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Bosch, Hieronymus
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Bosch, Hieronymus [Hieronimus, Jérôme, Jheronimus; Aken, Jeroen van; El Bosco]
(b c. 1450; d ’s Hertogenbosch, bur 9 Aug 1516).
Netherlandish painter and draughtsman. The most distinctive and idiosyncratic of 15th-century Netherlandish artists, he produced a body of work remarkable for its depiction of fantastic, often diabolic, creatures, generally moralizing representations of the consequences of sin and folly.
I. Life, commissions and patrons.
Bosch came from a family of painters originally from Aachen (hence the painter’s real name of Jeroen van Aken). His great-grandfather, a painter called Thomas, migrated westward, like many other artists, and in 1404 became a citizen of Nijmegen. Thomas’s brother Johan den Meler (‘the painter’) was also active there. Thomas’s son Jan (d 1454) is recorded at ’s Hertogenbosch in 1426. Four of Jan’s five sons were painters, including Hieronymus’s father, Antonius. Hieronymus’s brother Goossen was also a painter. Hieronymus Bosch is first documented in 1474 and first mentioned as a painter in 1480–81. In June 1481 he appears to have married the daughter of a well-to-do member of the local patriciate, Aleyt Goyarts van den Meervenne (d 1522–3), who was 25 years his senior; the marriage was apparently childless. In 1488 Bosch owned half a house with its grounds, inherited from his wife, in the Schildersstraetken, ’s Hertogenbosch. During the period 1474–98 there are fourteen documents concerning financial transactions by Bosch and his wife, four of which relate to Bosch selling his wife’s real estate for cash (not, however, including their principal property, the estate of Ten Roedeken), perhaps because art was not bringing him a sufficient income. Thus already by 1500— before he had achieved fame as an artist—Bosch did not have to paint for a living and was wealthy enough to paint whatever he chose. In fact, tax records for the years 1502–3 and 1511–12 show that Bosch was in the wealthiest top 10% of citizens of ’s Hertogenbosch (see Blondé and Vlieghe, 1989). Important to Bosch’s social position in the town was his membership of the Brotherhood of Our Lady, from whom he received his first commissions. An ordinary member from 1486–7 onwards, at the new year of 1488 he was already a guest of honour at the annual ‘swan banquet’, and he became a sworn member in that year—an early indication of his high social status. Of c. 300 sworn members, more than half were priests or magistri (academics). Officially only clerici (those who had taken at least minor orders) could be sworn members, but exceptions were made for aristocrats, magistrates, large landowners and prosperous businessmen. Bosch was either a member of this latter category, perhaps through marriage, or a clericus with some previous education; or he may have qualified on both grounds. At this time he was only about 38, and the honour was unusual for a ‘craftsman’: he was the only artist to be a sworn member. For the Brotherhood, Bosch executed five minor works in 1493, 1503–4, 1508–9 and 1511–12. According to J. B. Gramaye (1610), there were several altarpieces by Bosch in the St Janskerk in
’s Hertogenbosch (now all untraced). They included an altarpiece for the Brotherhood’s chapel, of which Bosch painted the inner wings, an altarpiece of the Creation of the World (Hexameron mundi) for the high altar (probably commissioned by the church), an altarpiece with four scenes from the Story of Judith and the Story of Esther for the chapel of St Michael (donor unknown) and, finally, an altarpiece with the Adoration of the Magi . Also in the church were paintings of David and Abigail and Solomon and Bathsheba , both of which are known from later copies (Switzerland, priv. col.). Bosch also supplied works of a traditional religious kind for several wealthy members of the bourgeoisie, including the Bronckhorst– Bosschuysse family, for whom he painted an Adoration of the Magi , and other unidentified families (another version of the Adoration of the Magi , Madrid, Prado; the Ecce homo , Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.; the Crucifixion , Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.). A triptych with the Martyrdom of St Ontcommer (Venice, Doge’s Pal.) Hieronymus Bosch: triptych with The Haywain, oil on panel, was probably painted for an Italian patron, perhaps from northern 1.35×1.00… Italy. The Brotherhood no doubt offered Bosch useful social contacts, among them several Spaniards in Brabant. Diego de Guevara, father of Felipe de Guevara, who was already a member of the Brotherhood in 1498–9, possessed six paintings by Bosch, including the tabletop with the Seven Deadly Sins and an original version of The Haywain (both Madrid, Prado). Another member was Count Hendrick III of Nassau, who probably commissioned the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’ (Madrid, Prado; see fig. below), which was kept at his court in Brussels. The Brotherhood generally afforded more contact with courtiers, patricians and the Dutch nobility than with the rulers of the Netherlands. It thus speaks highly for Bosch’s status that the Burgundian ruler Philip the Fair ordered a large altarpiece with the Last Judgement from him in 1504 (to which the fragment in Munich, Alte Pin., may belong)—the only commission for which there is documentary evidence. Philip may also have ordered a Temptation of St Anthony in 1505, and before that, according to inventories, Isabella the Catholic (d 1505) owned works signed by Bosch. A Temptation of St Anthony was also in the collection of Margaret of Austria, while Philip of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht (1465–1524), possessed at least one humorous scene by Bosch and also a Stone Operation (or ‘Cure of Folly ’; version, Madrid, Prado, probably not the original; see fig. below), although not stated as painted by Bosch. In these cases it is not known whether the works were acquired through intermediaries or commissioned direct from the artist. The works ordered or bought by the ruling nobility all belong to a single category (the Last Judgement and scenes of hermits) and were apparently supplied after 1500, while the Dutch nobility owned one humorous scene and the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’. There is no trace of Bosch’s many secular moralizing compositions in aristocratic circles. Paintings of this kind in Spanish collections in the late 16th century seem to have been acquired a good while after Bosch’s death. This was certainly the case with the large group of works systematically assembled by Philip II of Spain and possibly those owned by de Guevara. It is thus apparent that the aristocracy showed interest in Bosch at a very late stage, perhaps when he already had a certain reputation. Moreover, the ruling nobility was interested in a particular genre for which he became famous only in the 16th century, that of fantastic diablerie . Yet it is unclear to what extent they appreciated and understood his imagery. Antonio de Beatis’s description (1517) of the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’, for instance, shows a total failure to understand it. Bosch’s work, in fact, may have been deliberately emptied of any specific content, so that it would find favour as a curiosity and allow private interpretations. For most of the untraced works by Bosch, now known only from copies, replicas and inventories, there is no contemporary archival evidence. However, since they contain several basic elements of what may be called an early bourgeois ideology and their original function is obscure, it has been suggested that they were intended mainly for an upper middle-class urban public. Perhaps many of them were executed in the popular technique of watercolour on canvas: this was less expensive. Knowledge is greatly hindered by the rarity of upper middle-class inventories for the citizens of the south-eastern Netherlands in the period c. 1480–1520.
II. Work and iconography.
All the classifications of Bosch’s work according to chronological phases and stylistic development so far proposed are self-contradictory and subjective (see §III below). The situation is further complicated by the fact that many of the works are now known only from documents and prints (e.g. the Blind Leading the Blind ). They are thus best considered in terms of their iconography, which is extremely varied. The subjects can be roughly divided into two categories, though to some extent these overlap. Furthermore, many of the works are composed of dozens of small scenes that cannot be immediately related to any single theme, such as the main subject of the picture.
