Hieronymus Bosch: biography
Bosch was born in 1453, probably on 2 October, at ‘s-Hertogenbosch, a town in the Brabant. His father was the painter Jeroen Anthoniszoon van Aken. He probably adopted the pseudonym of Hieronymous Bosch to distinguish himself from many family members who bore his same name. The earliest information about the artist dates from 1474 when he was engaged in a business transaction of behalf of his sister. In fact, most of the information about his life concerns financial transactions recorded in the city’s land registry. His father, who died in 1478, left the management of his atelier to Bosch’s brother Goosen. That same year the artist married Aleyt an aristocrat whose wealth protected him from economic problems throughout his life. Thanks to his newly acquired status he began a slow climb through the ranks of the city’s bourgeois society. Clever management of his wife’s assets often allowed him to accept mere reimbursements for his expenses during his artistic career. In 1486 he joined the confraternity of Our Lady, to which his wife belonged, it was a congregation dedicated to charitable works and staging religious pageants. Two years later he was named a “notable” of the confraternity, and this recognition confirmed his social rise. Between 1489 and 1492 he worked on the altarpiece for the confraternity’s chapel in the cathedral. During that same period he probably painted the Vienna Christ Carrying the Cross, Death and the Miser, and The Ship of Fools. In the following years he continued working on the confraternity chapel and prepared the designs for the stained glass windows that were made by the master-glassmaker, Willelm Lambert. There is no information about the artist in his native town for three years following 1499. This gap plus the fact that there are some of his paintings in Venice lead to the hypothesis that Bosch spent some time there early in the sixteenth century. In 1504 Philip the Fair, who had met Bosch in 1496 commissioned a panel of the Last Judgment which may be the Last Judgment Triptych in Vienna or the fragment of the Last Judgment in Munich. His work became increasingly intensive: between 1505 and 1510 he did the drawings for the decorations and built models for the embellishment of the confraternity chapel and completed some of his most famous paintings: The Hermits Triptych in Venice, the Temptation of St. Anthony Triptych in Lisbon, the Procession to Calvary and the Temptations of Saint Anthony, both of which are in the Prado. In 1515 he was probably working on the Ghent Christ Carrying the Cross, one of his last documented works. The exact date of his death is not known, but from the confraternity records we know that his funeral was held on 9 August 1516 in the chapel of the Confraternity of Our Lady in the cathedral.
Hieronymus Bosch: the works
The Extraction of the Stone of Madness (The Cure of Folly)
1475-1480A painting of this subject once hung in the dining room of Philip of Burgundy, the bishop of Utrecht. In 1524 it was listed in the inventory of the castle of Duurstede and then in 1570, along with six other paintings by Bosch it became part of the collection of Philip II. The majority of the critics agrees that it is an original from his early years. In the painting a foolish man turns to a charlatan surgeon to liberate him from his illness, a disease shaped like a tulip because the Dutch word tulpe means madness. The theme refers to folk satire and invective against the physicians’ guild. In this painting we can see – albeit not clearly – the contrast between expressive clarity and a more complex symbolic intent that is typical of Bosch’s works.
Marriage Feast at Cana
1475-1480This painting was acquired from the Koenigs Collection in Haarlem in 1940. The upper part was cut and it was clumsily restored. The archaic tone of the images and spatial compression deriving from the use of raised perspective makes it probable that the painting was done in the late fifteen seventies. The painting reveals a certain elegance in the chromatic relationships based on an alternating play of warm and light tones creating a complex arrangement of the figures that are still substantially isolated from each other. Here too Bosch’s visionary world is filled with unsettling images and sinister symbols: at a sign from the master of ceremonies the foods on the platters emit infernal rays and the figurines on the sideboard come to life.
IconographySan Cristoforo
1504-1505This painting was originally in the Koenigs collection in Haarlem where it had gone from an Italian collection and it was acquired by the museum in 1940. The painting is signed in the lower left, but the date is still a subject of debate, either 1503 or after 1505. In any event the monumental figure and the new strength of the color would lead to believe that it was done more or less during the same period as the paintings of the ascetics. The theme was inspired by a popular version of the Golden Legend enhanced by a fourteenth century German elaboration: the soldier Christopher leaves the service of the devil symbolized by a dragon pursuing the naked man on the opposite bank of the river and the bear hunt (on the left), and, converted by the hermit portrayed on the right of the shore, he ferries the young Jesus across while buds blossom on his staff, as a symbol of the new life.
IconographySt. John the Baptist
1504-1505This painting strongly echoes the imaginary world of the Garden of Earthly Delights: it recalls the sharp-edged mountains and the sinisterly beautiful exotic plant that some have identified as a mandrake. The open fruits the birds peck at may symbolize the temptations of the senses that could distract the Baptist from his meditation and from the Christological symbol of the lamb that he points to with his finger. For some scholars the transformation of the traditional desert setting into a paradisiacal landscape can be related to the Visions of Isaiah, while the saint’s red cloak – instead of the traditional camel-skin – may allude to his future martyrdom.
