Hieronymus Bosch (Dutch pronunciation: [ɦijeːˈɾoːnimʏs ˈbɔs] ca. hijeronimusz bosz; Hungarian pronunciation hieronimusz bos) or Jeroen Bosch (born Jeroen Anthoniszoon van Aken [jəˈrun ɑnˈtoːnɪsoːn vɑn ˈaːkə(n)]; or Jheronimus van Aken; 's-Hertogenbosch or Herzogenbusch, c. 1450 - 1516. 9 August 1515) German Lowland painter, perhaps the most debated and interpreted character in art history.
He was descended from the influential van Aken family of painters; he married a patrician girl twenty years his senior. He was a member of the Brotherhood of Our Lady, which was well connected with the clergy, nobility and the highest circles of the urban gentry in the Low Countries; his clients came from among the brothers and, using their connections, from the court.
The brotherhood often commissioned him, and the small fee suggests that these works were more of an offering.
His paintings mainly depict and scourge human sins and weaknesses. The symbolic figures and objects in his paintings are part of a complex, original and imaginative iconography, the meaning of which, even in his own time, often remained obscure. Bosch used demons, half-human, half-animal figures and machines to depict human evil, creating fear and confusion.
His art, forgotten for centuries, eventually inspired the surrealist movements of the 20th century. His art is interpreted in two ways by scholars. In one school, Bosch is seen as a moralist who was frightened by his own visions.
The other is that he was a prankster whose painting drew on the satirical, humorous miniatures of his time. In his critical works, Maró not only denounced the depravity of society, but also showed how easily the weak can become prey to evil, which elevates his art to a higher moral plane.
The first true follower of his art was id. Pieter Bruegel, who used completely different means, but with the same moral ambition; he did not develop the fantastic, but the moral components.
In Dulle Griet, Bosch's influence is undeniable, but in his other paintings we can also find literally interpreted sayings and proverbs translated into the language of pictorial representation. In the early 1990s, Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn used Bosch's figures to create the stunning imagery of Depeche Mode's Songs of Faith and Devotion album.
Hieronymus Bosch's life
His family
Hieronymus Bosch was descended from the influential van Aken family of painters, hence his real name. The name Aken indicates that the family probably came from Aachen. Four generations of painters can be traced: his great-grandfather Thomas van Aken worked as a painter in Nijmegen.
Grandfather Jan van Aken arrived in 1426 from Nijmegen to the emerging city of 's-Hertogenbosch, the largest city in the Duchy of Brabant and the fourth largest in the German Low Countries. His family's social rise was crowned when he bought a stone house right next to the market square in 1462. Here he moved his already established painting workshop.
Jan's four or five sons, including Hieronymus' father Anthonius van Aken, were also painters. Anthonius had five children: two daughters and three sons, Goeswinus or Goessen van Aken, Jan van Aken and the fourth child, Jheronimus van Aken (Hieronymus). The sons all followed the family tradition and worked in their father's workshop.
In addition to them, two of Goessen's sons also worked here, and he, as the eldest son, took over the workshop after their father's death. Hieronymus named himself after his hometown. He probably took the name Bosch to distinguish him from his brother Goessen.
The little we know about Hieronymus Bosch's life
Hieronymus Bosch is first mentioned in documents in 1474. In 1481, Bosch married Aleyt Goyaert van de Mervenne, a patrician girl almost 20 years his senior, who brought a house and a country estate to the marriage. The dowry helped Bosch to greater independence.
There is no record of any children born of the marriage. Bosch joined the strongly religious Brotherhood of Our Lady in 1486, first as an outsider and then from 1488 as a member of the inner, elite society (there were about sixty of them). These sworn brothers were mostly clergymen, priests or patricians. Among others, Philip the Good, Nicholas of Hapsburg and his wife Mary of Burgundy and Philip the Fair were members of the Brotherhood of Our Lady.
The organisation maintained relations with the highest circles of the clergy, nobility and urban gentry of the Low Countries. Besides its political and social aspects, it was religiously regulated in the same way as the Dominican order.
They met once a month for communal meals, twice a week for communal masses, on St John's and St Mary's days, and on other feast days, including ecclesiastical plays and processions. They were involved in the care of the poor, education and support for the arts.
Bosch's patrons came from the ranks of the brothers and through their connections at court. He was often commissioned by the brotherhood, and from the meagre fees, it is clear that these works were more of an offering. His first known work is also associated with the organisation: in 1488-1492 he painted the wing paintings on the altar of the Chapel of the Virgin Mary.