1. Religious.
Besides those works (untraced) previously in the St Janskerk, ’s Hertogenbosch, Bosch’s religious pictures included the Story of Jonah, which was in Cardinal Grimani’s collection in Venice in 1521 (untraced), and two panels (both Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen) depicting Noah’s Ark on Mt Ararat and Monsters Populating the Earth (?after the Fall of the Rebel Angels); their shape suggests that they were wings of a triptych, of which the central panel may have represented the Flood (untraced). Among his other (untraced) Old Testament scenes, to all of which a metaphorical meaning was attached in the 16th century, were: the Tower of Babel (the struggle against tyranny and discord), Lot and his Daughters (unchasteness and ‘unequal love’) and Job ( patientia or longsuffering). The hermits and saints painted so often by Bosch, for instance the altarpiece of the Hermits (Venice, Doge’s Pal.), not only conveyed a narrative didactic religious message, illustrating the lives of the saints, but also often contained a moralizing message. They served as an admonition to self-control (especially over bodily passions), patience and constancy in the face of temptation, as in depictions of St Jerome (e.g. Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.; Venice, Doge’s Pal.); the Temptation of St Anthony (e.g. Madrid, Prado; Venice, Doge’s Pal.); St Giles (Venice, Doge’s Pal.); and St John the Baptist in the Wilderness (Madrid, Mus. Lázaro Galdiano). The essential significance of the hermit saint’s life, as seen by Bosch, is the rejection of society and the withdrawal from all earthly vices, a strong theme among the early humanists of the Upper Rhine (e.g. Sebastian Brant, Geiler von Kaisersberg), with whom Bosch had so much affinity. The hermit’s trials, they believed, were much easier to bear than those of worldly people—a view hard to reconcile with the practical morality of the same early humanist groups and their bourgeois sympathizers. The hermit was thus apparently more of a rhetorical model, an epitome of the wise man, impervious and invulnerable. The humanists also admired the hermit’s self-control and single-mindedness. Hermits were the only group of saints whom Bosch depicted independently, in their own right as a type and an exemplary ideal. The backgrounds of Bosch’s representations of hermit saints are rarely directly connected with their relevant legend. They are the artist’s invention, often implying a wholly independent ethical system. This is especially the case with the famous triptych with the Temptation of St Anthony (Lisbon, Mus. N. A. Ant.), in which Bosch used the hermit as a vehicle for his own convictions or rather those of the group for which it was intended. Apart from the hermits, he made few paintings of saints: none, for instance, of the Virgin, St Anne and other devotional saints who were then so popular. He was certainly not working to meet the needs of the ordinary devotee, but for particular patrons for whom his own intellectual contribution was generally decisive. Other depictions include St John on Patmos (Berlin, Gemäldegal.) and several untraced works: St Martin and the Beggar (preserved in a print published by Hieronymus Cock), St John the Evangelist (formerly in the collection of Mencía de Mendoza, the third wife of Hendrick III of Nassau), the Conversion of St Paul (in the 17th century with the Antwerp art dealer Forchondt) and St Dominic and the Heretics (mentioned by Karel van Mander). Bosch also used depictions of the Last Judgement (e.g. Bruges, Groeningemus.) as a vehicle for his ethical views: he presented a fundamentally pessimistic concept of the world, in which all men were foolish and sinful and very few could expect salvation. Bosch did not represent the
resurrection of the dead, and the division between sheep and goats is not very equal. Compared to the few blessed, there is always a legion of damned, already tormented by devils on earth. Eschatological thinking was of lasting importance in Bosch’s work. He saw mankind in the light of eternity, the eschatological schema serving as a final legitimization of his secular ethical views. In the tabletop with the Seven Deadly Sins , roundels in the corners depict the Four Last Things (Death , Hell, Terrestrial or Earthly Paradise and Celestial Paradise ), with the all-seeing eye of Christ in the centre. Similar scenes—the Blessed in the Terrestrial Paradise , the Ascent of the Blessed into the Celestial Paradise , the Fall of the Damned and Hell—are represented in four other panels (all Venice, Doge’s Pal.). The Haywain (see fig. above) and the ‘ Garden of Earthly Hieronymus Bosch: triptych with the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’, Delights ’ both have a representation of Hell on the right-hand panel. oil… Hay was at that time a symbol for everything worthless and transient; Bosch applied it to all earthly possessions and pleasures that men blindly pursue, leading to eternal damnation (the wain is driven by devils towards hell). The haywain motif is not his own invention: a 16th-century print of the same title (Nuremberg, Ger. Nmus.) bears long inscriptions based, on the evidence of language, on a Utrecht source of c. 1500. In the triptych with the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’, Bosch depicted the history of the world in terms of the Creation of the World by God the Father (on the outer wings), the earthly or Terrestrial Paradise (Garden of Eden) on the left inner wing and Hell on the right inner wing—all treated sub specie sexualitatis et procreationis. On the outer side the newly created world is already clothed in wonderful flora, symbols of nature and sexuality, which are also found in the central panel and in temptation scenes by the artist. The left wing shows the institution of marriage (Adam and Eve) and already hints at the sexual perversion of it (the owl in the fountain). The central panel shows the false paradise of love, probably as the aetas aurea from Adam to Noah, to be repeated at the end of the world sub specie luxuriae (‘sicut in diebus Noe …’). This grail, as the pseudo-paradisus amoris was called in the 15th and 16th centuries, is situated between the earthly and the supernatural and contains both heavenly and diabolical elements: thus some interpreters see it as depicting a paradisiacal state, others a state of sin. The ambiguity is, in fact, intended and is fundamental to a proper understanding of the triptych. Its ‘message’ is approximately as follows: sexuality can become an end in itself, owing to an unchaste interpretation of the paradisiacal state of marriage instituted by God, with the command to increase and multiply. Thus men and women believe they are living in a lovers’ paradise (the grail), but it is really false and pernicious. Bosch supported this view ‘historically’: sex and procreation were known from the beginning (the outside of the wings); in the ‘golden age’ they turned to luxuria ; and at the end of the world (which may come at any time) they will again lead back to evil. The preaching of ‘pure’ marriage is not so much a matter of religious thinking as of the upper middle-class preoccupation with marriage, the family and the household (concerns that were strongly promoted c. 1500). Besides Old Testament themes, saints and moralizing religious subjects, Bosch painted many scenes from the Life of Christ , centering on his childhood and the Passion. To the first category belong the Nativity (copy, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.), the Adoration of the Magi (Madrid, Prado, and copies after several lost prototypes; version New York, Met., see fig.); the Flight into Egypt (untraced; mentioned by van Mander) and Christ among the Doctors (copies in Paris, Louvre, and elsewhere). From Christ’s ministry there is only the Marriage at Cana (possible copy, Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen). The cycle of the Passion is introduced by Hieronymus Bosch: Adoration of Christ Driving the Money-changers from the Temple (copies, the Magi, oil and gold on… Glasgow, A.G. & Mus., and Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst) and the Entry into Jerusalem (untraced; ex-G. de Haen priv. col., Cologne, 1581). Then come the Betrayal of Christ (untraced, ex-Philip II priv. col.; copies, San Diego, CA, Mus. A., and Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), Christ before Pilate (copies, Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen, and Princeton, NJ, U. A. Mus.), the Ecce homo (Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.), the Crowning
with Thorns (London, N.G.), the Mocking of Christ (Madrid, Escorial), the Carrying of the Cross (versions, Madrid, Escorial (ex-Philip II); Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.), the Crucifixion (Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.), the Entombment (drawing, London, BM), the Lamentation (two untraced prototypes) and the Descent into Limbo (untraced, ex-Archduke Ernest priv. col., 1593; variant versions survive). In the Passion scenes Bosch emphasized the suffering and patience of Christ and the bestiality of his tormentors, who represent the blind and sinful world par excellence. It has often been suggested that the way in which Christ looks directly at the spectator is intended to recall the Imitatio Christi in the Devotio moderna . This sorrowful glance is reminiscent of early humanist visions, such as those expressed in Thomas More’s De tristitia Christi . The Christocentrism itself recalls the Devotio moderna . The sources of Bosch’s religiosity have not yet been fully explored. The ordinary late medieval devotional literature explains many elements, but by no means all. Bosch’s attitude to religion, as manifested in his works, may well have been determined by the taste of advanced bourgeois circles, whose religious outlook was itself an amalgam of ‘typical late medieval’ thought, early humanism and the Devotio moderna .
2. Moralizing.
Bosch’s many secular moralizing works served as a vehicle for expressing his thoughts on norms and values. The most detailed explanations of these paintings—and those best founded historically —are those of Dirk Bax, who pointed out that nearly all the vices depicted by Bosch are regularly characterized as ‘follies’ and are generally ascribed to a motley group of members of the lowest social class. The principal vices represented are unchastity, profligacy, quarrelsomeness, gluttony, drunkenness and self-inflicted poverty. Bosch’s connection between ‘vice’ or ‘evil behaviour’ and ‘folly’ or ‘stupidity’—a theme explored in such paintings as the Stone Operation, the Blind Leading the Blind and the Ship of Fools —was in tune with the intellectual outlook of the day. The equation of virtue and wisdom, and vice and folly, is found in the 15th-century ‘literature of folly’, such as Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff (‘Ship of fools’; 1494), the works of Thomas Murner and many other less-known or anonymous authors. Detachment, moderation, self-knowledge, control over passions, and, above all, reason were regarded as important values. This morality, which arose in bourgeois circles c. 1460–90, was aimed at defending the status quo, though it departed from the old order’s ideology by virtue of its rationalism, ethicism and individualism. In Bosch’s work the equation between folly, sin and (socially) reprehensible behaviour is not consciously expressed by a specific type representing folly; it is incidentally implied, as though Bosch regarded it as a selfevident basis for his moral precepts. It is not a question of his having been ‘influenced’ by the literature of folly: there was a common ideology that found expression in all the various media. In line with contemporary attitudes towards ‘social deviation’, Bosch associated sin and folly with a large cross-section of society’s lower classes: whores, jailbirds, topers and revellers, vagabonds, beggars and travelling mountebanks, procuresses, common soldiers and poor people of all sorts. Whereas earlier the poor had not been frowned on, in the later Middle Ages they began to be strictly controlled and stigmatized as good-for-nothing parasites and idlers. This reached a climax c. 1525, when the regulations for poor-relief were extensively overhauled. From the 14th century onwards, and especially in the 15th and 16th centuries, a number of satirical texts contained long lists of ‘depraved persons’, who it was thought should be banished from society, as fools were in the relevant literary genre. Fools and social undesirables were thus condemned to suffer a similar fate in both literature and art. Bosch in his pictures provided countless deviants whom he placed in hell or in the company of demons. Vagrants are another common subject in his work, as in The Vagabond (Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen), The Conjurer (preserved only in copies and imitations), the foreground figures of the centre panel and the outer wings of The Haywain and several other lost works: The Verdict , The Fosterer and the Blind Leading the Blind. The vices condemned by Bosch can be divided into four categories. In the first place, he disapproved of giving way to ‘wild’ bodily impulses: aggression, love of food and drink and, above all, sexuality. This accorded with contemporary ideas, which were expressed in the opposition of nature and culture, savagery and civilization, in both pictures and moral treatises. Bosch interpreted these ideas from a concrete social point of view, using everyday figure types. He also
disapproved of popular festivities and amusements, seen as opportunities for carnality and illbreeding, a love of pleasure and roisterous behaviour—vices constantly associated with the common people. The third category is concerned with work and idleness, wealth and poverty, avarice and prodigality. Here Bosch’s position was more moderate: he seems to have condemned the love of gain for its own sake but was even more opposed to extravagance. Self-inflicted poverty was often associated with those on the lowest rung of the social ladder and ascribed to vices from the first two categories: drunkenness, whoring and excessive merrymaking. In contrast, he praised the love of work and a moderate use of money and property. All this is reflected in The Haywain , the Death of the Miser (Washington, DC, N.G.A.) and the Scenes of Idleness (preserved only in 16th-century prints). The fourth and last category with which Bosch was concerned is rash and baseless aggression. He was an advocate of constant watchfulness, reticence, attentiveness, detachment, restraint and caution, as can be seen in the drawing of the Owl in the Tree (‘The Field Sees, the Wood Listens ’; Berlin, Kupferstichkab.) and the painting ‘Keep a Weather Eye Open ’ (c. 1600; Heverlee, Arenberg col.). The concept of threat plays a central part in Bosch’s world view: the individual is attacked in his moral and spiritual integrity by his own impulses, rooted in sensuality, by the external world and by supernatural forces of evil. Fear, both of material ruin and of spiritual damage, was a basic element of bourgeois culture c. 1500. The self was regarded as an extremely weak entity, constantly obliged to resist and remain firm. Along with the sense of the individual’s weakness goes an obsession with self-preservation as the ideal of utilitarian wisdom. Folly is self-destructive, leading to eternal damnation and the company of devils, a state Bosch saw embodied in the lowest ranks of human society. Although Bosch himself belonged to the wealthiest and socially highest class in ’s Hertogenbosch, the attitudes to work, money, possessions and their use, as expressed in his paintings, seem typical of the contemporary urban middle class (guilds, not commerce). The main emphasis is on moderation, avoiding unbridled acquisitiveness and also blind indifference. Then comes the defence of the work ethos and the loathing of extravagance, which leads to poverty and ruin. All this is related to oeconomica or domestic economy: a life of peace and contentment with the fruits of one’s labour, eschewing the desire for gain and novelty. Bosch endorsed the ideology of an urban middle class of craftsmen and small producers, to whom economy was also a moral question. This is certainly not a capitalist vision, but the emphasis on work and thrift (expressed negatively by Bosch: the rejection of laziness and squandering) already helps to prepare the way for capitalist discourse.
