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Bosch, Hieronymus [Hieronimus, Jérôme, Jheronimus;Aken, Jeroen van; El Bosco](b c. 1450; d ’s Hertogenbosch, bur 9 Aug 1516).

Netherlandish painter and draughtsman. The most distinctive and idiosyncratic of 15th-centuryNetherlandish artists, he produced a body of work remarkable for its depiction of fantastic, oftendiabolic, creatures, generally moralizing representations of the consequences of sin and folly.

I. Life, commissions and patrons.

Bosch came from a family of painters originally from Aachen (hence the painter’s real name ofJeroen van Aken). His great-grandfather, a painter called Thomas, migrated westward, like manyother artists, and in 1404 became a citizen of Nijmegen. Thomas’s brother Johan den Meler (‘thepainter’) was also active there. Thomas’s son Jan (d 1454) is recorded at ’s Hertogenbosch in1426. Four of Jan’s five sons were painters, including Hieronymus’s father, Antonius. Hieronymus’sbrother Goossen was also a painter.

Hieronymus Bosch is first documented in 1474 and first mentioned as a painter in 1480–81. InJune 1481 he appears to have married the daughter of a well-to-do member of the local patriciate,Aleyt Goyarts van den Meervenne (d 1522–3), who was 25 years his senior; the marriage wasapparently childless. In 1488 Bosch owned half a house with its grounds, inherited from his wife, inthe Schildersstraetken, ’s Hertogenbosch. During the period 1474–98 there are fourteen documentsconcerning financial transactions by Bosch and his wife, four of which relate to Bosch selling hiswife’s real estate for cash (not, however, including their principal property, the estate of TenRoedeken), perhaps because art was not bringing him a sufficient income. Thus already by 1500—before he had achieved fame as an artist—Bosch did not have to paint for a living and waswealthy enough to paint whatever he chose. In fact, tax records for the years 1502–3 and 1511–12show that Bosch was in the wealthiest top 10% of citizens of ’s Hertogenbosch (see Blondé andVlieghe, 1989).

Important to Bosch’s social position in the town was his membership of the Brotherhood of OurLady, from whom he received his first commissions. An ordinary member from 1486–7 onwards, atthe new year of 1488 he was already a guest of honour at the annual ‘swan banquet’, and hebecame a sworn member in that year—an early indication of his high social status. Of c. 300 swornmembers, more than half were priests or magistri (academics). Officially only clerici (those who hadtaken at least minor orders) could be sworn members, but exceptions were made for aristocrats,magistrates, large landowners and prosperous businessmen. Bosch was either a member of thislatter category, perhaps through marriage, or a clericus with some previous education; or he mayhave qualified on both grounds. At this time he was only about 38, and the honour was unusual fora ‘craftsman’: he was the only artist to be a sworn member. For the Brotherhood, Bosch executedfive minor works in 1493, 1503–4, 1508–9 and 1511–12.

According to J. B. Gramaye (1610), there were several altarpieces by Bosch in the St Janskerk in

Grove Art OnlineBosch, Hieronymus

Hieronymus Bosch: triptych withThe Haywain, oil on panel,1.35×1.00…

’s Hertogenbosch (now all untraced). They included an altarpiece for the Brotherhood’s chapel, ofwhich Bosch painted the inner wings, an altarpiece of the Creation of the World (Hexameronmundi) for the high altar (probably commissioned by the church), an altarpiece with four scenesfrom the Story of Judith and the Story of Esther for the chapel of St Michael (donor unknown) and,finally, an altarpiece with the Adoration of the Magi. Also in the church were paintings of David andAbigail and Solomon and Bathsheba, both of which are known from later copies (Switzerland, priv.col.).

Bosch also supplied works of a traditional religious kind for severalwealthy members of the bourgeoisie, including the Bronckhorst–Bosschuysse family, for whom he painted an Adoration of the Magi,and other unidentified families (another version of the Adoration ofthe Magi, Madrid, Prado; the Ecce homo, Frankfurt am Main, Städel.Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.; the Crucifixion, Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.). Atriptych with the Martyrdom of St Ontcommer (Venice, Doge’s Pal.)was probably painted for an Italian patron, perhaps from northernItaly. The Brotherhood no doubt offered Bosch useful social contacts,

among them several Spaniards in Brabant. Diego de Guevara, father of Felipe de Guevara, whowas already a member of the Brotherhood in 1498–9, possessed six paintings by Bosch, includingthe tabletop with the Seven Deadly Sins and an original version of The Haywain (both Madrid,Prado). Another member was Count Hendrick III of Nassau, who probably commissioned the‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ (Madrid, Prado; see fig. below), which was kept at his court inBrussels. The Brotherhood generally afforded more contact with courtiers, patricians and the Dutchnobility than with the rulers of the Netherlands. It thus speaks highly for Bosch’s status that theBurgundian ruler Philip the Fair ordered a large altarpiece with the Last Judgement from him in1504 (to which the fragment in Munich, Alte Pin., may belong)—the only commission for whichthere is documentary evidence. Philip may also have ordered a Temptation of St Anthony in 1505,and before that, according to inventories, Isabella the Catholic (d 1505) owned works signed byBosch. A Temptation of St Anthony was also in the collection of Margaret of Austria, while Philip ofBurgundy, Bishop of Utrecht (1465–1524), possessed at least one humorous scene by Bosch andalso a Stone Operation (or ‘Cure of Folly’; version, Madrid, Prado, probably not the original; see fig.below), although not stated as painted by Bosch. In these cases it is not known whether the workswere acquired through intermediaries or commissioned direct from the artist.

