Hieronymus Bosch—Ahead of His Time
Reid Coen | Imprint Tours
As a tour guide for Rick Steves Europe, I have been a frequent visitor to the incomparable city of Venice. Many other places in the world try to compare themselves with Venice, but it is all mere marketing. There is only one Venice, unique in the world.
Engraving of Hieronymus Bosch, Cornelis Cort, 1572
Image | Courtauld.org.uk
One of the sights one visits in Venice is the Accademia, the great painting gallery of the Venetian Renaissance. Replete with Titians, Bellinis, Tintorettos, Tiepolos, Veroneses, Giorgiones, and Canalettos, it is a world class museum. During a recent trip, the Accademia had a special exhibit of the Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch, who apparently spent some time in Venice (before making dishwashers). Apart from having one of the all-time great first names, though he was probably teased as a child, he was a successful late 15th-century Flemish artist. That success seems to defy all reason for me. It’s not that his art is not fascinating, arresting, and thought provoking (all good things in art), but rather that it was successful 500 years ago.
The Crucifixion of St. Julia | Hieronymus Bosch
Image | BoschProject.org
Bosch's paintings are full of fantastical creatures, phantasmagorias, and nightmarish scenes. Freud would have had a field-day with this guy, and, in fact, Bosch's art would have resonated with Sigmund's contemporary, Salvador Dali. Dali clearly drew inspiration from Bosch, and the kindred spirit of subconscious angst is obvious. I bet Timothy Leary was a fan as well. But patronization by the Church in the 1400s? The Church that was still insisting on the flatness of the world? . I marvel that these paintings were altarpiece triptychs.
Detail, Hell from Four Visions of the Hereafter polyptych | Hieronymus Bosch
Image | Web Gallery of Art, Wikimedia Commons
Prior to that Venetian exposure, I had seen only a couple Bosch paintings in Belgium, and his magnum opus, The Garden of Earthly Delights, in Madrid’s Prado. However, I had been fascinated with this artist from the moment I laid eyes on "The Garden" in an art history book decades ago. It is a very modern, even post-modern, painting by an artist centuries ahead of his time.
Garden of Earthly Delights | Hieronymus Bosch
Image | The Prado, Wikimedia Commons
The best I can do to understand his late Medieval appeal is to remember how superstitious Europeans were five centuries ago and remind myself that the Renaissance had not yet shifted Europeans from Mysticism to Reason. It would be two centuries until the Age of Reason and science would unlock the physical mysteries of the universe. Clearly our subconscious fears of hell, eternal damnation, and purgatorial punishment are not new ideas. Dante did a nice job launching that ship with his circles of hell and mental images of fire and brimstone. They remain with us to this day, as does the relevance of Bosch’s work. His depiction of a naked soul in a tunnel of light fits a prevailing interpretation among modern psychologists of a near death experience. Perhaps Bosch had such an experience, or maybe he experimented with psychotropic drugs.
Detail, Ascent into Heaven from Four Visions of the Hereafter | Hieronymus Bosch
Image | Art database, Wikimedia Commons
Despite my lack of understanding of Bosch’s purpose and his appeal, I was a little closer to clarity after that Venice visit. I read the captions beneath the Bosch installments and learned that the various stregozzi (his mythical creatures) were seen as representations of the temptations or weakness of the flesh. That would fit into what I understand of the Medieval mindset. Some questions were answered. New ones emerged. That’s what the best art evokes in the observer.
Stregozzi detail: Visions of the Hereafter | Hieronymus Bosch
Image | BoschProject.org
To explore more of Hieronymus Bosch’s masterful and fantastical creations, including interactive images that reveal the layers of sketches and painted figures beneath the completed paintings, visit BoschProject.org.
