Key Ideas:

So much changed in Northern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that the era deserves to be evaluated on its own terms. Some of the most important changes in Northern Europe include the:

• invention of the printing press, c. 1450

• advent of mechanically reproducible media such as woodcuts and engravings

• formation of a merchant class of art patrons that purchased works in oil on panel

• Protestant Reformation and the translation of the Bible from the original languages into the vernacular or common languages such as German and French

• international trade in urban centers