The works ordered or bought by the ruling nobility all belong to a single category (the LastJudgement and scenes of hermits) and were apparently supplied after 1500, while the Dutchnobility owned one humorous scene and the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’. There is no trace ofBosch’s many secular moralizing compositions in aristocratic circles. Paintings of this kind inSpanish collections in the late 16th century seem to have been acquired a good while after Bosch’sdeath. This was certainly the case with the large group of works systematically assembled by PhilipII of Spain and possibly those owned by de Guevara. It is thus apparent that the aristocracyshowed interest in Bosch at a very late stage, perhaps when he already had a certain reputation.Moreover, the ruling nobility was interested in a particular genre for which he became famous onlyin the 16th century, that of fantastic diablerie. Yet it is unclear to what extent they appreciated andunderstood his imagery. Antonio de Beatis’s description (1517) of the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’,for instance, shows a total failure to understand it. Bosch’s work, in fact, may have beendeliberately emptied of any specific content, so that it would find favour as a curiosity and allowprivate interpretations.

For most of the untraced works by Bosch, now known only from copies, replicas and inventories,there is no contemporary archival evidence. However, since they contain several basic elements ofwhat may be called an early bourgeois ideology and their original function is obscure, it has beensuggested that they were intended mainly for an upper middle-class urban public. Perhaps many ofthem were executed in the popular technique of watercolour on canvas: this was less expensive.Knowledge is greatly hindered by the rarity of upper middle-class inventories for the citizens of thesouth-eastern Netherlands in the period c. 1480–1520.

II. Work and iconography.

All the classifications of Bosch’s work according to chronological phases and stylistic developmentso far proposed are self-contradictory and subjective (see §III below). The situation is furthercomplicated by the fact that many of the works are now known only from documents and prints(e.g. the Blind Leading the Blind ). They are thus best considered in terms of their iconography,which is extremely varied. The subjects can be roughly divided into two categories, though to someextent these overlap. Furthermore, many of the works are composed of dozens of small scenesthat cannot be immediately related to any single theme, such as the main subject of the picture.

1. Religious.Besides those works (untraced) previously in the St Janskerk, ’s Hertogenbosch, Bosch’s religiouspictures included the Story of Jonah, which was in Cardinal Grimani’s collection in Venice in 1521(untraced), and two panels (both Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen) depicting Noah’s Arkon Mt Ararat and Monsters Populating the Earth (?after the Fall of the Rebel Angels); their shapesuggests that they were wings of a triptych, of which the central panel may have represented theFlood (untraced). Among his other (untraced) Old Testament scenes, to all of which a metaphoricalmeaning was attached in the 16th century, were: the Tower of Babel (the struggle against tyrannyand discord), Lot and his Daughters (unchasteness and ‘unequal love’) and Job ( patientia or long-suffering).

The hermits and saints painted so often by Bosch, for instance the altarpiece of the Hermits(Venice, Doge’s Pal.), not only conveyed a narrative didactic religious message, illustrating thelives of the saints, but also often contained a moralizing message. They served as an admonition toself-control (especially over bodily passions), patience and constancy in the face of temptation, asin depictions of St Jerome (e.g. Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.; Venice, Doge’s Pal.); the Temptation of StAnthony (e.g. Madrid, Prado; Venice, Doge’s Pal.); St Giles (Venice, Doge’s Pal.); and St John theBaptist in the Wilderness (Madrid, Mus. Lázaro Galdiano). The essential significance of the hermitsaint’s life, as seen by Bosch, is the rejection of society and the withdrawal from all earthly vices, astrong theme among the early humanists of the Upper Rhine (e.g. Sebastian Brant, Geiler vonKaisersberg), with whom Bosch had so much affinity. The hermit’s trials, they believed, were mucheasier to bear than those of worldly people—a view hard to reconcile with the practical morality ofthe same early humanist groups and their bourgeois sympathizers. The hermit was thus apparentlymore of a rhetorical model, an epitome of the wise man, impervious and invulnerable. Thehumanists also admired the hermit’s self-control and single-mindedness. Hermits were the onlygroup of saints whom Bosch depicted independently, in their own right as a type and an exemplaryideal. The backgrounds of Bosch’s representations of hermit saints are rarely directly connectedwith their relevant legend. They are the artist’s invention, often implying a wholly independentethical system. This is especially the case with the famous triptych with the Temptation of StAnthony (Lisbon, Mus. N. A. Ant.), in which Bosch used the hermit as a vehicle for his ownconvictions or rather those of the group for which it was intended.

