Flemish art, art of the 15th, 16th, and early 17th centuries in Flanders and in the surrounding regions including Brabant, Hainaut, Picardy, and Artois, known for its vibrant materialism and unsurpassed technical skill. From Hubert and Jan van Eyck through Pieter Bruegel the Elder to Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish painters were masters of the oil medium and used it primarily to portray a robust and realistically detailed vision of the world around them. Their paintings reflect clearly the changes in fortune of this narrow slice of country between France, Germany, and the Low Countries: first came the peaceful, pious, and prosperous 15th-century reigns of the dukes of Burgundy, then a long confused succession of religious crises and civil wars, and finally the imposition of autocratic rule by the kings of Spain.