In addition to the Brotherhood, he made paintings for the urban elite as well as the aristocracy. The first surviving document that mentions him as Bosch is a certificate for a painting commissioned by Philip the Fair, entitled The Last Judgement, which has since been lost.
Hieronymus Bosch was buried on 9 August 1516. A funeral mass was said in St John's Cathedral for his repose.
The world of Hieronymus Bosch
Hieronymus Bosch lived in the twilight of the Middle Ages, a time of economic opening, imperial power politics and the challenge of religious and moral renewal in a German Lowland fraught with conflict. Although his country was economically one of the most advanced of the time, it was spiritually backward compared to the culture of the countries of the south.
The battle lines were in total disarray: nobles against nobles, guilds against the penniless, and there were numerous wars and uprisings from 1464 to 1492, which claimed many lives and blood victims.
Jerome blasphemed this world in many of his paintings. This was a period of European culture in which belief in satanic and other magical forces strongly dominated the public mood. In 1484, Pope Ince VIII issued his bull Summis desiderantes, one of the events that launched the third wave of witch-hunts, with witch trials ending in bonfires in many European countries.
Witches were accused of orgies, human sacrifice, black magic, and every conceivable perversion. Bosch also depicts a black witch in his painting The Temptation of St Anthony. The secularisation of the clergy led to the formation of various organisations and sects.
The revival of many elements of the ancient magical worldview during the Renaissance may also have contributed greatly to the outbreak of witch hunts. In turn, it was the Renaissance that rediscovered nature in European art.
But it was also the age of alchemy, the age of white and black magic, the age of the famous witch's ointment, which was capable of producing LSD-like hallucinogenic effects. Some art historians have suggested that the surrealism of Bosch's paintings was drug-induced. He painted not only the discredited clergy but also all the contradictory phenomena of his time in his masterpieces to strange effect.
Hieronymus Bosch's art
Bosch's art baffles all art historians. As little is known about his life, so little is known about the circumstances of his paintings. The sequence of his works is largely unknown, as is the source of his inspiration. The authenticity of some of his paintings is still in doubt, but the number of paintings attributed to him and accepted as authentic is nowadays estimated at twenty.
S'-Hertogenbosch was one of the centres of the flamboyant style in the German Low Countries, whose influence on Bosch's work is undeniable, since his restlessness reflected the turbulent state of the late Middle Ages.
He was probably influenced by St. Denis of Carthage, the renowned theologian, who believed that beauty could be found in the deformed figure; few painters had painted more deformed figures than Bosch. Geertgen tot Sint Jans is considered to be his predecessor, whose art is associated with the desire to emphasise contrasts.
Two interpretations of his art exist among scholars. One is that Bosch is a moralist who is frightened by his own visions.
The other is that he was a prankster whose painting drew on the satirical, humorous miniatures of his time. In his critical Maro, he not only condemned the depravity of society, but showed how easily the weak can become prey to evil, which elevates his art to a higher moral plane.
He painted religious subjects for the general public and genre paintings for individual meditation, as well as so-called dream paintings for his distinguished clients. All these paintings have one thing in common: an attitude of scourging the aberrations that degrade man, an attitude that stems from Bosch's sincere Christian convictions.
Symbols
Bosch's paintings are full of symbols that have been deciphered, are still to be deciphered and, as far as we know today, are indecipherable. Many of these symbols were deciphered by analysing the proverbs and figures of speech in Brabant, but the many meanings of his paintings were not always understood.
The symbols usually represent a human weakness, most often a mortal sin (laziness, lust, pride, anger, envy, avarice, gluttony).
- The bear represents the deadly sin of "anger", but it can also represent masculinity.
- The toad-like frog, usually perched on a character, is a symbol of "lust" (if perched on the genitals, it is a reference to "lust", if on the chest or face, it is a reference to the sin of "pride"), but it can also be a symbol of unbelief.
- The inverted funnel on the head: deceitfulness.
- The "bone shoe" is a sign of a wicked person.
- The arrow symbolizes wickedness, if on the back of a man, depravity.
- The jug is a symbol of "lust"; usually used in combination with a stick.
- The bagpipe and lute also symbolise "lust".
- The fish is a symbol of satanic evil.
- The owl, contrary to ancient mythology, is not a symbol of wisdom. In Bosch's paintings, it is associated with characters who are concealing something insidious or are secretly prisoners of one of the seven cardinal sins.
- The sunken ship is a symbol of a church in decay.
- The swan sometimes has a positive connotation, symbolising Mary's purity and virginity, but in other images it can mean the opposite.