Apart from the hermits, he made few paintings of saints: none, for instance, of the Virgin, St Anneand other devotional saints who were then so popular. He was certainly not working to meet theneeds of the ordinary devotee, but for particular patrons for whom his own intellectual contributionwas generally decisive. Other depictions include St John on Patmos (Berlin, Gemäldegal.) andseveral untraced works: St Martin and the Beggar (preserved in a print published by HieronymusCock), St John the Evangelist (formerly in the collection of Mencía de Mendoza, the third wife ofHendrick III of Nassau), the Conversion of St Paul (in the 17th century with the Antwerp art dealerForchondt) and St Dominic and the Heretics (mentioned by Karel van Mander).

Bosch also used depictions of the Last Judgement (e.g. Bruges, Groeningemus.) as a vehicle forhis ethical views: he presented a fundamentally pessimistic concept of the world, in which all menwere foolish and sinful and very few could expect salvation. Bosch did not represent the

Hieronymus Bosch: triptych withthe ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’,oil…

Hieronymus Bosch: Adoration ofthe Magi, oil and gold on…

resurrection of the dead, and the division between sheep and goats is not very equal. Compared tothe few blessed, there is always a legion of damned, already tormented by devils on earth.

Eschatological thinking was of lasting importance in Bosch’s work. Hesaw mankind in the light of eternity, the eschatological schemaserving as a final legitimization of his secular ethical views. In thetabletop with the Seven Deadly Sins, roundels in the corners depictthe Four Last Things (Death, Hell, Terrestrial or Earthly Paradise andCelestial Paradise), with the all-seeing eye of Christ in the centre.Similar scenes—the Blessed in the Terrestrial Paradise, the Ascentof the Blessed into the Celestial Paradise, the Fall of the Damnedand Hell—are represented in four other panels (all Venice, Doge’sPal.). The Haywain (see fig. above) and the ‘Garden of EarthlyDelights’ both have a representation of Hell on the right-hand panel.Hay was at that time a symbol for everything worthless and transient;

Bosch applied it to all earthly possessions and pleasures that men blindly pursue, leading toeternal damnation (the wain is driven by devils towards hell). The haywain motif is not his owninvention: a 16th-century print of the same title (Nuremberg, Ger. Nmus.) bears long inscriptionsbased, on the evidence of language, on a Utrecht source of c. 1500.

In the triptych with the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’, Bosch depicted the history of the world in termsof the Creation of the World by God the Father (on the outer wings), the earthly or TerrestrialParadise (Garden of Eden) on the left inner wing and Hell on the right inner wing—all treated subspecie sexualitatis et procreationis. On the outer side the newly created world is already clothed inwonderful flora, symbols of nature and sexuality, which are also found in the central panel and intemptation scenes by the artist. The left wing shows the institution of marriage (Adam and Eve) andalready hints at the sexual perversion of it (the owl in the fountain). The central panel shows thefalse paradise of love, probably as the aetas aurea from Adam to Noah, to be repeated at the endof the world sub specie luxuriae (‘sicut in diebus Noe …’). This grail, as the pseudo-paradisusamoris was called in the 15th and 16th centuries, is situated between the earthly and thesupernatural and contains both heavenly and diabolical elements: thus some interpreters see it asdepicting a paradisiacal state, others a state of sin. The ambiguity is, in fact, intended and isfundamental to a proper understanding of the triptych. Its ‘message’ is approximately as follows:sexuality can become an end in itself, owing to an unchaste interpretation of the paradisiacal stateof marriage instituted by God, with the command to increase and multiply. Thus men and womenbelieve they are living in a lovers’ paradise (the grail), but it is really false and pernicious. Boschsupported this view ‘historically’: sex and procreation were known from the beginning (the outsideof the wings); in the ‘golden age’ they turned to luxuria; and at the end of the world (which maycome at any time) they will again lead back to evil. The preaching of ‘pure’ marriage is not so mucha matter of religious thinking as of the upper middle-class preoccupation with marriage, the familyand the household (concerns that were strongly promoted c. 1500).

Besides Old Testament themes, saints and moralizing religioussubjects, Bosch painted many scenes from the Life of Christ,centering on his childhood and the Passion. To the first categorybelong the Nativity (copy, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.), theAdoration of the Magi (Madrid, Prado, and copies after several lostprototypes; version New York, Met., see fig.); the Flight into Egypt(untraced; mentioned by van Mander) and Christ among the Doctors(copies in Paris, Louvre, and elsewhere). From Christ’s ministry thereis only the Marriage at Cana (possible copy, Rotterdam, Mus.Boymans–van Beuningen). The cycle of the Passion is introduced byChrist Driving the Money-changers from the Temple (copies,Glasgow, A.G. & Mus., and Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst) and the

