Northern Renaissance
North of the Alps, at the same time, a different Renaissance was underway. Northern painters perfected oil painting, rendering every strand of hair and every glint on brass (the famous story that Van Eyck 'invented' oil painting traces back to Vasari, and the current understanding is different: he perfected a technique that already existed in the medieval period, rather than inventing it from nothing). That oil technique traveled south into Italy, while an understanding of perspective and the human body moved north in exchange. Dürer crossed the Alps twice, carrying what he'd learned back home and cutting it into prints to distribute widely. This channel ran both ways from the very start. How far the northern fineness went can be seen in one small mirror at the back of one painting. Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait, 1434. On the far wall of the room hangs a round convex mirror. In it you can see the couple from behind, and two men coming into the room, one of them raising an arm. Immediately above the mirror is the painter's signature. Could the man in the mirror be van Eyck himself? That question is one the National Gallery in London, which owns the painting, asks itself. The person doing the painting may be reflected, very small, inside the room he painted. The new medium, oil, had become able to carry detail that fine.