3. Sources.
Bosch made extensive use of lower-class ‘folklore’, such as popular songs, ballads, proverbs, sayings and metaphors—all of which was then pressed into the service of an élite, bourgeois system of morals and satirical method. For Bosch the language and proverbs of the lower classes (whether these were substandard or not) presented a certain sense of obscurity, which was still deliberately cultivated as the vehicle of an intellectual morality: ‘the wise man speaks in riddles’. At the same time he used popular modes of expression and thought subconsciously to give form to his ideas. He also drew extensively on the inversive mode of expression in popular seasonal revels, for example Shrovetide. This may explain why he constantly represents wrong types of behaviour and never those he considered right. The principle of reversal is a widely recognized anthropological phenomenon: the central categories of a culture are dialectically defined by proclaiming their opposite, in a fictitious breach of the norm that, in fact, confirms it as well as providing amusement. Folklore traditions also provided specific subjects to be represented in Bosch’s work, as in the following paintings (all untraced): the Mock Tournament on the Ice , The Elephant , Strife and Dance on Shrove Tuesday and in Lent , the Blind Men’s Boar Hunt , in all of which a burlesque contest is the central feature. This explicit content, however, is used metaphorically to convey a more
fundamental message. Strife and Dance on Shrove Tuesday is a metaphor for the opposition between rival sets of values: in literature, from c. 1500 it is always Lent that wins, but in art, the outcome is uncertain, for Bosch attached too many negative connotations to carnival time. The other scenes are also metaphorical: by depicting opposites, they satirize foolish, aggressive and licentious popular amusements (e.g. the Mock Tournament), the ill-effects of error and rashness (e.g. the Blind Men’s Boar Hunt ) or unthinking hostility between social groups and classes (e.g. The Elephant ). Other folklore themes in Bosch’s work centre on the ritual celebration of folly. The Stone Operation or ‘Cure of Folly’ is not inspired by real surgical procedures (in medieval times it was thought that cutting a stone out of a madman’s head would cure him) but by burlesque illustrations of the futility of trying to make fools wise. The Shearing of the Fool (drawing, London, BM) is based on similar organized spectacles, intended to hold up folly to public opprobrium but later forbidden by the authorities because of their ‘licentious’ character.
III. Style, technique and chronology.
Bosch’s technique and style are not homogeneous, which has led to much confusion. For example he seems to have used several different techniques of underdrawing. Van Schoute (1967) examined with infra-red reflectography six panels accepted as authentic and identified what seemed to him three sketching techniques. His first category, to which he assigned the Crowning with Thorns (London, N.G.) and the St John on Patmos (Berlin, Gemäldegal.), consists of sketches drawn with a coarse brush and diluted paint, giving few details and merely indicating a general design. Individual strokes are short and of unequal length. Many changes of form were made at the painting stage. In his second category are the Ship of Fools (Paris, Louvre) and the Allegory (New Haven, CT, Yale U.A.G.), in which the underdrawing has areas of profuse hatching, giving an impression of great care and accuracy. Parallel oblique strokes, with a slightly mechanical effect, run from upper left to lower right. Changes of form are fairly minor. In his third and final category he placed the Carrying of the Cross (Ghent, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.) and the outer wings of the triptych with the Temptation of St Anthony (Lisbon, Mus. N. A. Ant.): these, he suggested, are characterized by a not very detailed sketch, in lines of moderate thickness that are often interrupted but firm and give only a summary indication of the different forms. Here again, an unusual number of changes of form and composition is evident in the final painting. Filedt Kok (1972–3), by contrast, distinguished only two types of underdrawing in Bosch’s work. The first group, in a ‘sketchy’ style, exemplified in the St Christopher (Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans– van Beuningen), is based on a broad, summary underdrawing, visible only under the garments, executed with a coarse brush in thin paint. Not much was changed in the painting, though the forms were further elaborated. Grouped around this work are other compositions showing a saint in a landscape, such as the St John on Patmos, in which the underdrawing consists of mostly straight lines of varying width, some simple, others repeated alongside or over one another. The hatched strokes are made up of short, rather irregular lines. To this group may be added the St John the Baptist in the Wilderness (Madrid, Mus. Lázaro Galdiano) and the St Jerome (Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.). All these works form a more or less coherent stylistic group. To the second main group, described as in a ‘careful’ style, Filedt Kok assigned the Carrying of the Cross (Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.), featuring a confident, flexible line gracefully indicating forms and contours, with a little hatching here and there. This technique is also found in van Schoute’s second group and in such works as the Death of the Miser and The Vagabond (both Washington, DC, N.G.A.). In this latter work, the profuse diagonal hatching is more varied and three-dimensional in character. This very carefully modelled underdrawing was preceded by a preliminary sketch, some traces of which can still be discerned. The works in this group, including the inside of the wings of the Lisbon triptych with the Temptation of St Anthony , exhibit the same careful underdrawing and thinly applied paint, with many white highlights. As Filedt Kok pointed out, these two different styles of underdrawing sometimes occur together, as in the Lisbon triptych, and thus afford no evidence as to chronology. Such differences in the
amount of detail in underdrawings, for instance between foreground and background figures, also occur in the works of Bosch’s contemporaries and are easily explained by the degree of attention given to the various elements. Filedt Kok further suggested that there may be a connection between the manner of drawing and the technique of the final painting, that it is the very thinly painted panels that have the most precise underdrawing. This second conclusion, while valid for certain groups, is contradicted by such works as the Crowning with Thorns , which is thinly painted over a schematic underdrawing (see fig. above). Just as Bosch’s paintings exhibit many styles of underdrawing, ranging from very careful to extremely casual, they also reveal totally different pictorial styles—sometimes carefully painted, with thick impasto, sometimes rapidly applied in an apparently slapdash manner, with a thin layer of paint. There are also many intermediate stages. To the first extreme belong, for example, the left wing and central panel of the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’, the outer side of the Bruges Last Judgement , the triptychs of the Hermits and the Martyrdom of St Ontcommer and St John the Baptist in the Wilderness . Examples of the second style are the central panel and right wing of The Haywain , the Death of the Miser , The Vagabond and others. Despite the fact that Bosch’s different styles of underdrawing and painting technique provide no help whatsoever in dating, it is possible to identify recurring patterns in individual groups of paintings. For instance a fundamental similarity of technical execution exists between three of Bosch’s large triptychs: the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’, The Haywain and the Last Judgement . In each case the left wing is thickly and carefully painted, while the underdrawing is entirely or nearly invisible. The right wing is executed more rapidly, with a thin, transparent layer of paint, with the underdrawing visible in many places. The central panel in each instance is intermediate between the other two styles. The underdrawing on the outer wings is invisible throughout, while the structure of the paint layer varies from moderate to very thick.
IV. Critical reception and posthumous reputation.
Besides Philip the Fair, Isabella the Catholic, Margaret of Austria and Philip of Burgundy, there were other collectors of Bosch’s works in the first half of the 16th century. In 1521 and 1528 at least five paintings were in the possession of Domenico and Marino Grimani in Venice. The collection of paintings by Bosch assembled by Mencía de Mendoza, Marquesa de Cenete and third wife of Hendrick III of Nassau, suggests that Spanish interest in Bosch’s work may have been linked to a local tendency towards eschatologism and prophetism, which verged on heresy: the heretical group of the Alumbrados (Enlightened Ones), associated with the Third Order of St Francis, presented features of Erasmianism and free thought, as well as apocalyptic claims, and their earliest centre, in 1519, was at the house of Mencía de Mendoza in Guadalajara. Another Bosch collector, imprisoned on a charge of heresy, was the humanist Damião de Goes. Thus c. 1500 there seem to have been certain inherent ideological tendencies in Spanish aristocratic and court circles that, while not strictly heretical, prepared the way for an interest in one aspect of Bosch; by the first half of the 16th century some humanist circles, inclining to heterodoxy, had gone still further and actually saw Bosch as a kindred spirit. This would mean that in Spanish and Spanish–Burgundian circles Bosch was approached one-sidedly from the beginning and was very soon ‘reinterpreted’ or endowed with a spurious content, giving rise to the ‘Bosch myth’. The myth was fundamentally twofold: an orthodox Bosch and a heretical one. Other 16th-century collectors of Bosch were Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1530–86), Fernando Alvárez de Toledo, Duque de Alba, and his illegitimate son Fernando de Toledo (d 1591), Archduke Ernst of Austria and his brother, Emperor Rudolf II of Prague. However, it was, above all, Philip II of Spain who systematically procured important works by Bosch, presenting them, from 1574, to the monastery of the Escorial. In the 17th century Spanish royal collections were enriched by dozens more examples of Bosch’s works, most of which have been lost. It was in Spain, too, that ‘El Bosco’ became a familiar name in art and literary writings until c. 1800.