Entry into Jerusalem (untraced; ex-G. de Haen priv. col., Cologne, 1581). Then come the Betrayalof Christ (untraced, ex-Philip II priv. col.; copies, San Diego, CA, Mus. A., and Amsterdam,Rijksmus.), Christ before Pilate (copies, Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen, and Princeton,NJ, U. A. Mus.), the Ecce homo (Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.), the Crowning

with Thorns (London, N.G.), the Mocking of Christ (Madrid, Escorial), the Carrying of the Cross(versions, Madrid, Escorial (ex-Philip II); Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.), the Crucifixion(Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.), the Entombment (drawing, London, BM), the Lamentation (two untracedprototypes) and the Descent into Limbo (untraced, ex-Archduke Ernest priv. col., 1593; variantversions survive). In the Passion scenes Bosch emphasized the suffering and patience of Christand the bestiality of his tormentors, who represent the blind and sinful world par excellence. It hasoften been suggested that the way in which Christ looks directly at the spectator is intended torecall the Imitatio Christi in the Devotio moderna. This sorrowful glance is reminiscent of earlyhumanist visions, such as those expressed in Thomas More’s De tristitia Christi. TheChristocentrism itself recalls the Devotio moderna. The sources of Bosch’s religiosity have not yetbeen fully explored. The ordinary late medieval devotional literature explains many elements, but byno means all. Bosch’s attitude to religion, as manifested in his works, may well have beendetermined by the taste of advanced bourgeois circles, whose religious outlook was itself anamalgam of ‘typical late medieval’ thought, early humanism and the Devotio moderna.

2. Moralizing.Bosch’s many secular moralizing works served as a vehicle for expressing his thoughts on normsand values. The most detailed explanations of these paintings—and those best founded historically—are those of Dirk Bax, who pointed out that nearly all the vices depicted by Bosch are regularlycharacterized as ‘follies’ and are generally ascribed to a motley group of members of the lowestsocial class. The principal vices represented are unchastity, profligacy, quarrelsomeness, gluttony,drunkenness and self-inflicted poverty. Bosch’s connection between ‘vice’ or ‘evil behaviour’ and‘folly’ or ‘stupidity’—a theme explored in such paintings as the Stone Operation, the Blind Leadingthe Blind and the Ship of Fools—was in tune with the intellectual outlook of the day. The equationof virtue and wisdom, and vice and folly, is found in the 15th-century ‘literature of folly’, such asSebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff (‘Ship of fools’; 1494), the works of Thomas Murner and many otherless-known or anonymous authors. Detachment, moderation, self-knowledge, control overpassions, and, above all, reason were regarded as important values. This morality, which arose inbourgeois circles c. 1460–90, was aimed at defending the status quo, though it departed from theold order’s ideology by virtue of its rationalism, ethicism and individualism. In Bosch’s work theequation between folly, sin and (socially) reprehensible behaviour is not consciously expressed bya specific type representing folly; it is incidentally implied, as though Bosch regarded it as a self-evident basis for his moral precepts. It is not a question of his having been ‘influenced’ by theliterature of folly: there was a common ideology that found expression in all the various media.

In line with contemporary attitudes towards ‘social deviation’, Bosch associated sin and folly with alarge cross-section of society’s lower classes: whores, jailbirds, topers and revellers, vagabonds,beggars and travelling mountebanks, procuresses, common soldiers and poor people of all sorts.Whereas earlier the poor had not been frowned on, in the later Middle Ages they began to bestrictly controlled and stigmatized as good-for-nothing parasites and idlers. This reached a climaxc. 1525, when the regulations for poor-relief were extensively overhauled. From the 14th centuryonwards, and especially in the 15th and 16th centuries, a number of satirical texts contained longlists of ‘depraved persons’, who it was thought should be banished from society, as fools were inthe relevant literary genre. Fools and social undesirables were thus condemned to suffer a similarfate in both literature and art. Bosch in his pictures provided countless deviants whom he placed inhell or in the company of demons. Vagrants are another common subject in his work, as in TheVagabond (Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen), The Conjurer (preserved only in copiesand imitations), the foreground figures of the centre panel and the outer wings of The Haywain andseveral other lost works: The Verdict, The Fosterer and the Blind Leading the Blind.

The vices condemned by Bosch can be divided into four categories. In the first place, hedisapproved of giving way to ‘wild’ bodily impulses: aggression, love of food and drink and, aboveall, sexuality. This accorded with contemporary ideas, which were expressed in the opposition ofnature and culture, savagery and civilization, in both pictures and moral treatises. Boschinterpreted these ideas from a concrete social point of view, using everyday figure types. He also

disapproved of popular festivities and amusements, seen as opportunities for carnality and ill-breeding, a love of pleasure and roisterous behaviour—vices constantly associated with thecommon people.

The third category is concerned with work and idleness, wealth and poverty, avarice andprodigality. Here Bosch’s position was more moderate: he seems to have condemned the love ofgain for its own sake but was even more opposed to extravagance. Self-inflicted poverty was oftenassociated with those on the lowest rung of the social ladder and ascribed to vices from the firsttwo categories: drunkenness, whoring and excessive merrymaking. In contrast, he praised the loveof work and a moderate use of money and property. All this is reflected in The Haywain, the Deathof the Miser (Washington, DC, N.G.A.) and the Scenes of Idleness (preserved only in 16th-centuryprints). The fourth and last category with which Bosch was concerned is rash and baselessaggression. He was an advocate of constant watchfulness, reticence, attentiveness, detachment,restraint and caution, as can be seen in the drawing of the Owl in the Tree (‘The Field Sees, theWood Listens ’; Berlin, Kupferstichkab.) and the painting ‘Keep a Weather Eye Open’ (c. 1600;Heverlee, Arenberg col.).

