Robert Campin, also known as the Master of Flémalle, brings to Flemish painting a natural and everyday quality which is entirely new

A new altarpiece is installed in the cathedral in Ghent, introducing the powerful realism of Jan van Eyck

Giovanni Arnolfini, a merchant from Lucca trading in Bruges, commissions from van Eyck a portrait of himself and his wife

Chancellor Nicolas Rolin, of Burgundy, commissions an altarpiece from Jan van Eyck

Rogier van der Weyden, the third in the extraordinary trio of Flemish artists of the 1430s, is appointed painter to the city of Brussels

Oil paints, long familiar in the Netherlands, begin to be adopted in Italy in place of tempera

Jerome van Aken works almost exclusively in his native s' Hertogenbosch, from which he derives the name Hieronymus Bosch

Tommaso Portinari, the Medici agent in Bruges, commissions an altarpiece from Hugo van der Goes for his family church in Florence

Hieronymus Bosch paints the most detailed of his exotically surreal canvases, The Garden of Earthly Delights

Pieter Brueghel the Elder depicts biblical events taking place among the peasants of the Netherlands countryside

Rubens returns from Italy to Antwerp, where he soon establishes Europe's most successful and prolific studio

The 19-year-old Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck is employed by Rubens in Antwerp as his chief assistant

The Dutch painter Frans Hals displays exceptional brilliance in his group portraits, including several of the civic guards of Haarlem

The Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn develops a life-long interest in self-portraiture

Rembrandt moves from his home town of Leiden to set up a studio in Amsterdam

Rembrandt marries Saskia van Uylenburgh, who will feature in many of his paintings

The Dutch artist Gerrit Dou paints with exquisite precision and becomes leader of a group known as the 'fine painters'

The profusion of paintings on sale in Holland astonishes an English visitor, John Evelyn

The Dutch artist Aelbert Cuyp paints landscapes that glow with the warmth of gentle sunlight

Jan Vermeer marries and begins a quiet career as a painter and art dealer in his home town of Delft

The painter Pieter de Hooch is a friendly guide through the welcoming spaces of the seventeenth-century Dutch courtyard and home

Jacques-Louis David, unmistakably identified as Napoleon's painter, is banished from France after the fall of the emperor and moves to Brussels

Dutch painter Vincent Willem van Gogh moves from Antwerp to Paris

Piet Mondrian and other Dutch artists establish the movement known as De Stijl, together with a magazine of the same name

The Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte has his first one-man show, at the Galerie Centaure in Brussels