Hieronymus Bosch

Between Magic and Reality

Biography of Hieronymus Bosch

Hieronymus Bosch was born in 1450 in Hertogenbosch, a provincial but prosperous town located in the modern Netherlands close to the Belgian border. He is one of the most famous of the Netherlandish artists, known for his enigmatic panels illustrating complex religious subjects with fantastic, often demonic imagery.

Too little information is safes about his life. His father and grandfather were both painters in the same town before him and apparently
Bosch lived all his life there. From his childhood he lived in artist’s family. He married a reach and highborn woman, Aleid van Mervey. Hieronymus
Bosch joined the lay of the Confraternity of Notre Dame. It was founded in
1318. The symbol of the organization was white swan. This sodality consists of friars and secular people. This organization kept away from the
Catholic Church, it confessed ideas of humanism and mysticism. The sodality organized a number of printing houses and schools. Bosch was responsible for designing a stained-glass window, among several other works, for the town church.

In 1480 he was for the first time mentioned as a painter. The last time he was mentioned in the books of sodality – the 9 of August 1516. It was the day of his funeral.

Mystery of Bosch’s paintings

Bosch is one of the most mysterious painters in the world. The attitude toward him has changed through years. His contemporaries thought that he was a strange man, who paint fantastic pictures, frightful and funny at the same time. His paintings became very popular in Spain and in
Portugal. In Portugal there are the most good collections of paintings of
Bosch. There are thousands of books about Bosch and his works. References to astrology, folklore, witchcraft, and alchemy, in addition to the theme of the Antichrist and episodes from the lives of exemplary saints, are all woven together by Bosch into a labyrinth of late medieval Christian iconography. Some scientists think that Bosch was a forerunner of the surrealism. Some think he was a real catholic, some that he was an atheist.
From his paintings we can understand that he was a very well educated person, he knew Bible and lots of other books of past and present, he also new lots of folk legends. He was good at science, medicine, astrology and even alchemy. We can say that he also knew music because we can find lots of musical instruments on his pictures. Scholars differ in their interpretation of Bosch's art, but most agree that his pictures show a preoccupation with the human propensity for sin in defiance of God, as well as with God's eternal damnation of lost souls in hell as a fateful consequence of human folly. The main theme of his paintings was the opposition of Good and Evil, of God and Devil, of life and death.

Among the dozens of Boschian paintings, the autograph works generally accepted as his include the following: The Marriage at Cana (Museum Boymans- van Beuningen, Rotterdam), The Seven Deadly Sins (Prado, Madrid),
Crucifixion (Museus Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), The Hay Wain (Prado),
The Death of the Miser (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), The
Temptation of Saint Anthony (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon), The
Garden of Earthly Delights (Prado), The Adoration of the Magi (Prado), and
Christ Carrying the Cross (Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent).

Periods of paintings

Dated works by Bosch do not exist so we cant only imagine the chronology of his paintings. Researchers divide his work into 3 periods – the earliest, mature and oldest period.

The paintings which belong to the earliest period (1470 – 1500) mostly devoted to religious themes. Most of them are illustrations to the Bible.
In the manner of this time we can see an incertitude. Some of the paintings are miniatures. Among the paintings of the first period there are such works as “The Adoration of the magi”, “Christ Shown to the People”, “
Crucifixion”, “ The Seven Deadly Sins”.

We can refer such pictures as “Garden of Delights”, “The last
Judgement”, ‘Monsters”, “ The Hay Wain” etc. to the middle period of
Bosch’s work. His paintings in that period were full of little figures of people and other creatures, sometimes unreal and strange. But to the end of the middle period and in the last period of his work Bosch’s paintings become simply and light. Most of them devoted to the life of saint people, like “ Temptation of St Anthony”, “St John the Evangelist on Patmos” and others. The evil became more realistic, it connected with real people, not monsters.

The technics of paintings

The technics of Bosch’s painting is different from other painter’s technics of his time. The colors are more bright and rich and this make his paintings more lively and dinamic. Often he draw on the piece of wood. On the wood colors became more bright and at the same time crystal. He also used varnish atop the colour.

Bosch originally solved the problem of space. In his earliest works he try to follow the rules of the traditional perspective, but then, in his next works he invent his own technics. It is the fantastic space full of little figures, composed several chains. In his last works his technics changed again. All figures moved to the first plan. There is no perspective on this paintings.

Stylistically, Bosch worked in a manner called alla prima, a method of applying paint freely on a preliminary ground of brownish paint. He was familiar with Dutch manuscript paintings and with foreign prints, and many of his images can be traced to these sources.

Symbols

The paintings of Hieronymus Bosch are full of symbols. The symbols are so different that it is very hard to find one general key to all of them. One symbol can denote lots of different things and objects. The symbols in Bosch’s paintings came from different sources: alchemy, magic tractates, folklore, religious books and others.

The symbols, which came from alchemy, are the most enigmatic in his paintings. It is often symbols of evil, Devil and demons, and also symbols of lust. There are lots of crystal spheres in his paintings and it’s come from alchemy. We can see different stages of substance, water, gas and others.

We can see different fruits and berries that symbolized lust. There are lots of symbols of male and female in his paintings. Always sharp objects like arrows, knifes, horns are the symbols of man. Symbols of woman are circles, shells, jugs, etc.

Bosch took lots of symbols of animals from bible: we can find camels, rabbits, pigs, horses and other “impure” animals, which symbolized sin and evil. Often we can see an owl on his paintings. It is a symbol of wisdom and at the same time of heresy. Also there are lots of skeletons of animals and stale trees on his paintings.

Other symbols that we can often find in his works are steps, which symbolized cognition in alchemy and also sexual intercourse. Also the symbol of cognition is the key. One of the most fearful symbols is the clip leg – the symbol of pain, torture and magic.

The works of Hieronymus Bosch (aspecially the paintings of the second period) are full of different images of Satan. We can see a traditional demons with horns, wings and tale, but also there are bugs, half-human half- animal creatures, anthropomorphic machines and other grotesque figures.
Often Bosch painted demons as a music instruments, mostly wind-instruments.
Finally one of the most prevalent symbol of his paintings is a mirror – the symbol of temptation.

The first period of Bosch’s work: Seven Deadly Sins