The concept of threat plays a central part in Bosch’s world view: the individual is attacked in hismoral and spiritual integrity by his own impulses, rooted in sensuality, by the external world and bysupernatural forces of evil. Fear, both of material ruin and of spiritual damage, was a basic elementof bourgeois culture c. 1500. The self was regarded as an extremely weak entity, constantlyobliged to resist and remain firm. Along with the sense of the individual’s weakness goes anobsession with self-preservation as the ideal of utilitarian wisdom. Folly is self-destructive, leadingto eternal damnation and the company of devils, a state Bosch saw embodied in the lowest ranksof human society.

Although Bosch himself belonged to the wealthiest and socially highest class in ’s Hertogenbosch,the attitudes to work, money, possessions and their use, as expressed in his paintings, seemtypical of the contemporary urban middle class (guilds, not commerce). The main emphasis is onmoderation, avoiding unbridled acquisitiveness and also blind indifference. Then comes thedefence of the work ethos and the loathing of extravagance, which leads to poverty and ruin. Allthis is related to oeconomica or domestic economy: a life of peace and contentment with the fruitsof one’s labour, eschewing the desire for gain and novelty. Bosch endorsed the ideology of anurban middle class of craftsmen and small producers, to whom economy was also a moralquestion. This is certainly not a capitalist vision, but the emphasis on work and thrift (expressednegatively by Bosch: the rejection of laziness and squandering) already helps to prepare the wayfor capitalist discourse.

3. Sources.Bosch made extensive use of lower-class ‘folklore’, such as popular songs, ballads, proverbs,sayings and metaphors—all of which was then pressed into the service of an élite, bourgeoissystem of morals and satirical method. For Bosch the language and proverbs of the lower classes(whether these were substandard or not) presented a certain sense of obscurity, which was stilldeliberately cultivated as the vehicle of an intellectual morality: ‘the wise man speaks in riddles’. Atthe same time he used popular modes of expression and thought subconsciously to give form tohis ideas. He also drew extensively on the inversive mode of expression in popular seasonalrevels, for example Shrovetide. This may explain why he constantly represents wrong types ofbehaviour and never those he considered right. The principle of reversal is a widely recognizedanthropological phenomenon: the central categories of a culture are dialectically defined byproclaiming their opposite, in a fictitious breach of the norm that, in fact, confirms it as well asproviding amusement.

Folklore traditions also provided specific subjects to be represented in Bosch’s work, as in thefollowing paintings (all untraced): the Mock Tournament on the Ice, The Elephant, Strife and Danceon Shrove Tuesday and in Lent, the Blind Men’s Boar Hunt, in all of which a burlesque contest isthe central feature. This explicit content, however, is used metaphorically to convey a more

fundamental message. Strife and Dance on Shrove Tuesday is a metaphor for the oppositionbetween rival sets of values: in literature, from c. 1500 it is always Lent that wins, but in art, theoutcome is uncertain, for Bosch attached too many negative connotations to carnival time. Theother scenes are also metaphorical: by depicting opposites, they satirize foolish, aggressive andlicentious popular amusements (e.g. the Mock Tournament), the ill-effects of error and rashness(e.g. the Blind Men’s Boar Hunt) or unthinking hostility between social groups and classes (e.g. TheElephant). Other folklore themes in Bosch’s work centre on the ritual celebration of folly. The StoneOperation or ‘Cure of Folly’ is not inspired by real surgical procedures (in medieval times it wasthought that cutting a stone out of a madman’s head would cure him) but by burlesque illustrationsof the futility of trying to make fools wise. The Shearing of the Fool (drawing, London, BM) is basedon similar organized spectacles, intended to hold up folly to public opprobrium but later forbiddenby the authorities because of their ‘licentious’ character.

III. Style, technique and chronology.

Bosch’s technique and style are not homogeneous, which has led to much confusion. For examplehe seems to have used several different techniques of underdrawing. Van Schoute (1967)examined with infra-red reflectography six panels accepted as authentic and identified whatseemed to him three sketching techniques. His first category, to which he assigned the Crowningwith Thorns (London, N.G.) and the St John on Patmos (Berlin, Gemäldegal.), consists of sketchesdrawn with a coarse brush and diluted paint, giving few details and merely indicating a generaldesign. Individual strokes are short and of unequal length. Many changes of form were made at thepainting stage. In his second category are the Ship of Fools (Paris, Louvre) and the Allegory (NewHaven, CT, Yale U.A.G.), in which the underdrawing has areas of profuse hatching, giving animpression of great care and accuracy. Parallel oblique strokes, with a slightly mechanical effect,run from upper left to lower right. Changes of form are fairly minor. In his third and final category heplaced the Carrying of the Cross (Ghent, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.) and the outer wings of the triptych withthe Temptation of St Anthony (Lisbon, Mus. N. A. Ant.): these, he suggested, are characterized bya not very detailed sketch, in lines of moderate thickness that are often interrupted but firm andgive only a summary indication of the different forms. Here again, an unusual number of changesof form and composition is evident in the final painting.

