."