Hieronymus Bosch - Painter of the Grotesque

Hieronymus Bosch:

Hieronymus Bosch, who lived during the late Middle Ages, is well-known for his extraordinarily inventive and grotesque paintings that – in excellent detail and bright, harmonious colors – depict human beings undergoing fantastic torments in hell. A Seventeenth Century Spanish Priest explained that unlike some painters who sought to paint the outer aspects of man, Bosch's artistic aim was to bring out the inner agony; this Priest seems to have had a pretty pessimistic opinion of human nature. Well, be that as it may, Bosch certainly seems to have had a fine time with fingering human sinners in his works – and so, I must say, do the viewers. Bosch's apocalyptic paintings seem to evoke awe and astonishment rather than pity.

Early Life:

For an artist whose work is so instantly recognizable and has had a major role in influencing many modern artists, the information about Bosch's personal life is not exactly extensive.

Bosch was born in 1450 in the town of s-Hertogenbosch, a prosperous and cultural place on the Dutch-Belgian border. Although he took to calling himself Bosch – apparently after his home town – his family name was actually 'van Aken'.

The van Aken family owned a big town house on the Main Square and were very well-known in s-Hertogenbosch. Many members of the van Aken clan were artists and Bosch's father, Anthonius van Aken, and grandfather, Jan van Aken, were particularly renowned; they received important art commissions from the city's Cathedral of St. John.

Bosch probably had a comfortable childhood and no doubt received art instruction from his relatives.

Religious Influences:

Given the spirit of the times and his family's close connections with the Cathedral of St. John, it was perhaps inevitable that Bosch should take to religion with a deeply convinced fervor.

He was influenced first by the Brethren of the Common Life – a religious society that hoped to battle moral corruption with materialistic renunciation and pure unselfishness – and later by the Brotherhood of Our Lady, a powerful, wealthy society with slightly wider aims.

However, whatever funny Freudian ideas one may get from viewing his paintings, he was never an acolyte of the Adamites – those Medieval exponents of the Free Love Theory, who hoped to recreate the Innocent Sexual Life Before the Fall.

Personal Life:

Bosch lived in s-Hertogenbosch all his life, though he may have traveled to Italy for work or art study.

He married the very rich and much older Aleyt Goyaerts van den Meervenne sometime in 1479 or 1481. She was a member of the Brotherhood of Our Lady, and, as her husband, Bosch too gained entry into this exclusive group.

Career:

After his marriage, Bosch worked principally for the Brotherhood of Our Lady, undertaking many commissions to paint altarpieces and design stained-glass windows and crucifixes and chandeliers, amongst other things.

He had already established his style with his painting 'Seven Deadly Sins' and now he really let his unorthodox imagination loose.

His paintings were unlike the traditional ones in vogue then. Instead of being solely inspired by Biblical themes, he turned to popular folk-lore and contemporary moral and satirical literature and caricatured these in a very intense and dramatical way. Bosch had no interest in spending a lot of time over a painting or in portraying serenity and realism. He worked very fast, and populated his malevolent, tumultuous worlds with suffering humans and weird creatures and bizarre objects. We see a phallus-like knife between large human ears, crushing and cutting everyone in its path; human heads directly attached to feet; rat-headed demons and vicious birds with human feet; half a human body with a tavern inside and the arms turning into tree trunks, and many other unnerving images.

Far from causing a controversy, his work was greatly appreciated by both his patrons and the townspeople. No one before had shown in such fine detail the bestial horrors that awaited those that sinned, and it is a peculiarly human trait to include our neighbor rather than ourselves in the sinning fraternity and gain a certain amount of satisfaction from knowledge of their coming punishment. Schadenfreude, I think it's called in German.

Anyway, so his work was much liked and his reputation grew. In true sign of success, many contemporary artists took to ripping off his style.

In 1504, he was commissioned by Duke Philip of Burgundy to paint an altarpiece depicting the Last Judgment.

Unfortunately, this work hasn't survived to the present day. We also have only 30 sheets of Bosch's drawing and sketches, and, as he never dated his works, the exact chronology of his 40 remaining paintings is not known.

Some of his best known works are 'The Hay Wain', 'The Garden of Earthly Delights', 'Mocking of Christ', and 'Adoration of the Kings'.

End:

Bosch died in s-Hertogenbosch in 1516. His works inspired Pieter Bruegel and much later on the Surrealists.

References:

Bosch, The Great Artists, Marshall Cavendish Ltd., 1993

The World of Art, by Robert Payne, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1972