The Garden of Earthly Delights. Hieronymus Bosch · Public domain · source

Hieronymus Bosch

Public domain1450-1516·Netherlandish·painting·Wikipedia ↗

Who

Jheronimus van Aken, born around 1450 in 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, spent his whole life in the town and died there in 1516, buried on 9 August. He painted in oil on oak panels: fantastic illustrations of religious ideas and stories.

Why they matter

He painted sin, temptation and damnation as a world of hybrid creatures, half man and half beast, and his fantastical style cast a wide influence on northern art of the sixteenth century. Philip II of Spain acquired many of his paintings, which is why the Prado in Madrid holds so much of him, The Garden of Earthly Delights among it. The whole surviving output is tiny: about twenty to twenty-five paintings, depending on who is counting, and eight drawings.

What to buy

Prints: two museums print their own Bosch to order from their own photography. The National Gallery in London sells Christ Mocked on art paper or stretched canvas, in three sizes, framed or not; the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City sells its small Temptation of Saint Anthony on archival paper or canvas, in a size and frame you choose. Both are single panels that hang well; the Garden, a triptych crowded with tiny figures, loses most of what matters in a poster, so for that picture a book is the better buy. Books: Stefan Fischer's Hieronymus Bosch. The Complete Works for Taschen covers every painting and drawing, with new photography of the restored Garden and Last Judgement; the 45th Edition is a compact 512-page hardback and the cheapest honest way to own it all. Originals: not realistic. The accepted paintings are all in museums, and even specialists have argued over which panels are Bosch and which his workshop or followers; a "Bosch" at an ordinary sale is at best a follower's work.

Notes

The Garden of Earthly Delights is in the Prado, Madrid. Christ Mocked, bought by the National Gallery in 1934, is the only painting of that subject now attributable to him, and its upright format is highly unusual. The Kansas City Temptation is only about 39 by 25 centimetres.

Story

Five hundred years after Bosch died, his home town set out to bring his work back, and the research behind the show changed which pictures count as his. For the anniversary, the Noordbrabants Museum in 's-Hertogenbosch gathered seventeen of his paintings and nineteen drawings for Jheronimus Bosch - Visions of Genius, from February to May 2016, the largest exhibition of his work so far. Ahead of it, the Bosch Research and Conservation Project, set up in 2010, examined the surviving panels with infrared imaging and other tests. Its verdicts cut both ways. Two paintings owned by the Prado, The Cure of Folly and a Temptation of St Anthony, were demoted to Bosch's workshop or followers, and the Prado withdrew them from the show. A small panel in Kansas City went the other way. The Nelson-Atkins had acquired it in 1935; it was long thought to be the work of a follower, and a restoration in the 1960s and 70s had left it heavily retouched and overpainted. When the researchers came to study it in 2015, infrared revealed an underdrawing that settled it: the panel was painted by Bosch himself, not his workshop. It went on view in Kansas City under his name in June 2017.

Key works

The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490-1500) - Museo del Prado, Madrid
The Temptation of Saint Anthony (c. 1500-1510) - Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
Christ Mocked (The Crowning with Thorns) (c. 1510) - National Gallery, London

Hieronymus Bosch

Who

Why they matter

What to buy

Notes

Story

Key works

In museum collections

See the work

Prints

Books

See also