From Felipe de Guevara, Ambrosio de Morales and Fray José de Sigüenza in the 16th century and the early 17th to Antonio Ponz and J. A. Ceán Bermúdez in the late 18th, dozens of art theorists have kept alive Bosch’s fame in Spain. Many literary works, for example entremeses (short comic interludes) by Felix Lope de Vega (1562–1635), used his name. References to Bosch in Italian art treatises are briefer: he was mentioned by Guicciardini, Vasari and Lomazzo, always as the embodiment of the fantastic, absurd and grotesque. In the Netherlands it was, above all, Karel van Mander’s Schilderboeck that provided an appreciation of Bosch and information concerning some of his lost works. Bosch then fell out of favour, except in Spain, and although he was mentioned in the art literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, it was without special enthusiasm. He was not rediscovered until the end of the 19th century, when his apocalyptic vision began to be appreciated for new reasons.
Bibliography
Ceán Bermúdez ; EWA ; Thieme–Becker
Early sources
G. Vasari: Vite (1550, rev. 2/1568); ed. G. Milanesi (1878–85) F. de Guevara: Comentarios de la pintura (MS., c. 1560); ed. A. Ponz (Madrid, 1788), pp. 41–4
L. Guicciardini: Descrittione di …tutti Paesi Bassi (1567) G. P. Lomazzo: Trattato dell’arte de la pittura, scultura ed architettura (MS., 1584); ed. (Rome, 1844), ii, pp. 201–2 K. van Mander: Schilder-boeck ([1603]–1604) J. de Sigüenza: Historia de la Orden de San Jerónimo (1605/ R Madrid, 1905), pp. 837ff A. Ponz: Viaje (1772–94 ); ed. C. M. de Rivero (1947) X. de Salas: El Bosco en la literatura española (Barcelona, 1943) A. Salazar: ‘El Bosco y Ambrosio de Morales’, Archv. Esp. A. , xxviii (1955), pp. 117–38 X. de Salas: ‘Más sobre El Bosco en España’, Homenaje a J. A. van Praag (Amsterdam, 1956), pp. 108– 13 M. Levisi: ‘Hieronymus Bosch y los Sueños de Francisco de Quevedo’, Filología , ix (1963), pp. 163–200
H. Heidenreich: ‘Hieronymus Bosch in Some Literary Contexts’, J. Warb. & Court. Inst., xxxiii (1970), pp. 171–99
Documentary sources
C. Justi: ‘Die Werke des Hieronymus Bosch in Spanien’, Jb. Preuss. Kstsamml. , x (1889), pp. 141–4
J. Ebeling: ‘Jheronimus van Aken’, Miscellanea Jan Gessler, i (Antwerp, 1948), pp. 444–57
P. Gerlach: ‘De bronnen voor het leven en het werk van Jeroen Bosch’ [Sources for the life and work of Hieronymus Bosch], Brabantia , xvi (1967), pt 1, pp. 58–65, pt 2, pp. 95–104 ; Fr. trans. of pt 2, Gaz. B.A. , 6th ser., lxxi (1968), pp. 109–16 P. Gerlach: ‘Jheronimus van Aken alias Bosch en de Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Broederschap’, Jheronimus Bosch: Bijdragen bij gelegenheid van de herdenkingstentoonstelling te ’s Hertogenbosch 1967 [Essays on the occasion of the memorial exhibition at ’s Hertogenbosch 1967], pp. 48–60 J. K. Steppe: ‘Jheronimus Bosch: Bijdragen tot de historische en de ikonografische studie van zijn werk’, Jheronimus Bosch: Bijdragen bij gelegenheid van de herdenkingstentoonstelling te ’s Hertogenbosch 1967 , pp. 5–41 [with ref. to edns of Spanish royal inventories and others] P. Gerlach: ‘Oirschot en de familie vanden Meervenne’, Campina , ii (1973), pp. 183–93 F. Gorissen: Das Stundenbuch der Katharina von Kleve: Analyse und Kommentar (Berlin, 1973), pp. 1100–08, 1129–65 [the van Aken family in Nijmegen and ’s Hertogenbosch, c. 1350–1516, with geneaological charts and transcriptions of the relevant docs] P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Rudolf II als verzamelaar van werk van en naar Jheronimus Bosch’, Jb.: Kon. Mus. S. Kst. (1981), pp. 119–33 B. Blondé and H. Vlieghe: ‘The Social Status of Hieronymus Bosch’, Burl. Mag. , cxxxi/1039 (1989), pp. 699–700
Bibliographies
W. Gibson: Hieronymus Bosch: An Annotated Bibliography , ed. C. Harbison (Boston, MA, 1983) [for the lit. to 1983] P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Über neuere Bosch-Literatur’, Krit. Ber. , xiv (1986), p. 52 [suppl. to Gibson]
Monographic studies
P. Lafond: Hieronymus Bosch (Brussels and Paris, 1914) M. J. Friedländer: Die altniederländische Malerei , v (Berlin, 1927); Eng. trans. as Early Netherlandish Painting (Leiden, 1967–76) Jeroen Bosch (exh. cat. by D. Hannema and J. G. van Gelder, Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans, 1936)
L. von Baldass: Hieronymus Bosch (Vienna, 1941, 2/1959) C. de Tolnay: Hieronymus Bosch , 2 vols (Baden-Baden, 1965) D. Buzzati and M. Cinotti: L’opera completa di Hieronimus Bosch (Milan, 1966) Jheronimus Bosch (exh. cat., ed. K. G. Boon and others; ’s Hertogenbosch, Noordbrabants Mus., 1967)
W. S. Gibson: Hieronymus Bosch (London, 1973) J. Snyder: Bosch in Perspective (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1973) S. Takashika: The Complete Work of Jheronimus Bosch (Tokyo, 1978) [best illus] R. Marijnissen and P. Ruyffelaere: Jheronimus Bosch (Antwerp, 1987) [does not cover lost works, tapestries or graphic work; concentrates on the artist’s religious work]
P. Vandenbroeck: Jheronimus Bosch: Tussen volksleven en stadscultuur [Hieronymus Bosch: between the life of the people and urban culture] (Berchem and Antwerp, 1987) E. Larksen: Hieronymus Bosch: Catalogo completo (Florence, 1998)
Iconography
D. Bax: Ontcijfering van Jeroen Bosch (The Hague, 1949); Eng. trans. as Hieronymus Bosch: His Picture Writing Deciphered (Rotterdam, 1979) D. Bax: ‘Beschrijving en poging tot verklaring van het Tuin der Onkuisheiddrieluik van Jeroen Bosch, gevolgd door kritiek op Fraenger’, Acad. Anlct.: Kl. S. Kst., lxiii/2 (1956) [whole issue devoted to iconog. study of the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ ] J.-P. Jouffroy: ‘Le Jardin des Délices’ de Jérôme Bosch: Grandeur nature (Paris, 1977) [good illustrations]
D. Bax: ‘Hieronymus Bosch and Lucas Cranach: Two Last Judgement Triptychs. Description and Exposition’, Acad. Anlct.: Kl. S. Kst., cxvii (1982) [whole issue] P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Jheronimus Bosch’ zogenaamde Tuin der Lusten : I’ [Hieronymus Bosch’s so-called Garden of Earthly Delights: I], Jb.: Kon. Mus. S. Kst. (1989), pp. 9–210 M. Bergman: ‘The Garden of Love: A Neoplatonic Interpretation of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych’, Gaz. B.-A. , cxv (May–June 1990), nos 1456–7 , pp. 191–212 W. Gibson.: Hieronymus Bosch and the Vision of Hell in the Late Middle Ages (Tokyo, 1990) P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Jheronimus Bosch’ zogenaamde Tuin der Lusten : II’, Jb.: Kon. Mus. S. Kst. (1990), pp. 9–192 A. Simonson: ‘On Spiritual Creativity in Hieronymus Bosch’, Fifteenth Cent. Sutd., xviii (1991), pp. 221–58
G. Clark: Bosch’s Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness and the Artist’s ‘Fleurs du Mal’ (Princeton, 1994)
Technique
R. van Schoute: ‘Over de techniek van Jeroen Bosch’, Jheronimus Bosch: Bijdragen bij gelegenheid van de herdenkingstentoonstelling te ’s Hertogenbosch 1967 [Essays on the occasion of the memorial exhibition at ’s Hertogenbosch 1967], pp. 72–9 M. Sonkes: ‘Le Dessin sous-jacent chez les primitifs flamands’, Bull. Inst. Royal Patrm. A. , xii (1970), pp. 195–225 J. P. Filedt Kok: ‘Underdrawing and Drawing in the Work of Hieronymus Bosch: A Provisional Survey in Connection with Paintings by him in Rotterdam’, Simiolus , vi (1972–3 ), pp. 133–62 P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Problèmes concernant l’oeuvre de Jheronimus Bosch: Le Dessin sous-jacent en relation avec l’authenticité et la chronologie’, Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, Colloque IV: Leuven, U. Catholique, 1981 , pp. 107–19 M. del Carmen Garrido and R. van Schoute: ‘El tríptico de la Adoración de los magos de Hieronymus van Aeken Bosch: Estudio técnico’, Bol. Mus. Prado , vi (1985), pp. 59–77 M. del Carmen Garrido and R. van Schoute: ‘Les Péchés capitaux de Jérôme Bosch au Musée du Prado
à Madrid: Etude téchnologique, premières considérations’, Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, Colloque VI: Leuven, U. Catholique, 1985 , pp. 103–6
Paul Vandenbroeck
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Bosch, Hieronymus
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Bosch, Hieronymus [Hieronimus, Jérôme, Jheronimus; Aken, Jeroen van; El Bosco]
(b c. 1450; d ’s Hertogenbosch, bur 9 Aug 1516).
