HIERONYMUS BOSCH DUTCH PAINTER Hiëronymus Bosch, orig. Jeroen van Aken or Jerome van Aken, (born in 1450s) Netherlandish painter. He was the son and grandson of accomplished painters; his name comes from his native town of ’s Hertogenbosch. He enjoyed a successful career and was widely imitated. Of the numerous works attributed to him, none can be dated precisely. His paintings blend fantasy and reality in apocalyptic scenes of chaos with half-human, half-animal creatures, devils, and demons interacting with human figures in imaginary architecture and landscapes. Among his best-known works is The Garden of Earthly Delights, depicting the dreams that afflict people who live in a pleasure-seeking world. One of the most original northern European artists of the late Middle Ages, he was an outstanding draftsman and one of the first to make drawings as independent works. He also produced decorative works, altarpieces, and stained-glass designs. BOSCH’S WORKS Bosch produced at least sixteen triptychs: of them, eight survive fully intact with another five surviving in fragments. Bosch's works are generally organized into three periods of his life dealing with the early works (c. 1470–1485), the middle period (c. 1485–1500), and the late period (c. 1500 until his death). Among all of his paintings most famous ones are: The Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych of the Temptation of Saint Anthony Table of the Mortal Sins THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS Bosch's most famous triptych is The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1495–1505) whose outer panels are intended to bracket the main central panel between the Garden of Eden depicted on the left panel and the Last Judgment depicted on the right panel. It is attributed by Fischer as a transition painting rendered by Bosch from between his middle period and his late period. In the left hand panel God presents Eve to Adam; innovatively God is given a youthful appearance. The figures are set in a landscape populated by exotic animals and unusual semi-organic hut-shaped forms. The central panel is a broad panorama teeming with nude figures engaged in innocent, selfabsorbed joy, as well as fantastical compound animals, oversized fruit, and hybrid stone formations. The right panel presents a hellscape; a world in which humankind has succumbed to the temptations of evil and is reaping eternal damnation. Set at night, the panel features cold colours, tortured figures and frozen waterways. The nakedness of the human figures has lost any eroticism suggested in the central panel, as large explosions in the background throw light through the city gate and spill onto the water in the panel's midground. TABLE OF THE MORTAL SINS In Table of the Mortal Sins each sin has its own scene. In pride, a demon holds a mirror in front of a woman. As a result of wrath, an angry man is about to kill a woman. The small circles are also detailed. In the corner works Death is shown at the door step together with an angel and a demon while the priest reads the sinner's last rites. In Heaven (also referred to as Glory), the saved enter the kingdom with Jesus and the saints. Saint Peter is shown as a gatekeeper and at the gate an Angel stops a demon from trapping a woman. In Judgment Christ is glorified while angels wake up the dead. In Hell demons persecute sinners in accordance with their sins. For example, in gluttony a man is fed the food of Hell by a demon, and in greed misers are boiled in a pot of gold. Early paintings by Bosch are rather awkward in their drawing and composition and his brush work was somewhat limited. In such works, Bosch portrays the vulnerability of people when tempted by evil or lust. He depicts groups of people as ignorant or absurd when faced with different challenges on life's journey. The imagery he uses, however, is still rather conventional, and it is only in a small number of paintings that strange figures such as demons or magicians make an appearance.
