![]() ![]() 4 Such imagery had long informed cathedral portals ever since the Romanesque–a commonplace, familiar to readers of this Journal. This imagery certainly had firm foundations in the region, as revealed by even a cursory review of Craig Harbison’s dissertation on the Last Judgment in Netherlandish painting. His essential repertoire consists of God, Satan, angels, and the demons of hell, especially when taken together to form the entire concatenation of the Last Judgment. Of course, the cultural inheritance of Christian thought and imagery was retained by Bosch as well: the life of Christ as well as the Christo-mimetic lives of later Christian saints, particularly hermit saints, provided him with some of his most basic themes ( fig. 1 Jheronimus Bosch, Saint Jerome in Prayer, oil on panel, 80.1 x 60.6 cm. Bosch also follows inherited convention in employing grisaille or brunaille tones for the exteriors of many of his triptychs, including the presentation of conventional saint figures on the outside of his Vienna Last Judgment as well as less conventional narrative scenes in monochrome on the outside of the Lisbon Saint Anthony, the Prado Epiphany, and the Garden of Earthly Delights. 3 The use of a bell-shaped Antwerp triptych model suggests both the later date and probable workshop status of one contested triptych, the Bruges Torments of Job. Even the shapes of his triptychs range from standard fifteenth-century rectangular wings and centers for most of his triptychs to the rounded tops more typical of sixteenth-century Antwerp. Even though he stemmed from a family of painters, what strikes all observers most about Bosch is his originality, conventionally described in modern terms as his “genius.”Īs the Latin saying declares, ex nihilo nihil fit, or “nothing is made out of nothing.” And as Lynn Jacobs and others have noted, Bosch utilizes the same formats as his Netherlandish predecessors, particularly triptychs. He seems to defy such connections and to break with all precedents, particularly in terms of what he might have taken from earlier models of painting in either Flanders or Holland. This thinking proves particularly unsatisfying for trying to explain a uniquely original artist like Jheronimus Bosch. 2 In an attempt to elucidate something more essential about Bosch’s artistic mission and the core of his spirituality, I offer the following essay.Īrt historians always worry about origins–in the form of genealogies of training or in concerns about artistic influence. 1 Reviews of that book were consistent with most of the criticisms addressed to books on Bosch: all such volumes provide interesting discussions of context and content, but somehow none has gotten at the essence of this unique and puzzling artist. ![]() 7.Ģ. This painting was acquired as by Pieter Huys, and it is listed on the RKD as an artist in the circle of Jan Mandyn.Several years ago I added my voice to the vast chorus of scholarly commentary on Bosch. Campbell, The early Flemish pictures in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Cambridge 1985, p. 2 It illustrates the moment that Christ, having torn asunder the gates of hell, delivers the redeemed from purgatory. A brightly illuminated Christ stands at center, wearing a red mantle and holding a victory banner, surrounded by the similarly illuminated souls that he will bring with him to Heaven. Filling the composition around these figures are a variety of odd and somewhat curious creatures, from the crowned mouse peering from the castle tower, to the monsters flying the boat through the sky, to the armored critter crawling in the foreground.ġ. This colorful and detailed panel shares visual affinities in both style and composition with two of Bosch’s most well-known followers, Pieter Huys ( circa 1500 -1560) and Jan Mandijn (1519-1584). Infernal subjects such as Christ in Limbo, an episode described in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, were vividly explored by the Flemish painter Hieronymous Bosch (1453 – 1516). Such themes lent themselves well to his intriguing compositions as well as his diabolical and outlandish creatures, all of which would serve as an endless source of inspiration for generations of artists to follow, including the artist of the present panel. Early sources confirm that Bosch explored a subject similar to this in at least four paintings, all now lost, two of which were in the collection of King Philip II of Spain. ![]()
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