Netherlandish painter and draughtsman. The most distinctive and idiosyncratic of 15th-century Netherlandish artists, he produced a body of work remarkable for its depiction of fantastic, often diabolic, creatures, generally moralizing representations of the consequences of sin and folly.
I. Life, commissions and patrons.
Bosch came from a family of painters originally from Aachen (hence the painter’s real name of Jeroen van Aken). His great-grandfather, a painter called Thomas, migrated westward, like many other artists, and in 1404 became a citizen of Nijmegen. Thomas’s brother Johan den Meler (‘the painter’) was also active there. Thomas’s son Jan (d 1454) is recorded at ’s Hertogenbosch in 1426. Four of Jan’s five sons were painters, including Hieronymus’s father, Antonius. Hieronymus’s brother Goossen was also a painter. Hieronymus Bosch is first documented in 1474 and first mentioned as a painter in 1480–81. In June 1481 he appears to have married the daughter of a well-to-do member of the local patriciate, Aleyt Goyarts van den Meervenne (d 1522–3), who was 25 years his senior; the marriage was apparently childless. In 1488 Bosch owned half a house with its grounds, inherited from his wife, in the Schildersstraetken, ’s Hertogenbosch. During the period 1474–98 there are fourteen documents concerning financial transactions by Bosch and his wife, four of which relate to Bosch selling his wife’s real estate for cash (not, however, including their principal property, the estate of Ten Roedeken), perhaps because art was not bringing him a sufficient income. Thus already by 1500— before he had achieved fame as an artist—Bosch did not have to paint for a living and was wealthy enough to paint whatever he chose. In fact, tax records for the years 1502–3 and 1511–12 show that Bosch was in the wealthiest top 10% of citizens of ’s Hertogenbosch (see Blondé and Vlieghe, 1989). Important to Bosch’s social position in the town was his membership of the Brotherhood of Our Lady, from whom he received his first commissions. An ordinary member from 1486–7 onwards, at the new year of 1488 he was already a guest of honour at the annual ‘swan banquet’, and he became a sworn member in that year—an early indication of his high social status. Of c. 300 sworn members, more than half were priests or magistri (academics). Officially only clerici (those who had taken at least minor orders) could be sworn members, but exceptions were made for aristocrats, magistrates, large landowners and prosperous businessmen. Bosch was either a member of this latter category, perhaps through marriage, or a clericus with some previous education; or he may have qualified on both grounds. At this time he was only about 38, and the honour was unusual for a ‘craftsman’: he was the only artist to be a sworn member. For the Brotherhood, Bosch executed five minor works in 1493, 1503–4, 1508–9 and 1511–12. According to J. B. Gramaye (1610), there were several altarpieces by Bosch in the St Janskerk in
’s Hertogenbosch (now all untraced). They included an altarpiece for the Brotherhood’s chapel, of which Bosch painted the inner wings, an altarpiece of the Creation of the World (Hexameron mundi) for the high altar (probably commissioned by the church), an altarpiece with four scenes from the Story of Judith and the Story of Esther for the chapel of St Michael (donor unknown) and, finally, an altarpiece with the Adoration of the Magi . Also in the church were paintings of David and Abigail and Solomon and Bathsheba , both of which are known from later copies (Switzerland, priv. col.). Bosch also supplied works of a traditional religious kind for several wealthy members of the bourgeoisie, including the Bronckhorst– Bosschuysse family, for whom he painted an Adoration of the Magi , and other unidentified families (another version of the Adoration of the Magi , Madrid, Prado; the Ecce homo , Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.; the Crucifixion , Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.). A triptych with the Martyrdom of St Ontcommer (Venice, Doge’s Pal.) Hieronymus Bosch: triptych with The Haywain, oil on panel, was probably painted for an Italian patron, perhaps from northern 1.35×1.00… Italy. The Brotherhood no doubt offered Bosch useful social contacts, among them several Spaniards in Brabant. Diego de Guevara, father of Felipe de Guevara, who was already a member of the Brotherhood in 1498–9, possessed six paintings by Bosch, including the tabletop with the Seven Deadly Sins and an original version of The Haywain (both Madrid, Prado). Another member was Count Hendrick III of Nassau, who probably commissioned the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’ (Madrid, Prado; see fig. below), which was kept at his court in Brussels. The Brotherhood generally afforded more contact with courtiers, patricians and the Dutch nobility than with the rulers of the Netherlands. It thus speaks highly for Bosch’s status that the Burgundian ruler Philip the Fair ordered a large altarpiece with the Last Judgement from him in 1504 (to which the fragment in Munich, Alte Pin., may belong)—the only commission for which there is documentary evidence. Philip may also have ordered a Temptation of St Anthony in 1505, and before that, according to inventories, Isabella the Catholic (d 1505) owned works signed by Bosch. A Temptation of St Anthony was also in the collection of Margaret of Austria, while Philip of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht (1465–1524), possessed at least one humorous scene by Bosch and also a Stone Operation (or ‘Cure of Folly ’; version, Madrid, Prado, probably not the original; see fig. below), although not stated as painted by Bosch. In these cases it is not known whether the works were acquired through intermediaries or commissioned direct from the artist. The works ordered or bought by the ruling nobility all belong to a single category (the Last Judgement and scenes of hermits) and were apparently supplied after 1500, while the Dutch nobility owned one humorous scene and the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’. There is no trace of Bosch’s many secular moralizing compositions in aristocratic circles. Paintings of this kind in Spanish collections in the late 16th century seem to have been acquired a good while after Bosch’s death. This was certainly the case with the large group of works systematically assembled by Philip II of Spain and possibly those owned by de Guevara. It is thus apparent that the aristocracy showed interest in Bosch at a very late stage, perhaps when he already had a certain reputation. Moreover, the ruling nobility was interested in a particular genre for which he became famous only in the 16th century, that of fantastic diablerie . Yet it is unclear to what extent they appreciated and understood his imagery. Antonio de Beatis’s description (1517) of the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’, for instance, shows a total failure to understand it. Bosch’s work, in fact, may have been deliberately emptied of any specific content, so that it would find favour as a curiosity and allow private interpretations. For most of the untraced works by Bosch, now known only from copies, replicas and inventories, there is no contemporary archival evidence. However, since they contain several basic elements of what may be called an early bourgeois ideology and their original function is obscure, it has been suggested that they were intended mainly for an upper middle-class urban public. Perhaps many of them were executed in the popular technique of watercolour on canvas: this was less expensive. Knowledge is greatly hindered by the rarity of upper middle-class inventories for the citizens of the south-eastern Netherlands in the period c. 1480–1520.
II. Work and iconography.
All the classifications of Bosch’s work according to chronological phases and stylistic development so far proposed are self-contradictory and subjective (see §III below). The situation is further complicated by the fact that many of the works are now known only from documents and prints (e.g. the Blind Leading the Blind ). They are thus best considered in terms of their iconography, which is extremely varied. The subjects can be roughly divided into two categories, though to some extent these overlap. Furthermore, many of the works are composed of dozens of small scenes that cannot be immediately related to any single theme, such as the main subject of the picture.
