The Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden (1399-1464) was the most influential northern artist of the 15th century. His style is characterized by fluency of line, rhythmic composition, and expressive intensity.

Rogier van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck, and Robert Campin were the founding fathers of the main traditions of early Netherlandish painting. The formal beauty and spiritual intensity of Weyden's art, however, made Netherlandish painting more readily accessible to succeeding generations of artists than the work of his two major contemporaries.

Rogier van der Weyden, probably born at Tournai, was the son of a master cutler. Weyden was apprenticed to Campin on March 5, 1427. In 1432 he was received into the Tournai guild as a master and presumably remained in that city for the next 3 years. In 1436 he is recorded in Brussels, where he was appointed city painter. With the exception of a pilgrimage to Rome in 1450, Weyden resided...