What was called the Northern Renaissance was not a renaissance in the Italian sense. In the Netherlands - present-day Belgium (then called Flanders) and the Netherlands - artists had no Roman ruins to rediscover. Thus his break with the Gothic style produced a brilliant flourishing of the arts.
While Italians sought inspiration from classical antiquity, Northern Europeans were inspired by nature. In the absence of classical sculpture to teach ideal proportions, they painted reality exactly as it seemed to them, in a detailed realistic style. The portraits bore such an exact resemblance that Charles VI of France sent a painter to three different courts to paint possible consorts (spouses, wives), basing his choice only on the portraits.