Filedt Kok (1972–3), by contrast, distinguished only two types of underdrawing in Bosch’s work.The first group, in a ‘sketchy’ style, exemplified in the St Christopher (Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen), is based on a broad, summary underdrawing, visible only under the garments,executed with a coarse brush in thin paint. Not much was changed in the painting, though the formswere further elaborated. Grouped around this work are other compositions showing a saint in alandscape, such as the St John on Patmos, in which the underdrawing consists of mostly straightlines of varying width, some simple, others repeated alongside or over one another. The hatchedstrokes are made up of short, rather irregular lines. To this group may be added the St John theBaptist in the Wilderness (Madrid, Mus. Lázaro Galdiano) and the St Jerome (Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.).All these works form a more or less coherent stylistic group.

To the second main group, described as in a ‘careful’ style, Filedt Kok assigned the Carrying of theCross (Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.), featuring a confident, flexible line gracefully indicating forms andcontours, with a little hatching here and there. This technique is also found in van Schoute’ssecond group and in such works as the Death of the Miser and The Vagabond (both Washington,DC, N.G.A.). In this latter work, the profuse diagonal hatching is more varied and three-dimensionalin character. This very carefully modelled underdrawing was preceded by a preliminary sketch,some traces of which can still be discerned. The works in this group, including the inside of thewings of the Lisbon triptych with the Temptation of St Anthony, exhibit the same carefulunderdrawing and thinly applied paint, with many white highlights.

As Filedt Kok pointed out, these two different styles of underdrawing sometimes occur together, asin the Lisbon triptych, and thus afford no evidence as to chronology. Such differences in the

amount of detail in underdrawings, for instance between foreground and background figures, alsooccur in the works of Bosch’s contemporaries and are easily explained by the degree of attentiongiven to the various elements. Filedt Kok further suggested that there may be a connectionbetween the manner of drawing and the technique of the final painting, that it is the very thinlypainted panels that have the most precise underdrawing. This second conclusion, while valid forcertain groups, is contradicted by such works as the Crowning with Thorns, which is thinly paintedover a schematic underdrawing (see fig. above).

Just as Bosch’s paintings exhibit many styles of underdrawing, ranging from very careful toextremely casual, they also reveal totally different pictorial styles—sometimes carefully painted,with thick impasto, sometimes rapidly applied in an apparently slapdash manner, with a thin layerof paint. There are also many intermediate stages. To the first extreme belong, for example, the leftwing and central panel of the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’, the outer side of the Bruges LastJudgement, the triptychs of the Hermits and the Martyrdom of St Ontcommer and St John theBaptist in the Wilderness. Examples of the second style are the central panel and right wing of TheHaywain, the Death of the Miser, The Vagabond and others.

Despite the fact that Bosch’s different styles of underdrawing and painting technique provide nohelp whatsoever in dating, it is possible to identify recurring patterns in individual groups ofpaintings. For instance a fundamental similarity of technical execution exists between three ofBosch’s large triptychs: the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’, The Haywain and the Last Judgement. Ineach case the left wing is thickly and carefully painted, while the underdrawing is entirely or nearlyinvisible. The right wing is executed more rapidly, with a thin, transparent layer of paint, with theunderdrawing visible in many places. The central panel in each instance is intermediate betweenthe other two styles. The underdrawing on the outer wings is invisible throughout, while thestructure of the paint layer varies from moderate to very thick.

IV. Critical reception and posthumous reputation.

Besides Philip the Fair, Isabella the Catholic, Margaret of Austria and Philip of Burgundy, therewere other collectors of Bosch’s works in the first half of the 16th century. In 1521 and 1528 atleast five paintings were in the possession of Domenico and Marino Grimani in Venice. Thecollection of paintings by Bosch assembled by Mencía de Mendoza, Marquesa de Cenete and thirdwife of Hendrick III of Nassau, suggests that Spanish interest in Bosch’s work may have beenlinked to a local tendency towards eschatologism and prophetism, which verged on heresy: theheretical group of the Alumbrados (Enlightened Ones), associated with the Third Order of StFrancis, presented features of Erasmianism and free thought, as well as apocalyptic claims, andtheir earliest centre, in 1519, was at the house of Mencía de Mendoza in Guadalajara.

Another Bosch collector, imprisoned on a charge of heresy, was the humanist Damião de Goes.Thus c. 1500 there seem to have been certain inherent ideological tendencies in Spanisharistocratic and court circles that, while not strictly heretical, prepared the way for an interest in oneaspect of Bosch; by the first half of the 16th century some humanist circles, inclining to heterodoxy,had gone still further and actually saw Bosch as a kindred spirit. This would mean that in Spanishand Spanish–Burgundian circles Bosch was approached one-sidedly from the beginning and wasvery soon ‘reinterpreted’ or endowed with a spurious content, giving rise to the ‘Bosch myth’. Themyth was fundamentally twofold: an orthodox Bosch and a heretical one.