- The unicorn is also a symbol of many meanings: it represents both Christian virginity and masculine potential.
- Flower picking (fruit picking) means sexual intercourse.
- The strawberry can represent earthly lust, greedy lust for life, but it can also have a purely sexual meaning.
- Dog-headed figures: monks of the Order of St. Dominic, often called 'dogs of the church', and surrounded by extreme resentment for their role in witch-hunts.
- Blackberries symbolise the transience of bodily pleasures, with a similar meaning to hay.
Demons and fantastic creatures
In many of his paintings, Bosch depicted both fascinating and terrifying, demonic figures and fairytale creatures, human bodies with fish, bird, pig and predator heads. He populated his paintings with gnomes and monsters. These creatures have in common that they torture or damn defenceless people.
The depiction of fairy-tale creatures was not unusual in the Middle Ages, as they were often found in bestiaries. These books originated in Alexandria/Egypt and were written as folklore. They reached Europe in the early Middle Ages, where they were translated.
The bestiaries contained descriptions of real and imaginary animals with their real and imagined characteristics. They served the purpose of moral and religious enlightenment and were also very popular, as people learned about the exotic fauna of distant continents from these books. They also contained descriptions of the unicorn and the dragon.
Bosch was familiar with and used the depictions of fantastic creatures found in bestiaries, and this can be seen in his paintings. Animals known in Europe or living in exotic places appear again and again in his works. However, he turned the existing animals and fairy-tale figures into fearsome and exciting creatures that he used to express human evil.
The afterlife of Hieronymus Bosch's art
Bosch's paintings were popular among connoisseurs from the beginning, and the proliferation of copies and forgeries meant that the quality of the paintings previously attributed to him was highly uneven.
Even the epigones, considered the most talented, failed to grasp the artistic essence, so that their paintings were only a faint impression of Bosch's oeuvre; they were generally content to copy Bosch's fantastic creatures.
Some art historians have tried to associate Bosch with the heretical sects of his time. This is sharply contradicted by the fact that the greatest collector of his works was the most Catholic of monarchs, King Philip II of Spain, who acquired thirty-six paintings from the artist's relatively small oeuvre.
Most of these paintings are now on display in the Prado in Madrid. But other patrons, both prominent and less prominent, and patrons of the arts, have also tried to acquire a Bosch painting.
The first real follower of his art was id. Pieter Bruegel, in whom, although he used completely different means, the same moral demand was alive; he did not work out the fantastic but the moral components. Bosch's influence is undeniable in his painting Dulle Griet, but in his other paintings we can also find literally interpreted sayings and proverbs translated into the language of pictorial representation.
In later times, the esteem in which he was held faded, and he was regarded as a painter of obscure metamorphoses. In the 19th century, Johann Joahim Wincklemann thought Bosch's expression lacked elegance. In the early 20th century, it took the beginning of the study of the subconscious and the emergence of the surrealists to rediscover one of the unique artists of the late Middle Ages.
In the early 1990s, Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn used Bosch's figures to create the stunning imagery of Depeche Mode's Songs of Faith and Devotion.
Jácint Legéndy dedicated his poem Heaven and Hell to the memory of Bosch (Jácint Legéndy: Central Zone - Balassi Publishers, Budapest, 2006).
Hieronymus Bosch famous works
- Hier Hieronymus Bosch, Ecce Homo, 1475-1480, Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut
- Magician, 1475-1480, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Musée Municipal
- The Prodigal Son, 1475-1480, Madrid, Museo del Prado
- The Seven Chief Sins, c. 1480, Madrid, Museo del Prado
- Stone Operation or The Cure for Foolishness, 1475-1480, Madrid, Museo del Prado
- Christ Carrying the Cross, Vienna, c. 1480, Vienna, Vienna Museum of Fine Arts
- Boat of Fools, 1490-1500, Paris, Louvre
- Crucifixion, 1480-1485, Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts
- Garden of Delights, c. 1500, Madrid, Museo del Prado
- The hay cart, 1500-1502, Madrid, Museo del Pardo
- St John on the island of Patmos, 1504-1505, Berlin, Staatliche Museen
- The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1505-1506, Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga
- Adoration of Kings, c. 1510 Madrid, Museo del Prado
- Crowning of Thorns, -, London, National Gallery
- Carrying the Cross, -, Escorial, Monasterio de San Lorenzo,
- Last Judgement, -, Vienna, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien
- The Soul's Ascent to Heaven, -, Venice, Palazzo Ducale