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| Anonymous Netherlandish Artist Mystic Marriage of St Agnes ca. 1475 oil on panel Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht |
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| Albrecht Bouts The Annunciation ca. 1480 oil on panel Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| Geertgen tot Sint Jans St John the Baptist in the Wilderness ca. 1484 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Justus van Gent (Joos van Wassenhove) Institution of the Eucharist (Pala del Corpus Domini) 1473-75 oil on panel Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino |
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| Jean Hey (Master of Moulins) Ecce Homo 1494 oil on panel Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
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| Jean Hey (Master of Moulins) St Joachim and St Anne meeting at the Golden Gate in the presence of Charlemagne (altarpiece fragment) ca. 1491-94 oil on panel National Gallery, London |
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| Jean Hey (Master of Moulins) St Joachim and St Anne meeting at the Golden Gate in the presence of Charlemagne (detail) ca. 1491-94 oil on panel National Gallery, London |
"This realism should not be understood as 'drawn from life,' but as lifelike in the execution of the representation. The human figure has physical warmth, objects and nature are particularised materially and presented in three-dimensional space. In Italy this sense of reality was seen as something extraordinary even at the time, as exemplified by a rare description dating from 1449 by the humanist Cyriac of Ancona of a Descent from the Cross of Rogier van der Weyden. Full of wonder, he described the 'breathing faces, in contrast to the body which was like that of a real dead person.' The colourful garments, meadows, flowers and trees, the hills, the decorated doorways, gold, pearls and gems, seemed to him to be 'created directly by nature rather than by human art.' In contrast to the art of Italy, light is the key to the appearance of things in northern art, not their geometric definition in space. Painting developed into a system based on transparent layers of paint, with oil as the binding agent; this technique gave the colours a degree of saturation and depth such as had never been seen before. Reality was not coloured, but made to exude colour."
– Dirk de Vos, The Flemish Primitives (Princeton University Press, 2002)
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| Jean Hey (Master of Moulins) The Annunciation ca. 1490-95 oil on panel Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Hans Memling The Crucifixion, with Saints and Donors before 1494 oil on panel Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca' d'Oro, Venice |
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| Hans Memling Man of Sorrows, Blessing ca. 1480-90 oil on panel Palazzo Bianco, Genoa |
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| Robert Campin St John the Baptist (altarpiece fragment) ca. 1410 tempera on panel Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| Petrus Christus The Annunciation (altarpiece fragment) 1452 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| workshop of Hugo van der Goes Virgin and Child ca. 1485 oil on panel National Gallery, London |
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| Hugo van der Goes Adoration of the Magi (Monforte Altarpiece) ca. 1470 oil on panel (originally the central panel of a triptych, and subsequently cut down) Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Hugo van der Goes The Crucifixion ca. 1470 oil on panel Museo Correr, Venice |