Nelleke de Vries participated in the Summer School: Northern Renaissance Art, a joint organization between the Rijksmuseum and the RKD–Netherlands Institute for Art History.

Over ten days of presentations and site visits, the program spanned the study of paintings, drawings, prints, stained-glass windows, manuscripts and sculptures from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives. 

Participants of the summer school followed an intensive program, discussing all aspects of Northern Renaissance art on different locations, such as Amsterdam, The Hague, Xanten, Kalkar, Leiden, Gouda, Haarlem, Utrecht and Antwerp. Activities ranged from visits to churches, print rooms and museums to exclusive visits of storage facilities and in-depth workshops, lectures and debates. Different aspects of Northern Renaissance art were discussed, from art historical issues such as art in situ, artistic practices in Haarlem and Antwerp and the function of works on paper, to practical issues such as the state of the field, the role of the curator and the pros and cons of connoisseurship and technical research. Participants discussed issues ranging from iconography, the migration of objects and artists, and workshop practice to art in its original environment versus art in a museum. The group addressed both religious art as well as art depicting everyday life from the period, and culminated with the lecture ‘Humour in Sixteenth-century Painting’ by Friso Lammertse, curator of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Through the series of lectures, presentations and excursions, as well as the introduction to methods of technical research and conservation, the summer school provided a comprehensive overview of current Northern Renaissance research projects and methodologies.