Hieronymus Bosch created fantastical painterly schemes populated by monsters and morals, earthly experience and premonitions of the afterlife. On the 500th anniversary of his death, this large-scale monograph explores his genius imagination with full-page reproductions, copious details, a fold-out spread from The Last Judgement, and expert...
Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450-1516) was a remarkable artist from the Netherlands who left an indelible mark on the imagination of the world. He was one of the few artists who rose above the conventions of his time and created a new visual language of macabre symbolism, sometimes a literal translation of verbal metaphors found in the Bible. He gave his imagination free rein in works, his paintings populated with grotesque scenes using images of demons and other fantastical creatures to portray the lacking morality of man. Bosch produced at least sixteen triptychs, of which eight are fully intact, and another five in fragments. His most famous work, The Garden of Earthly Delights, depicts the decline of the world through sin, a beautiful garden becoming a dark, fiery nightmare. Like so many of his pieces, it serves as a visual lecture on morality. Hertogenbosch, a city in the Netherlands and Bosch's hometown, celebrates the life and works of the artist in 2016, starting with the largest retrospective ever of Bosch's work being exhibited at the Noordbrabants Museum, 12th February - 8th May. Theatre, dance and musical extravaganzas inspired by Bosch's work will be performed around the city, including a spectacular light show that will be presented on the city's market square. Jheronimus- The Road to Heaven and Hell is essential reading for all Bosch enthusiasts and a perfect introduction for those new to this incredible artist.
An accessible survey on a genius artist, published to accompany the 500th anniversary of Bosch's death Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) lived and worked in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, where he created enigmatic paintings and drawings full of bizarre creatures, phantasmagoric monsters, and terrifying nightmares. He also depicted detailed landscapes and found inspiration in fundamental moral concepts: seduction, sin, and judgment. This beautiful book accompanies a major exhibition on Bosch's work in his native city, and will feature important new research on his 25 known paintings and 20 drawings. The book, divided into six sections, covers the entirety of the artist's career. It discusses in detail Bosch's Pilgrimage of Life, Bosch and the Life of Christ, his role as a draughtsman, his depictions of saints, and his visualization of Judgment Day and the hereafter, among other topics, and is handsomely illustrated by new photography undertaken by the Bosch Research and Conservation Project Team.
A comprehensive look at the work of Jheronimus Bosch, published to coincide with the 5th centenary of the artist's death and in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museo del Prado
A new and exciting interpretation of Bosch's masterpiece, repositioning the triptych as a history of humanity and the natural world Hieronymus Bosch's (c. 1450-1516) Garden of Earthly Delights has elicited a sense of wonder for centuries. Over ten feet long and seven feet tall, it demands that we step back to take it in, while its surface, intricately covered with fantastical creatures in dazzling detail, draws us closer. In this highly original reassessment, Margaret D. Carroll reads the Garden as a speculation about the origin of the cosmos, the life-history of earth, and the transformation of humankind from the first age of world history to the last. Upending traditional interpretations of the painting as a moralizing depiction of God's wrath, human sinfulness, and demonic agency, Carroll argues that it represents Bosch's exploration of progressive changes in the human condition and the natural world. Extensively researched and beautifully illustrated, this groundbreaking secular analysis draws on new findings about Bosch's idiosyncratic painting technique, his curiosity about natural history, his connections to the Burgundian court, and his experience of contemporary politics. The book offers fresh insights into the artist and his most beloved and elusive painting.
Professor Charles D. Cuttler changed from artist to art historian at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, studying under distinguished teachers such as Walter Friedlaender and Erwin Panofsky. A specialist in Flemish painting, he spent the major part of his career teaching at the University of Iowa. He published numerous articles, reviews, and a well known text, Northern Painting. He lectured on Bosch on three continents, and his retirement enabled him to devote time to further research. A result is Hieronymus Bosch: Late Work. This new book presents Cuttler's discoveries on three late triptychs, a major trio of Bosch's maturity: the Haywain, the Lisbon Temptation of St. Anthony, and the Garden of Earthly Delights. He presents Bosch's unique view of Christ and salvation in union with hagiography, the Devotio moderna, and medieval hermeneutics, a revelation of Bosch's immense erudition and overwhelming artistry. Bosch reinforced his concepts with supporting casts of animals, natural and demonic, birds, and other iconographic elements. Analysis of the Berlin painting of St. John the Evangelist's apocalyptic vision of the Virgin Mary, the Madrid Seven Deadly Sins tondo, and the Vienna drawing of the Tree-Man expands our understanding of these themes. Other influences affecting Bosch's art, such as whether he travelled or whether he used contemporary prints, whether he drew upon Dante's Inferno, or religious tracts, and the attitudes of his ambience are also examined. The final chapter presents the author's understanding of Bosch, his religiosity and his genius, in his time and place.
Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights takes a special place in European art history, partly because of the special late-medieval imagery. The meaning of the painting, however, differs according to every expert. After extensive research, Reindert
In this visually stunning and much anticipated book, acclaimed art historian Joseph Leo Koerner casts the art of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel in a completely new light, revealing how the painting of everyday life was born from what seems its opposite: depictions of a foe hellbent on destroying us. Probing deeply the visual cunning of these Renaissance masters, Koerner uncovers art history's unexplored underside: the visual image as enemy. An absorbing study of the dark paradoxes of human creativity, Bosch and Bruegel is also a timely account of how hatred can be converted into tolerance through art. Koerner guides readers through all the major paintings, drawings, and prints of these two towering artists, including Bosch's elusive Garden of Earthly Delights, which forms the mesmerizing center of the historical tour de force. Elegantly written and abundantly illustrated the book is based on Koerner's A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, a series given annually at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. -- Inside jacket flap.
The so-called Garden of Delights by Jheronimus Bosch (c. 1450-1516), now located in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, was painted over half a millennium ago yet remains an absolutely iconic work in European art history. The highly complex and enigmatic image has frequently been interpreted as a paradisaical utopia, in which people indulge playfully in erotic pleasure in harmony with nature. It is a visual utopia framed before Thomas More had actually coined the word in a book whose entirely unfrivolous blueprint for society could hardly differ more from Bosch's phantasm. More traditional art historians have identified Bosch's masterpiece as a painted warning against the sins of the body, more specifically that of 'lust', citing the image of Hell in the right wing in support. Paul Vandenbroeck argues that these two interpretations need not preclude one another: Bosch painted a phantasmagorical false paradise that leads inexorably to ruin. He drew his inspiration from folk ideas about a semi-earthly, semi-supernatural erotic paradise or Grail, in which those who entered could live in a dream-world of unbridled pleasure. But only until Judgement Day, upon which they would all wind up in Hell. As far as 'right-thinking' town-dwellers were concerned from their vantage point within a 'bourgeois civilizing offensive', belief in such an existence was dangerous, if not diabolical nonsense - tantamount to the 'Cult of Adam' and the indiscriminate sexual promiscuity of the late-medieval Sect of the Free Spirit. In large swathes of countryside throughout Europe, however, people were familiar with 'ecstatics', those 'born with the caul', who were able to access this other world. Bosch's magisterial work is simultaneously a reflection on the first and last times, on passions and moral norms, human beings and Nature. A Nature which, although also part of God's creation, was permeated with malevolent and highly dangerous sexual urges, which human beings were required to keep in check. For whom did Bosch paint this enormous triptych? Since the discoveries of Prof. J.K. Steppe of Leuven University, art historians have tended to identify the patron as Henry III of Nassau or, more recently, his uncle, Engelbert II. This book presents an unexpected alternative hypothesis.