1. Religious.
Besides those works (untraced) previously in the St Janskerk, ’s Hertogenbosch, Bosch’s religious pictures included the Story of Jonah, which was in Cardinal Grimani’s collection in Venice in 1521 (untraced), and two panels (both Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen) depicting Noah’s Ark on Mt Ararat and Monsters Populating the Earth (?after the Fall of the Rebel Angels); their shape suggests that they were wings of a triptych, of which the central panel may have represented the Flood (untraced). Among his other (untraced) Old Testament scenes, to all of which a metaphorical meaning was attached in the 16th century, were: the Tower of Babel (the struggle against tyranny and discord), Lot and his Daughters (unchasteness and ‘unequal love’) and Job ( patientia or longsuffering). The hermits and saints painted so often by Bosch, for instance the altarpiece of the Hermits (Venice, Doge’s Pal.), not only conveyed a narrative didactic religious message, illustrating the lives of the saints, but also often contained a moralizing message. They served as an admonition to self-control (especially over bodily passions), patience and constancy in the face of temptation, as in depictions of St Jerome (e.g. Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.; Venice, Doge’s Pal.); the Temptation of St Anthony (e.g. Madrid, Prado; Venice, Doge’s Pal.); St Giles (Venice, Doge’s Pal.); and St John the Baptist in the Wilderness (Madrid, Mus. Lázaro Galdiano). The essential significance of the hermit saint’s life, as seen by Bosch, is the rejection of society and the withdrawal from all earthly vices, a strong theme among the early humanists of the Upper Rhine (e.g. Sebastian Brant, Geiler von Kaisersberg), with whom Bosch had so much affinity. The hermit’s trials, they believed, were much easier to bear than those of worldly people—a view hard to reconcile with the practical morality of the same early humanist groups and their bourgeois sympathizers. The hermit was thus apparently more of a rhetorical model, an epitome of the wise man, impervious and invulnerable. The humanists also admired the hermit’s self-control and single-mindedness. Hermits were the only group of saints whom Bosch depicted independently, in their own right as a type and an exemplary ideal. The backgrounds of Bosch’s representations of hermit saints are rarely directly connected with their relevant legend. They are the artist’s invention, often implying a wholly independent ethical system. This is especially the case with the famous triptych with the Temptation of St Anthony (Lisbon, Mus. N. A. Ant.), in which Bosch used the hermit as a vehicle for his own convictions or rather those of the group for which it was intended. Apart from the hermits, he made few paintings of saints: none, for instance, of the Virgin, St Anne and other devotional saints who were then so popular. He was certainly not working to meet the needs of the ordinary devotee, but for particular patrons for whom his own intellectual contribution was generally decisive. Other depictions include St John on Patmos (Berlin, Gemäldegal.) and several untraced works: St Martin and the Beggar (preserved in a print published by Hieronymus Cock), St John the Evangelist (formerly in the collection of Mencía de Mendoza, the third wife of Hendrick III of Nassau), the Conversion of St Paul (in the 17th century with the Antwerp art dealer Forchondt) and St Dominic and the Heretics (mentioned by Karel van Mander). Bosch also used depictions of the Last Judgement (e.g. Bruges, Groeningemus.) as a vehicle for his ethical views: he presented a fundamentally pessimistic concept of the world, in which all men were foolish and sinful and very few could expect salvation. Bosch did not represent the
resurrection of the dead, and the division between sheep and goats is not very equal. Compared to the few blessed, there is always a legion of damned, already tormented by devils on earth. Eschatological thinking was of lasting importance in Bosch’s work. He saw mankind in the light of eternity, the eschatological schema serving as a final legitimization of his secular ethical views. In the tabletop with the Seven Deadly Sins , roundels in the corners depict the Four Last Things (Death , Hell, Terrestrial or Earthly Paradise and Celestial Paradise ), with the all-seeing eye of Christ in the centre. Similar scenes—the Blessed in the Terrestrial Paradise , the Ascent of the Blessed into the Celestial Paradise , the Fall of the Damned and Hell—are represented in four other panels (all Venice, Doge’s Pal.). The Haywain (see fig. above) and the ‘ Garden of Earthly Hieronymus Bosch: triptych with the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’, Delights ’ both have a representation of Hell on the right-hand panel. oil… Hay was at that time a symbol for everything worthless and transient; Bosch applied it to all earthly possessions and pleasures that men blindly pursue, leading to eternal damnation (the wain is driven by devils towards hell). The haywain motif is not his own invention: a 16th-century print of the same title (Nuremberg, Ger. Nmus.) bears long inscriptions based, on the evidence of language, on a Utrecht source of c. 1500. In the triptych with the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’, Bosch depicted the history of the world in terms of the Creation of the World by God the Father (on the outer wings), the earthly or Terrestrial Paradise (Garden of Eden) on the left inner wing and Hell on the right inner wing—all treated sub specie sexualitatis et procreationis. On the outer side the newly created world is already clothed in wonderful flora, symbols of nature and sexuality, which are also found in the central panel and in temptation scenes by the artist. The left wing shows the institution of marriage (Adam and Eve) and already hints at the sexual perversion of it (the owl in the fountain). The central panel shows the false paradise of love, probably as the aetas aurea from Adam to Noah, to be repeated at the end of the world sub specie luxuriae (‘sicut in diebus Noe …’). This grail, as the pseudo-paradisus amoris was called in the 15th and 16th centuries, is situated between the earthly and the supernatural and contains both heavenly and diabolical elements: thus some interpreters see it as depicting a paradisiacal state, others a state of sin. The ambiguity is, in fact, intended and is fundamental to a proper understanding of the triptych. Its ‘message’ is approximately as follows: sexuality can become an end in itself, owing to an unchaste interpretation of the paradisiacal state of marriage instituted by God, with the command to increase and multiply. Thus men and women believe they are living in a lovers’ paradise (the grail), but it is really false and pernicious. Bosch supported this view ‘historically’: sex and procreation were known from the beginning (the outside of the wings); in the ‘golden age’ they turned to luxuria ; and at the end of the world (which may come at any time) they will again lead back to evil. The preaching of ‘pure’ marriage is not so much a matter of religious thinking as of the upper middle-class preoccupation with marriage, the family and the household (concerns that were strongly promoted c. 1500). Besides Old Testament themes, saints and moralizing religious subjects, Bosch painted many scenes from the Life of Christ , centering on his childhood and the Passion. To the first category belong the Nativity (copy, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.), the Adoration of the Magi (Madrid, Prado, and copies after several lost prototypes; version New York, Met., see fig.); the Flight into Egypt (untraced; mentioned by van Mander) and Christ among the Doctors (copies in Paris, Louvre, and elsewhere). From Christ’s ministry there is only the Marriage at Cana (possible copy, Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen). The cycle of the Passion is introduced by Hieronymus Bosch: Adoration of Christ Driving the Money-changers from the Temple (copies, the Magi, oil and gold on… Glasgow, A.G. & Mus., and Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst) and the Entry into Jerusalem (untraced; ex-G. de Haen priv. col., Cologne, 1581). Then come the Betrayal of Christ (untraced, ex-Philip II priv. col.; copies, San Diego, CA, Mus. A., and Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), Christ before Pilate (copies, Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen, and Princeton, NJ, U. A. Mus.), the Ecce homo (Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.), the Crowning
with Thorns (London, N.G.), the Mocking of Christ (Madrid, Escorial), the Carrying of the Cross (versions, Madrid, Escorial (ex-Philip II); Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.), the Crucifixion (Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.), the Entombment (drawing, London, BM), the Lamentation (two untraced prototypes) and the Descent into Limbo (untraced, ex-Archduke Ernest priv. col., 1593; variant versions survive). In the Passion scenes Bosch emphasized the suffering and patience of Christ and the bestiality of his tormentors, who represent the blind and sinful world par excellence. It has often been suggested that the way in which Christ looks directly at the spectator is intended to recall the Imitatio Christi in the Devotio moderna . This sorrowful glance is reminiscent of early humanist visions, such as those expressed in Thomas More’s De tristitia Christi . The Christocentrism itself recalls the Devotio moderna . The sources of Bosch’s religiosity have not yet been fully explored. The ordinary late medieval devotional literature explains many elements, but by no means all. Bosch’s attitude to religion, as manifested in his works, may well have been determined by the taste of advanced bourgeois circles, whose religious outlook was itself an amalgam of ‘typical late medieval’ thought, early humanism and the Devotio moderna .
2. Moralizing.
Bosch’s many secular moralizing works served as a vehicle for expressing his thoughts on norms and values. The most detailed explanations of these paintings—and those best founded historically —are those of Dirk Bax, who pointed out that nearly all the vices depicted by Bosch are regularly characterized as ‘follies’ and are generally ascribed to a motley group of members of the lowest social class. The principal vices represented are unchastity, profligacy, quarrelsomeness, gluttony, drunkenness and self-inflicted poverty. Bosch’s connection between ‘vice’ or ‘evil behaviour’ and ‘folly’ or ‘stupidity’—a theme explored in such paintings as the Stone Operation, the Blind Leading the Blind and the Ship of Fools —was in tune with the intellectual outlook of the day. The equation of virtue and wisdom, and vice and folly, is found in the 15th-century ‘literature of folly’, such as Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff (‘Ship of fools’; 1494), the works of Thomas Murner and many other less-known or anonymous authors. Detachment, moderation, self-knowledge, control over passions, and, above all, reason were regarded as important values. This morality, which arose in bourgeois circles c. 1460–90, was aimed at defending the status quo, though it departed from the old order’s ideology by virtue of its rationalism, ethicism and individualism. In Bosch’s work the equation between folly, sin and (socially) reprehensible behaviour is not consciously expressed by a specific type representing folly; it is incidentally implied, as though Bosch regarded it as a selfevident basis for his moral precepts. It is not a question of his having been ‘influenced’ by the literature of folly: there was a common ideology that found expression in all the various media. In line with contemporary attitudes towards ‘social deviation’, Bosch associated sin and folly with a large cross-section of society’s lower classes: whores, jailbirds, topers and revellers, vagabonds, beggars and travelling mountebanks, procuresses, common soldiers and poor people of all sorts. Whereas earlier the poor had not been frowned on, in the later Middle Ages they began to be strictly controlled and stigmatized as good-for-nothing parasites and idlers. This reached a climax c. 1525, when the regulations for poor-relief were extensively overhauled. From the 14th century onwards, and especially in the 15th and 16th centuries, a number of satirical texts contained long lists of ‘depraved persons’, who it was thought should be banished from society, as fools were in the relevant literary genre. Fools and social undesirables were thus condemned to suffer a similar fate in both literature and art. Bosch in his pictures provided countless deviants whom he placed in hell or in the company of demons. Vagrants are another common subject in his work, as in The Vagabond (Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen), The Conjurer (preserved only in copies and imitations), the foreground figures of the centre panel and the outer wings of The Haywain and several other lost works: The Verdict , The Fosterer and the Blind Leading the Blind. The vices condemned by Bosch can be divided into four categories. In the first place, he disapproved of giving way to ‘wild’ bodily impulses: aggression, love of food and drink and, above all, sexuality. This accorded with contemporary ideas, which were expressed in the opposition of nature and culture, savagery and civilization, in both pictures and moral treatises. Bosch interpreted these ideas from a concrete social point of view, using everyday figure types. He also
disapproved of popular festivities and amusements, seen as opportunities for carnality and illbreeding, a love of pleasure and roisterous behaviour—vices constantly associated with the common people. The third category is concerned with work and idleness, wealth and poverty, avarice and prodigality. Here Bosch’s position was more moderate: he seems to have condemned the love of gain for its own sake but was even more opposed to extravagance. Self-inflicted poverty was often associated with those on the lowest rung of the social ladder and ascribed to vices from the first two categories: drunkenness, whoring and excessive merrymaking. In contrast, he praised the love of work and a moderate use of money and property. All this is reflected in The Haywain , the Death of the Miser (Washington, DC, N.G.A.) and the Scenes of Idleness (preserved only in 16th-century prints). The fourth and last category with which Bosch was concerned is rash and baseless aggression. He was an advocate of constant watchfulness, reticence, attentiveness, detachment, restraint and caution, as can be seen in the drawing of the Owl in the Tree (‘The Field Sees, the Wood Listens ’; Berlin, Kupferstichkab.) and the painting ‘Keep a Weather Eye Open ’ (c. 1600; Heverlee, Arenberg col.). The concept of threat plays a central part in Bosch’s world view: the individual is attacked in his moral and spiritual integrity by his own impulses, rooted in sensuality, by the external world and by supernatural forces of evil. Fear, both of material ruin and of spiritual damage, was a basic element of bourgeois culture c. 1500. The self was regarded as an extremely weak entity, constantly obliged to resist and remain firm. Along with the sense of the individual’s weakness goes an obsession with self-preservation as the ideal of utilitarian wisdom. Folly is self-destructive, leading to eternal damnation and the company of devils, a state Bosch saw embodied in the lowest ranks of human society. Although Bosch himself belonged to the wealthiest and socially highest class in ’s Hertogenbosch, the attitudes to work, money, possessions and their use, as expressed in his paintings, seem typical of the contemporary urban middle class (guilds, not commerce). The main emphasis is on moderation, avoiding unbridled acquisitiveness and also blind indifference. Then comes the defence of the work ethos and the loathing of extravagance, which leads to poverty and ruin. All this is related to oeconomica or domestic economy: a life of peace and contentment with the fruits of one’s labour, eschewing the desire for gain and novelty. Bosch endorsed the ideology of an urban middle class of craftsmen and small producers, to whom economy was also a moral question. This is certainly not a capitalist vision, but the emphasis on work and thrift (expressed negatively by Bosch: the rejection of laziness and squandering) already helps to prepare the way for capitalist discourse.
