LATE GOTHIC

After the gradual waning of international Gothic, new formal languages developed during the course of the fifteenth century with the emergence of “national” styles. While Renaissance Italy followed its own path, in the Germanic regions and the Netherlands, in France, England and Spain, Gothic traditions were revitalized by powerful innovative currents continuing down to the Reformation and sometimes even extending further into the  sixteenth century. The directions taken, contradictory or complementary, swung between tension and sweetness, exaggeration and simplicity, caricature and inwardness as the case might be, gradually paving the way for the adoption of the first Italianisms, as in France, or on the contrary promoting almost “pre-baroque” expressive values, as in the Germanic world.