Abstract
The influence of Flemish landscape on the Italian painting is well known. It affected particularly the composition of Florentine painting in the 1470s. While the genuine innovation of Florentine painting consists in the objective representation of the human body and perspective, Flemish painting establishes the landscape as a Folie in which the figures in the foreground stand out. The introduction of such a landscape into Florentine painting is testified to by one of Botticelli's early works : the background of the London Adoration of the Magi borrows directly from the landscape of the valley in S. Francis receiving the Stigmata by Jan van Eyck. Many Florentine painters of the time seem to have copied from the Flemish landscape in their studios, since they left few sketches based on the study of nature. Therefore, Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ in the Uffizi may be presumed to have been executed by the same process. There were affinities between Flemish painting and Florentine painting, with each compensating for its own weakness with the other's advantage. The Flemish landscape, too, was a complement to Florentine painting. In conclusion, the landscape as Folie established by Jan van Eyck was useful Florentine istoria compositions produced from the 1480s onwards.
