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WORLD'S BEST ART
For a list of the finest works of
painting and sculpture, see:
Greatest Paintings Ever
Oils, watercolours, mixed media
from 1300-present.
WORLDS GREATEST
ARTISTS
For the greatest view painters, see:
Best Landcape Artists.
For the greatest still life art, see:
Best Still Life Painters.
For the greatest portraitists
see: Best Portrait Artists.
For the greatest genre-painting, see:
Best Genre Painters.
For the top allegorical painting,
see: Best History Painters.
WORLD'S COSTLIEST ART
For a list of the highest priced
oil painting sold at auction, see:
Top 10 Most Expensive
Paintings.
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Paintings By Bosch
The chronology of Bosch's paintings is
highly controversial. A small group of biblical scenes and didactic genre
paintings, characterized by stiff, awkwardly placed figures and hard,
sharp brushwork, are generally accepted as early works. The themes of
the genre paintings - The Ship of Fools, (Louvre, Paris), The
Stone Operation (Prado, Madrid), and the Seven Deadly Sins
(Prado, Madrid) - are those of contemporary satirical writing. Bosch castigates
the vices of charlatans and quacks, of rich men, and of lecherous monks
and nuns.
The Last Judgment Triptych
The two major triptychs, The Last Judgment
(Alte Pinakothek, Munich) and The Haywain (Prado, Madrid), stand
at the center of Bosch's middle period (c.1485-1500). In the central panel
of The Last Judgment Bosch created a highly original hellish landscape,
infested by a swarm of devils and covered by burning pits and furnaces,
bizarre constructions, and instruments of torture. Many of the monsters
are half animal, half human. Others combine animal forms with inanimate
ones, and startling juxtapositions of scale increase the horror of the
effect - as in the egg, pierced by an arrow, that scuttles about on booted
legs. Some of Bosch's imagery is developed from traditional medieval symbols
and he was further inspired by the grotesques that appear on medieval
manuscripts; yet there is no precedent for the extraordinary fertility
of his invention.
The Haywain Triptych
The subject of The Haywain was new
in Netherlandish art. The inner and outer wings show the Creation and
Fall of Man (inner) and Hell (outer). On the central panel a crowd of
demons pulls a vast haycart, with a pair of lovers on top, towards hell.
Behind ride dignitaries of Church and State, while beside it an unruly
mob fight over handfuls of hay. Their greed and depravity is the subject
of the painting. Bosch's source was a contemporary ballad or proverb;
the hay also symbolizes the worthlessness of all material gain.
The Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych
The Deadly Sin of Lust is almost certainly
the subject of Bosch's most difficult triptych, The Garden of Earthly
Delights (Prado, Madrid), probably painted after 1500. The work is
divided into 4 panels. The outer panels, when closed, show the Third Day
of Creation, painted in grisaille. Inside, the Garden of Earthly Delights
is flanked on the right by Hell and on the left by the Garden of Eden.
This central panel shows a garden landscape of enchanting and fragile
beauty, painted in pearly pinks and blues. Here, groups of small nude
figures, spread out decoratively as though on a tapestry, indulge in every
kind of sexual activity. They ride on beasts, cavort in ponds and streams,
nibble at luscious fruits, and entwine themselves with giant birds. There
are over 1,000 figures in the work, each highly individual and involved
in their own action. Almost all the details are erotic symbols drawn from
contemporary folklore. Bosch certainly intended to represent not innocence
but depravity; the surface beauty of the painting underlines the alluring
and deceptive pleasures of sin, and the soft fruits symbolize the transience
of carnal pleasure. The Garden of Earthly Delights demonstrates
that lust is the main reason for man's downfall.
The Temptation of St Anthony
Triptych
Especially in his later years, Bosch was
fascinated by the temptations and torments that beset those hermits and
holy men who sought to achieve union with God by a life spent in contemplation
and denial of the needs of the flesh. A series of paintings on this theme
culminates in the brilliant colour
of the triptych of The Temptation of St Anthony (1500; National
Museum of Art, Lisbon). Bosch took the details of the story from the Lives
of the Fathers and The Golden Legend. The left and right wings show traditional
scenes - the saint attacked by demons and rescued, unconscious, by his
friends, and his temptation by a naked devil-queen. The central scene,
however, is far more complex and its details have been interpreted in
many different ways. St Anthony, his hand raised in blessing, kneels before
a ruined tomb. He is surrounded by a throng of devils who symbolize the
temptations that had beset him in the desert. They cluster and press around
him with a terrifying intensity, and many of their bodies are fearsome
mixtures of human, animal, and inanimate forms.
Other Paintings
Bosch painted many other traditional Christian
subjects from the life of Christ, especially scenes from the Passion.
The triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (Prado, Madrid) is one
of his most baffling works. The scene takes place before a dilapidated
hut, in which lurks a crowd of men with menacing faces and bizarre clothing.
Their presence has never been satisfactorily explained, but they suggest
the universal conflict of good and evil: reminders of the all-pervading
presence of evil recur throughout the splendid panoramic landscape which
links the three panels.
A series of half-length paintings of the
Passion of Christ, which may date from late in Bosch's life, are more
straightforward. These exploit to the full the contrast between Christ's
humility and the bestiality of his persecutors. In Bosch's last Passion
scene, Christ carrying the Cross (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent),
the deformed and leering faces of the mob are grotesquely ugly. Yet Christ
remains aloof and serene; his carrying of the cross promises a victory
over evil, which was Bosch's final message.
Attribution
Paintings by Hieronymus Bosch can be found
in the best art museums and private collections
all over the world, but many of these are only copies of his original
works. He never dated his works, and signed few, which makes them difficult
to attribute. Only about 25 pictures and a handful of drawings can be
attributed to him with reasonable certainty. Aside from those mentioned
above, they include: Allegory of Gluttony and Lust, c.1490 (Yale
University Art Gallery, New Haven), The Conjurer, c.1500 (Musée
Municipal, St.-Germain-en-Laye), Death and the Miser (National
Gallery of Art, Washington DC), Ecce Homo, c.1476 (original version at
the Städel Museum, Frankfurt), The Extraction of the Stone of
Madness (The Cure of Folly), c.1475 (Museo del Prado), Paradise
and Hell, c.1510 (Museo del Prado) and Terrestrial Paradise,
c.1500 (Palazzo Ducale, Venice).
Artistic Reputation
In the 21st century, some scholars have
come to believe that Bosch was merely using his art to reflect the religious
and moral codes of his day, depicting stories which could quite easily
be heard in a church ceremony in the middle ages. Others claim that Bosch
was hundreds of years ahead of his time and was in fact an early Surrealist,
along the lines of Salvador
Dali. Some writers have tried to link him to the dream works of Freud.
Whatever the case, he remains one of the
most extravagant and famous artists of Northern Europe. He died in 1516
and many painters went on to imitate his style. After the painter’s
death, King Philip II of Spain, who shared Bosch’s surreal dark vision
of the world, bought many of the artist’s works, which is why there
are so many in the Museo del Prado in Madrid today.
Not until Pieter Bruegel the Elder did
Bosch have a successor, and many art critics consider him to be one of
the greatest figurative artists
of the Northern Renaissance and one of the most imaginative painters
in the history of art.
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