Hugo van der Goes is one of the greatest of the early painters of the northern Renaissance.
The Flemish Primitives included some figures we did not have room to discuss here-painters such as Dirk Bouts and
Hugo van der Goes, and later innovators such as Quentin Massys (who incorporated a more fluid, Italianate manner into the style).
A very general section next locates the Madonna in a broad historical context of European art by interweaving discussion of its iconography, through a discussion of the impact of printing, with an account of its devotional function and style, via consideration of other paintings of the same date by artists as disparate in kind and geography as Mantegna,
Hugo van der Goes, and Botticelli.
