Dominicus Lampsonius, The Life of Lambert Lombard (1565); and Effigies of Several Famous Painters from the Low Countries (1572)

Together, Dominicus Lampsonius's Life of Lambert Lombard (1565) and the Effigies (1572) established frameworks for a distinctly Netherlandish history of art. Responding to a growing sense of Netherlandish cultural and political identity on the eve of the Dutch Revolt, these texts proposed a critical alternative to Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists and its Italian model of art historical development, celebrating local ingenuity and skill. They remain the starting point for any history of the northern Renaissance.