IconographyTrittico del Giudizio finale: Il peccato originale
after 1504The triptych that portrays the Last Judgment and the Punishment of the Damned in the central panel and Original Sin and The Inferno on the sides, with St. James the Greater and St. Bavo on the outside was originally in the gallery of the archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and was listed as an original in the 1659 inventory. At the end of the eighteenth century it belonged to the collection of count Malmberg-.Spritzenstein who bequeathed it to the Vienna museum. As we view the left section from bottom to top we see the creation of Eve, the original sin, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden in a continuous landscape crowned by a vision of the Eternal among the clouds and the fall of the rebel angels transformed into insects. In the right panel we see Satan enthroned as the souls of the damned are brought before him. In this scene of the last judgment scholars have noted the influence of contemporary theater and explain almost all the motifs as punishment of the various forms of carnal sin.
IconographyTrittico del Giudizio finale: l'inferno
after 1504The triptych that portrays the Last Judgment and the Punishment of the Damned in the central panel and Original Sin and The Inferno on the sides, with St. James the Greater and St. Bavo on the outside was originally in the gallery of the archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and was listed as an original in the 1659 inventory. At the end of the eighteenth century it belonged to the collection of count Malmberg-.Spritzenstein who bequeathed it to the Vienna museum. As we view the left section from bottom to top we see the creation of Eve, the original sin, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden in a continuous landscape crowned by a vision of the Eternal among the clouds and the fall of the rebel angels transformed into insects. In the right panel we see Satan enthroned as the souls of the damned are brought before him. In this scene of the last judgment scholars have noted the influence of contemporary theater and explain almost all the motifs as punishment of the various forms of carnal sin.
IconographyTrittico del Giudizio finale: il giudizio finale
after 1504The triptych that portrays the Last Judgment and the Punishment of the Damned in the central panel and Original Sin and The Inferno on the sides, with St. James the Greater and St. Bavo on the outside was originally in the gallery of the archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and was listed as an original in the 1659 inventory. At the end of the eighteenth century it belonged to the collection of count Malmberg-.Spritzenstein who bequeathed it to the Vienna museum. As we view the left section from bottom to top we see the creation of Eve, the original sin, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden in a continuous landscape crowned by a vision of the Eternal among the clouds and the fall of the rebel angels transformed into insects. In the right panel we see Satan enthroned as the souls of the damned are brought before him. In this scene of the last judgment scholars have noted the influence of contemporary theater and explain almost all the motifs as punishment of the various forms of carnal sin.
Procession to Calvary
1505-1507This painting comes from the Escorial where it was sent by Philip II in 1574 along with some other paintings. The compositional arrangement presents an intermediate moment between the Vienna Christ Carrying the Cross (1490-1500) with the figures on two planes and the later Christ Carrying the Cross of Ghent (1515-1516) that is reduced to just heads around the central fulcrum of the cross. Christ who accepts his martyrdom with resignation, recalls Saint Anthony of the Lisbon Triptych in both his expression and pose. As in other paintings by Bosch, we find Mary and John on the right in a serene landscape, while the horizon is closed by Jerusalem with its mighty walls. The palette is quite subdued, almost monochrome and the shapes are broad and monumental.
IconographyTemptation of St. Anthony Triptych
1505-1506In this painting the artist succeeded in giving form to one of the anxieties of Medieval man: Satan’s domination of the world and the battles of the soul. According to undocumented information the humanist Damaio de Gòis purchased the triptych between 1523 and 1545. The first definitive information dates from the middle of the nineteenth century when the painting entered the collection of the Portuguese royal family. The left panel portrays Saint Anthony carried aloft by devils and then supported by his companions after his fall. The composition develops on zigzagging planes from the bottom up according to an unusual spatial arrangement. The central panel is a complex rendering with the saint on his knees as the diabolical tumult is unleashed around him. This has been interpreted as a grouping of the temptations or as personifications of various sins. In the right panel we see the saint alone, meditating and isolating himself from the temptations that surround him. When compared with the Fall of St. Anthony we see that the artist achieved a better accord with real space where the zigzagging visions fit into a broad sloping of the horizon.
IconographyChrist Mocked (The Crowning With Thorns)
1507-1508This painting reached the National Gallery in 1934 after many changes of ownership. This is one of the first Passions with large busts grouped in the background. We can see a return to the agitated modes of his early maturity with a new spatial organization that creates a great dramatic effect through the contrast with the apparent solemnity of the figures. The calm nobility, solemn plasticity and the physiognomies bring it closer to his later works with a first sign of the characterization of the wicked characters that would lead to the group of executioners in the Prado Crowning and the Ghent Christ Carrying the Cross. Typical motifs that Bosch painted and that are still difficult to decipher include the arrow in the hat, the crescent moon and the nail studded collar.
IconographyChrist Carrying the Cross
1515-1516This painting came to the museum in 1902 with the Hulin de Loo acquisition. It may also be Bosch’s final work. Some scholars have wanted to see a projection of the Redeemer’s anguished dream of mankind’s destiny in this composition of just heads moving around the diagonal of the cross on the neutral background. The cross attracts Christ’s gaze as it is surrounded by a large group of deformed heads as in Dürer’s Jesus With the Doctors. The monstrous faces, symbols of humanity corrupted by sin, are matched by the aggrieved expression of the Son of God. In this composition that is constructed on the repetition of a group of heads in various poses, the gesture of the soldier who puts the cross on the Savior’s back, Bosch introduces a formal and spiritual pause: Veronica’s face as a counterpoint of the penitent thief subjected to the fierce charity of the Dominican monk.
Iconography