BOSCH DICTIONARY PAGE

Quick Reference Dictionary of Art/The Drawing Place
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BOSCH, Hieronymus (Jerome van Aeken) (1450-1516)
Netherlandish painter, active in his native town Hertogenbosch. Worked there for the Confraternity of Notre Dame (from1480/1). Paid by Philippe le Beau for his Last Judgement (1504). Curiously unconnected with comtempory styles, Bosch occupied himself principally with moralizing subjects in which he developed a symbolism and an esoteric iconography which are still being unravelled. His Garden of Earthly Delights (Prado) exemplifies the fantastic side of his art, for he populates the earth with hundreds of small nudes, belaboured by various creatures-horrid organisms invented by the artist to represent various sins or misfortunes. A technical innovator, as well as an imaginative one, he developed the use of alla prima painting, his execution being of the hightest quality (eg Adoration of the Magi, c. 1500, Prado). His terrible visions of spiritual torture, symbolised in the physically grotesque, had great influence on Bruegel, as did his cunning charasteristics of various mean types (eg The Crowing with Thorns, 1508-9, NG, London).
Primary reference source:
A VISUAL DICTIONARY OF ART
Published by:
THE NEW YORK GRAPHIC SOCIETY
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