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Hieronymus Bosch
(1450?-1516), one of the most famous of the Netherlandish artists, known for his
enigmatic panels illustrating complex religious subjects with fantastic, often
demonic imagery.
The documents about Bosch indicate that he followed the
predictable life of a prominent Roman Catholic artist in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, a
provincial but prosperous town located in the modern Netherlands close to the
Belgian border. His father and grandfather were both painters in the same town
before him, and apparently Bosch lived all his life there. He married a local
woman and joined the lay organization of the Confraternity of Notre Dame. Bosch
was responsible for designing a stained-glass window, among several other works,
for the town church. His art was well known outside ‘s-Hertogenbosch during his
lifetime.
References to astrology,
folklore, witchcraft, and alchemy, in
addition to the theme of the Antichrist and episodes from the lives of exemplary
saints, are all woven together by Bosch into a labyrinth of late medieval
Christian iconography. Scholars differ in their interpretation of
Bosch's art, but most agree that his pictures show a preoccupation with the
human propensity for sin in defiance of God, as well as with God's eternal
damnation of lost souls in hell as a fateful consequence of human folly.
Stylistically, Bosch worked in a manner called alla
prima, a method of applying paint freely on a preliminary ground of brownish
paint. He was familiar with Dutch manuscript paintings and with foreign prints,
and many of his images can be traced to these sources.
Dated works by Bosch do not exist and, of those panels
that bear his signature, many might have been by followers. His pictures were
widely imitated well into the later 16th century. During the 1550s, a veritable
Boschian revival occurred in Antwerp that involved artists such as Pieter Huys
and even Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who openly made variations of
his paintings. Descriptions of some of his works were written by 16th-century
Spanish nobleman Don Felipe Guevara. Among other sources, these have aided
modern art historians in determining Bosch's authentic works.
Among the dozens of Boschian paintings, the autograph
works generally accepted as his include the following: The Marriage at
Cana (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam), The Seven Deadly Sins
(Prado, Madrid), Crucifixion (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels),
The Hay Wain (Prado), The Death of the Miser (National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C.), The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Museu Nacional
de Arte Antiga, Lisbon), The Garden of Earthly Delights (Prado), The
Adoration of the Magi (Prado), and Christ Carrying the Cross (Museum
voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent). |