3. Sources.
Bosch made extensive use of lower-class ‘folklore’, such as popular songs, ballads, proverbs, sayings and metaphors—all of which was then pressed into the service of an élite, bourgeois system of morals and satirical method. For Bosch the language and proverbs of the lower classes (whether these were substandard or not) presented a certain sense of obscurity, which was still deliberately cultivated as the vehicle of an intellectual morality: ‘the wise man speaks in riddles’. At the same time he used popular modes of expression and thought subconsciously to give form to his ideas. He also drew extensively on the inversive mode of expression in popular seasonal revels, for example Shrovetide. This may explain why he constantly represents wrong types of behaviour and never those he considered right. The principle of reversal is a widely recognized anthropological phenomenon: the central categories of a culture are dialectically defined by proclaiming their opposite, in a fictitious breach of the norm that, in fact, confirms it as well as providing amusement. Folklore traditions also provided specific subjects to be represented in Bosch’s work, as in the following paintings (all untraced): the Mock Tournament on the Ice , The Elephant , Strife and Dance on Shrove Tuesday and in Lent , the Blind Men’s Boar Hunt , in all of which a burlesque contest is the central feature. This explicit content, however, is used metaphorically to convey a more
fundamental message. Strife and Dance on Shrove Tuesday is a metaphor for the opposition between rival sets of values: in literature, from c. 1500 it is always Lent that wins, but in art, the outcome is uncertain, for Bosch attached too many negative connotations to carnival time. The other scenes are also metaphorical: by depicting opposites, they satirize foolish, aggressive and licentious popular amusements (e.g. the Mock Tournament), the ill-effects of error and rashness (e.g. the Blind Men’s Boar Hunt ) or unthinking hostility between social groups and classes (e.g. The Elephant ). Other folklore themes in Bosch’s work centre on the ritual celebration of folly. The Stone Operation or ‘Cure of Folly’ is not inspired by real surgical procedures (in medieval times it was thought that cutting a stone out of a madman’s head would cure him) but by burlesque illustrations of the futility of trying to make fools wise. The Shearing of the Fool (drawing, London, BM) is based on similar organized spectacles, intended to hold up folly to public opprobrium but later forbidden by the authorities because of their ‘licentious’ character.
III. Style, technique and chronology.
Bosch’s technique and style are not homogeneous, which has led to much confusion. For example he seems to have used several different techniques of underdrawing. Van Schoute (1967) examined with infra-red reflectography six panels accepted as authentic and identified what seemed to him three sketching techniques. His first category, to which he assigned the Crowning with Thorns (London, N.G.) and the St John on Patmos (Berlin, Gemäldegal.), consists of sketches drawn with a coarse brush and diluted paint, giving few details and merely indicating a general design. Individual strokes are short and of unequal length. Many changes of form were made at the painting stage. In his second category are the Ship of Fools (Paris, Louvre) and the Allegory (New Haven, CT, Yale U.A.G.), in which the underdrawing has areas of profuse hatching, giving an impression of great care and accuracy. Parallel oblique strokes, with a slightly mechanical effect, run from upper left to lower right. Changes of form are fairly minor. In his third and final category he placed the Carrying of the Cross (Ghent, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.) and the outer wings of the triptych with the Temptation of St Anthony (Lisbon, Mus. N. A. Ant.): these, he suggested, are characterized by a not very detailed sketch, in lines of moderate thickness that are often interrupted but firm and give only a summary indication of the different forms. Here again, an unusual number of changes of form and composition is evident in the final painting. Filedt Kok (1972–3), by contrast, distinguished only two types of underdrawing in Bosch’s work. The first group, in a ‘sketchy’ style, exemplified in the St Christopher (Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans– van Beuningen), is based on a broad, summary underdrawing, visible only under the garments, executed with a coarse brush in thin paint. Not much was changed in the painting, though the forms were further elaborated. Grouped around this work are other compositions showing a saint in a landscape, such as the St John on Patmos, in which the underdrawing consists of mostly straight lines of varying width, some simple, others repeated alongside or over one another. The hatched strokes are made up of short, rather irregular lines. To this group may be added the St John the Baptist in the Wilderness (Madrid, Mus. Lázaro Galdiano) and the St Jerome (Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.). All these works form a more or less coherent stylistic group. To the second main group, described as in a ‘careful’ style, Filedt Kok assigned the Carrying of the Cross (Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.), featuring a confident, flexible line gracefully indicating forms and contours, with a little hatching here and there. This technique is also found in van Schoute’s second group and in such works as the Death of the Miser and The Vagabond (both Washington, DC, N.G.A.). In this latter work, the profuse diagonal hatching is more varied and three-dimensional in character. This very carefully modelled underdrawing was preceded by a preliminary sketch, some traces of which can still be discerned. The works in this group, including the inside of the wings of the Lisbon triptych with the Temptation of St Anthony , exhibit the same careful underdrawing and thinly applied paint, with many white highlights. As Filedt Kok pointed out, these two different styles of underdrawing sometimes occur together, as in the Lisbon triptych, and thus afford no evidence as to chronology. Such differences in the
amount of detail in underdrawings, for instance between foreground and background figures, also occur in the works of Bosch’s contemporaries and are easily explained by the degree of attention given to the various elements. Filedt Kok further suggested that there may be a connection between the manner of drawing and the technique of the final painting, that it is the very thinly painted panels that have the most precise underdrawing. This second conclusion, while valid for certain groups, is contradicted by such works as the Crowning with Thorns , which is thinly painted over a schematic underdrawing (see fig. above). Just as Bosch’s paintings exhibit many styles of underdrawing, ranging from very careful to extremely casual, they also reveal totally different pictorial styles—sometimes carefully painted, with thick impasto, sometimes rapidly applied in an apparently slapdash manner, with a thin layer of paint. There are also many intermediate stages. To the first extreme belong, for example, the left wing and central panel of the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’, the outer side of the Bruges Last Judgement , the triptychs of the Hermits and the Martyrdom of St Ontcommer and St John the Baptist in the Wilderness . Examples of the second style are the central panel and right wing of The Haywain , the Death of the Miser , The Vagabond and others. Despite the fact that Bosch’s different styles of underdrawing and painting technique provide no help whatsoever in dating, it is possible to identify recurring patterns in individual groups of paintings. For instance a fundamental similarity of technical execution exists between three of Bosch’s large triptychs: the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights ’, The Haywain and the Last Judgement . In each case the left wing is thickly and carefully painted, while the underdrawing is entirely or nearly invisible. The right wing is executed more rapidly, with a thin, transparent layer of paint, with the underdrawing visible in many places. The central panel in each instance is intermediate between the other two styles. The underdrawing on the outer wings is invisible throughout, while the structure of the paint layer varies from moderate to very thick.
IV. Critical reception and posthumous reputation.
Besides Philip the Fair, Isabella the Catholic, Margaret of Austria and Philip of Burgundy, there were other collectors of Bosch’s works in the first half of the 16th century. In 1521 and 1528 at least five paintings were in the possession of Domenico and Marino Grimani in Venice. The collection of paintings by Bosch assembled by Mencía de Mendoza, Marquesa de Cenete and third wife of Hendrick III of Nassau, suggests that Spanish interest in Bosch’s work may have been linked to a local tendency towards eschatologism and prophetism, which verged on heresy: the heretical group of the Alumbrados (Enlightened Ones), associated with the Third Order of St Francis, presented features of Erasmianism and free thought, as well as apocalyptic claims, and their earliest centre, in 1519, was at the house of Mencía de Mendoza in Guadalajara. Another Bosch collector, imprisoned on a charge of heresy, was the humanist Damião de Goes. Thus c. 1500 there seem to have been certain inherent ideological tendencies in Spanish aristocratic and court circles that, while not strictly heretical, prepared the way for an interest in one aspect of Bosch; by the first half of the 16th century some humanist circles, inclining to heterodoxy, had gone still further and actually saw Bosch as a kindred spirit. This would mean that in Spanish and Spanish–Burgundian circles Bosch was approached one-sidedly from the beginning and was very soon ‘reinterpreted’ or endowed with a spurious content, giving rise to the ‘Bosch myth’. The myth was fundamentally twofold: an orthodox Bosch and a heretical one. Other 16th-century collectors of Bosch were Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1530–86), Fernando Alvárez de Toledo, Duque de Alba, and his illegitimate son Fernando de Toledo (d 1591), Archduke Ernst of Austria and his brother, Emperor Rudolf II of Prague. However, it was, above all, Philip II of Spain who systematically procured important works by Bosch, presenting them, from 1574, to the monastery of the Escorial. In the 17th century Spanish royal collections were enriched by dozens more examples of Bosch’s works, most of which have been lost. It was in Spain, too, that ‘El Bosco’ became a familiar name in art and literary writings until c. 1800.