Other 16th-century collectors of Bosch were Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1530–86),Fernando Alvárez de Toledo, Duque de Alba, and his illegitimate son Fernando de Toledo (d1591), Archduke Ernst of Austria and his brother, Emperor Rudolf II of Prague. However, it was,above all, Philip II of Spain who systematically procured important works by Bosch, presentingthem, from 1574, to the monastery of the Escorial. In the 17th century Spanish royal collectionswere enriched by dozens more examples of Bosch’s works, most of which have been lost.

It was in Spain, too, that ‘El Bosco’ became a familiar name in art and literary writings until c. 1800.

From Felipe de Guevara, Ambrosio de Morales and Fray José de Sigüenza in the 16th century andthe early 17th to Antonio Ponz and J. A. Ceán Bermúdez in the late 18th, dozens of art theoristshave kept alive Bosch’s fame in Spain. Many literary works, for example entremeses (short comicinterludes) by Felix Lope de Vega (1562–1635), used his name.

References to Bosch in Italian art treatises are briefer: he was mentioned by Guicciardini, Vasariand Lomazzo, always as the embodiment of the fantastic, absurd and grotesque. In theNetherlands it was, above all, Karel van Mander’s Schilderboeck that provided an appreciation ofBosch and information concerning some of his lost works. Bosch then fell out of favour, except inSpain, and although he was mentioned in the art literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, it waswithout special enthusiasm. He was not rediscovered until the end of the 19th century, when hisapocalyptic vision began to be appreciated for new reasons.

Bibliography

Ceán Bermúdez; EWA ; Thieme–Becker

Early sources

G. Vasari: Vite (1550, rev. 2/1568); ed. G. Milanesi (1878–85)

F. de Guevara: Comentarios de la pintura (MS., c. 1560); ed. A. Ponz (Madrid, 1788), pp. 41–4

L. Guicciardini: Descrittione di …tutti Paesi Bassi (1567)

G. P. Lomazzo: Trattato dell’arte de la pittura, scultura ed architettura (MS., 1584); ed. (Rome, 1844), ii,pp. 201–2

K. van Mander: Schilder-boeck ([1603]–1604)

J. de Sigüenza: Historia de la Orden de San Jerónimo (1605/R Madrid, 1905), pp. 837ff

A. Ponz: Viaje (1772–94); ed. C. M. de Rivero (1947)

X. de Salas: El Bosco en la literatura española (Barcelona, 1943)

A. Salazar: ‘El Bosco y Ambrosio de Morales’, Archv. Esp. A., xxviii (1955), pp. 117–38

X. de Salas: ‘Más sobre El Bosco en España’, Homenaje a J. A. van Praag (Amsterdam, 1956), pp. 108–13

M. Levisi: ‘Hieronymus Bosch y los Sueños de Francisco de Quevedo’, Filología, ix (1963), pp. 163–200

H. Heidenreich: ‘Hieronymus Bosch in Some Literary Contexts’, J. Warb. & Court. Inst., xxxiii (1970), pp.171–99

Documentary sources

C. Justi: ‘Die Werke des Hieronymus Bosch in Spanien’, Jb. Preuss. Kstsamml., x (1889), pp. 141–4

J. Ebeling: ‘Jheronimus van Aken’, Miscellanea Jan Gessler, i (Antwerp, 1948), pp. 444–57

P. Gerlach: ‘De bronnen voor het leven en het werk van Jeroen Bosch’ [Sources for the life and work ofHieronymus Bosch], Brabantia, xvi (1967), pt 1, pp. 58–65, pt 2, pp. 95–104 ; Fr. trans. of pt 2, Gaz. B.-A., 6th ser., lxxi (1968), pp. 109–16

P. Gerlach: ‘Jheronimus van Aken alias Bosch en de Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Broederschap’, JheronimusBosch: Bijdragen bij gelegenheid van de herdenkingstentoonstelling te ’s Hertogenbosch 1967 [Essays onthe occasion of the memorial exhibition at ’s Hertogenbosch 1967], pp. 48–60

J. K. Steppe: ‘Jheronimus Bosch: Bijdragen tot de historische en de ikonografische studie van zijn werk’,Jheronimus Bosch: Bijdragen bij gelegenheid van de herdenkingstentoonstelling te ’s Hertogenbosch1967, pp. 5–41 [with ref. to edns of Spanish royal inventories and others]

P. Gerlach: ‘Oirschot en de familie vanden Meervenne’, Campina , ii (1973), pp. 183–93

F. Gorissen: Das Stundenbuch der Katharina von Kleve: Analyse und Kommentar (Berlin, 1973), pp.1100–08, 1129–65 [the van Aken family in Nijmegen and ’s Hertogenbosch, c. 1350–1516, withgeneaological charts and transcriptions of the relevant docs]

P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Rudolf II als verzamelaar van werk van en naar Jheronimus Bosch’, Jb.: Kon. Mus. S.Kst. (1981), pp. 119–33

B. Blondé and H. Vlieghe: ‘The Social Status of Hieronymus Bosch’, Burl. Mag., cxxxi/1039 (1989), pp.699–700

Bibliographies

W. Gibson: Hieronymus Bosch: An Annotated Bibliography, ed. C. Harbison (Boston, MA, 1983) [for the lit.to 1983]

P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Über neuere Bosch-Literatur’, Krit. Ber., xiv (1986), p. 52 [suppl. to Gibson]

