In the 14th, 15th and 16th century most artists and craftsmen were members of the great artist guild of St. Luke.  The guilds of St. Luke operating in Antwerp and Bruges were extremely influential in not just the local art scene but politics as well. According to author and historian Ernest Gilliat-Smith, "Amongst the illuminators enrolled in the Guild of St. Luke were all sorts and conditions of men; from polished courtiers like Jan van Eyck to men doubtless of as questionable character as the obscure individual, half artist, half perhaps fortune teller, though, for the matter of that, he swore on the damnation of his soul he had had no dealings with familiar spirits, whose vagabond life the rack of Tristam has revealed to us. But whatever their social rank may have been, like the monks who worked alongside of them, the cloister was the rock from which they were hewn, and ‘the exquisite work which some of them produced is sufficient to alone explain the origin of Flemish panel painting."

  Ill-Matched Lovers c.1520 by Quentin Massys

Important Northern Renaissance  Artists