From Felipe de Guevara, Ambrosio de Morales and Fray José de Sigüenza in the 16th century and the early 17th to Antonio Ponz and J. A. Ceán Bermúdez in the late 18th, dozens of art theorists have kept alive Bosch’s fame in Spain. Many literary works, for example entremeses (short comic interludes) by Felix Lope de Vega (1562–1635), used his name. References to Bosch in Italian art treatises are briefer: he was mentioned by Guicciardini, Vasari and Lomazzo, always as the embodiment of the fantastic, absurd and grotesque. In the Netherlands it was, above all, Karel van Mander’s Schilderboeck that provided an appreciation of Bosch and information concerning some of his lost works. Bosch then fell out of favour, except in Spain, and although he was mentioned in the art literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, it was without special enthusiasm. He was not rediscovered until the end of the 19th century, when his apocalyptic vision began to be appreciated for new reasons.
Bibliography
Ceán Bermúdez ; EWA ; Thieme–Becker
Early sources
G. Vasari: Vite (1550, rev. 2/1568); ed. G. Milanesi (1878–85) F. de Guevara: Comentarios de la pintura (MS., c. 1560); ed. A. Ponz (Madrid, 1788), pp. 41–4
L. Guicciardini: Descrittione di …tutti Paesi Bassi (1567) G. P. Lomazzo: Trattato dell’arte de la pittura, scultura ed architettura (MS., 1584); ed. (Rome, 1844), ii, pp. 201–2 K. van Mander: Schilder-boeck ([1603]–1604) J. de Sigüenza: Historia de la Orden de San Jerónimo (1605/ R Madrid, 1905), pp. 837ff A. Ponz: Viaje (1772–94 ); ed. C. M. de Rivero (1947) X. de Salas: El Bosco en la literatura española (Barcelona, 1943) A. Salazar: ‘El Bosco y Ambrosio de Morales’, Archv. Esp. A. , xxviii (1955), pp. 117–38 X. de Salas: ‘Más sobre El Bosco en España’, Homenaje a J. A. van Praag (Amsterdam, 1956), pp. 108– 13 M. Levisi: ‘Hieronymus Bosch y los Sueños de Francisco de Quevedo’, Filología , ix (1963), pp. 163–200
H. Heidenreich: ‘Hieronymus Bosch in Some Literary Contexts’, J. Warb. & Court. Inst., xxxiii (1970), pp. 171–99
Documentary sources
C. Justi: ‘Die Werke des Hieronymus Bosch in Spanien’, Jb. Preuss. Kstsamml. , x (1889), pp. 141–4
J. Ebeling: ‘Jheronimus van Aken’, Miscellanea Jan Gessler, i (Antwerp, 1948), pp. 444–57
P. Gerlach: ‘De bronnen voor het leven en het werk van Jeroen Bosch’ [Sources for the life and work of Hieronymus Bosch], Brabantia , xvi (1967), pt 1, pp. 58–65, pt 2, pp. 95–104 ; Fr. trans. of pt 2, Gaz. B.A. , 6th ser., lxxi (1968), pp. 109–16 P. Gerlach: ‘Jheronimus van Aken alias Bosch en de Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Broederschap’, Jheronimus Bosch: Bijdragen bij gelegenheid van de herdenkingstentoonstelling te ’s Hertogenbosch 1967 [Essays on the occasion of the memorial exhibition at ’s Hertogenbosch 1967], pp. 48–60 J. K. Steppe: ‘Jheronimus Bosch: Bijdragen tot de historische en de ikonografische studie van zijn werk’, Jheronimus Bosch: Bijdragen bij gelegenheid van de herdenkingstentoonstelling te ’s Hertogenbosch 1967 , pp. 5–41 [with ref. to edns of Spanish royal inventories and others] P. Gerlach: ‘Oirschot en de familie vanden Meervenne’, Campina , ii (1973), pp. 183–93 F. Gorissen: Das Stundenbuch der Katharina von Kleve: Analyse und Kommentar (Berlin, 1973), pp. 1100–08, 1129–65 [the van Aken family in Nijmegen and ’s Hertogenbosch, c. 1350–1516, with geneaological charts and transcriptions of the relevant docs] P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Rudolf II als verzamelaar van werk van en naar Jheronimus Bosch’, Jb.: Kon. Mus. S. Kst. (1981), pp. 119–33 B. Blondé and H. Vlieghe: ‘The Social Status of Hieronymus Bosch’, Burl. Mag. , cxxxi/1039 (1989), pp. 699–700
Bibliographies
W. Gibson: Hieronymus Bosch: An Annotated Bibliography , ed. C. Harbison (Boston, MA, 1983) [for the lit. to 1983] P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Über neuere Bosch-Literatur’, Krit. Ber. , xiv (1986), p. 52 [suppl. to Gibson]
Monographic studies
P. Lafond: Hieronymus Bosch (Brussels and Paris, 1914) M. J. Friedländer: Die altniederländische Malerei , v (Berlin, 1927); Eng. trans. as Early Netherlandish Painting (Leiden, 1967–76) Jeroen Bosch (exh. cat. by D. Hannema and J. G. van Gelder, Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans, 1936)
L. von Baldass: Hieronymus Bosch (Vienna, 1941, 2/1959) C. de Tolnay: Hieronymus Bosch , 2 vols (Baden-Baden, 1965) D. Buzzati and M. Cinotti: L’opera completa di Hieronimus Bosch (Milan, 1966) Jheronimus Bosch (exh. cat., ed. K. G. Boon and others; ’s Hertogenbosch, Noordbrabants Mus., 1967)
W. S. Gibson: Hieronymus Bosch (London, 1973) J. Snyder: Bosch in Perspective (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1973) S. Takashika: The Complete Work of Jheronimus Bosch (Tokyo, 1978) [best illus] R. Marijnissen and P. Ruyffelaere: Jheronimus Bosch (Antwerp, 1987) [does not cover lost works, tapestries or graphic work; concentrates on the artist’s religious work]
P. Vandenbroeck: Jheronimus Bosch: Tussen volksleven en stadscultuur [Hieronymus Bosch: between the life of the people and urban culture] (Berchem and Antwerp, 1987) E. Larksen: Hieronymus Bosch: Catalogo completo (Florence, 1998)
Iconography
D. Bax: Ontcijfering van Jeroen Bosch (The Hague, 1949); Eng. trans. as Hieronymus Bosch: His Picture Writing Deciphered (Rotterdam, 1979) D. Bax: ‘Beschrijving en poging tot verklaring van het Tuin der Onkuisheiddrieluik van Jeroen Bosch, gevolgd door kritiek op Fraenger’, Acad. Anlct.: Kl. S. Kst., lxiii/2 (1956) [whole issue devoted to iconog. study of the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ ] J.-P. Jouffroy: ‘Le Jardin des Délices’ de Jérôme Bosch: Grandeur nature (Paris, 1977) [good illustrations]
D. Bax: ‘Hieronymus Bosch and Lucas Cranach: Two Last Judgement Triptychs. Description and Exposition’, Acad. Anlct.: Kl. S. Kst., cxvii (1982) [whole issue] P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Jheronimus Bosch’ zogenaamde Tuin der Lusten : I’ [Hieronymus Bosch’s so-called Garden of Earthly Delights: I], Jb.: Kon. Mus. S. Kst. (1989), pp. 9–210 M. Bergman: ‘The Garden of Love: A Neoplatonic Interpretation of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych’, Gaz. B.-A. , cxv (May–June 1990), nos 1456–7 , pp. 191–212 W. Gibson.: Hieronymus Bosch and the Vision of Hell in the Late Middle Ages (Tokyo, 1990) P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Jheronimus Bosch’ zogenaamde Tuin der Lusten : II’, Jb.: Kon. Mus. S. Kst. (1990), pp. 9–192 A. Simonson: ‘On Spiritual Creativity in Hieronymus Bosch’, Fifteenth Cent. Sutd., xviii (1991), pp. 221–58
G. Clark: Bosch’s Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness and the Artist’s ‘Fleurs du Mal’ (Princeton, 1994)
Technique
R. van Schoute: ‘Over de techniek van Jeroen Bosch’, Jheronimus Bosch: Bijdragen bij gelegenheid van de herdenkingstentoonstelling te ’s Hertogenbosch 1967 [Essays on the occasion of the memorial exhibition at ’s Hertogenbosch 1967], pp. 72–9 M. Sonkes: ‘Le Dessin sous-jacent chez les primitifs flamands’, Bull. Inst. Royal Patrm. A. , xii (1970), pp. 195–225 J. P. Filedt Kok: ‘Underdrawing and Drawing in the Work of Hieronymus Bosch: A Provisional Survey in Connection with Paintings by him in Rotterdam’, Simiolus , vi (1972–3 ), pp. 133–62 P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Problèmes concernant l’oeuvre de Jheronimus Bosch: Le Dessin sous-jacent en relation avec l’authenticité et la chronologie’, Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, Colloque IV: Leuven, U. Catholique, 1981 , pp. 107–19 M. del Carmen Garrido and R. van Schoute: ‘El tríptico de la Adoración de los magos de Hieronymus van Aeken Bosch: Estudio técnico’, Bol. Mus. Prado , vi (1985), pp. 59–77 M. del Carmen Garrido and R. van Schoute: ‘Les Péchés capitaux de Jérôme Bosch au Musée du Prado
à Madrid: Etude téchnologique, premières considérations’, Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, Colloque VI: Leuven, U. Catholique, 1985 , pp. 103–6
Paul Vandenbroeck
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