Monographic studies

P. Lafond: Hieronymus Bosch (Brussels and Paris, 1914)

M. J. Friedländer: Die altniederländische Malerei , v (Berlin, 1927); Eng. trans. as Early NetherlandishPainting (Leiden, 1967–76)

Jeroen Bosch (exh. cat. by D. Hannema and J. G. van Gelder, Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans, 1936)

L. von Baldass: Hieronymus Bosch (Vienna, 1941, 2/1959)

C. de Tolnay: Hieronymus Bosch, 2 vols (Baden-Baden, 1965)

D. Buzzati and M. Cinotti: L’opera completa di Hieronimus Bosch (Milan, 1966)

Jheronimus Bosch (exh. cat., ed. K. G. Boon and others; ’s Hertogenbosch, Noordbrabants Mus., 1967)

W. S. Gibson: Hieronymus Bosch (London, 1973)

J. Snyder: Bosch in Perspective (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1973)

S. Takashika: The Complete Work of Jheronimus Bosch (Tokyo, 1978) [best illus]

R. Marijnissen and P. Ruyffelaere: Jheronimus Bosch (Antwerp, 1987) [does not cover lost works,tapestries or graphic work; concentrates on the artist’s religious work]

P. Vandenbroeck: Jheronimus Bosch: Tussen volksleven en stadscultuur [Hieronymus Bosch: between thelife of the people and urban culture] (Berchem and Antwerp, 1987)

E. Larksen: Hieronymus Bosch: Catalogo completo (Florence, 1998)

Iconography

D. Bax: Ontcijfering van Jeroen Bosch (The Hague, 1949); Eng. trans. as Hieronymus Bosch: His PictureWriting Deciphered (Rotterdam, 1979)

D. Bax: ‘Beschrijving en poging tot verklaring van het Tuin der Onkuisheiddrieluik van Jeroen Bosch,gevolgd door kritiek op Fraenger’, Acad. Anlct.: Kl. S. Kst., lxiii/2 (1956) [whole issue devoted to iconog.study of the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’]

J.-P. Jouffroy: ‘Le Jardin des Délices’ de Jérôme Bosch: Grandeur nature (Paris, 1977) [good illustrations]

D. Bax: ‘Hieronymus Bosch and Lucas Cranach: Two Last Judgement Triptychs. Description andExposition’, Acad. Anlct.: Kl. S. Kst., cxvii (1982) [whole issue]

P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Jheronimus Bosch’ zogenaamde Tuin der Lusten : I ’ [Hieronymus Bosch’s so-calledGarden of Earthly Delights: I], Jb.: Kon. Mus. S. Kst. (1989), pp. 9–210

M. Bergman: ‘The Garden of Love: A Neoplatonic Interpretation of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly DelightsTriptych’, Gaz. B.-A., cxv (May–June 1990), nos 1456–7, pp. 191–212

W. Gibson.: Hieronymus Bosch and the Vision of Hell in the Late Middle Ages (Tokyo, 1990)

P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Jheronimus Bosch’ zogenaamde Tuin der Lusten : II ’, Jb.: Kon. Mus. S. Kst. (1990), pp.9–192

A. Simonson: ‘On Spiritual Creativity in Hieronymus Bosch’, Fifteenth Cent. Sutd., xviii (1991), pp. 221–58

G. Clark: Bosch’s Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness and the Artist’s ‘Fleurs du Mal’ (Princeton,1994)

Technique

R. van Schoute: ‘Over de techniek van Jeroen Bosch’, Jheronimus Bosch: Bijdragen bij gelegenheid vande herdenkingstentoonstelling te ’s Hertogenbosch 1967 [Essays on the occasion of the memorialexhibition at ’s Hertogenbosch 1967], pp. 72–9

M. Sonkes: ‘Le Dessin sous-jacent chez les primitifs flamands’, Bull. Inst. Royal Patrm. A., xii (1970), pp.195–225

J. P. Filedt Kok: ‘Underdrawing and Drawing in the Work of Hieronymus Bosch: A Provisional Survey inConnection with Paintings by him in Rotterdam’, Simiolus, vi (1972–3), pp. 133–62

P. Vandenbroeck: ‘Problèmes concernant l’oeuvre de Jheronimus Bosch: Le Dessin sous-jacent enrelation avec l’authenticité et la chronologie’, Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, Colloque IV:Leuven, U. Catholique, 1981, pp. 107–19

M. del Carmen Garrido and R. van Schoute: ‘El tríptico de la Adoración de los magos de Hieronymus vanAeken Bosch: Estudio técnico’, Bol. Mus. Prado, vi (1985), pp. 59–77

M. del Carmen Garrido and R. van Schoute: ‘Les Péchés capitaux de Jérôme Bosch au Musée du Prado

Copyright © Oxford University Press 2007 — 2011.

à Madrid: Etude téchnologique, premières considérations’, Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture,Colloque VI: Leuven, U. Catholique, 1985, pp. 103–6

Paul Vandenbroeck