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Bosch was motivated by the problem of evil, particularly the origins of evil in the world therefore, in order to trace his own originality, we must go still farther back in time, even to the moment before the advent of humanity, Adam and then Eve, to examine his frequent fascination with the Fall of the Rebel Angels. 5 Yet this particular originality of Bosch derives from ultimate origins: God’s Creation and the Garden of Eden. Those scholars, including myself, who see Bosch’s painted demons as an innovative watershed in the history of Netherlandish painting note that they remain his signal inventions, especially connected to his recurring novel visions of the afterlife.

2) of the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych, where he shows the original creation ex nihilo, as described in Genesis, by the Creator himself. P02823 (artwork in the public domain) īosch’s originality must be traced back to its own questions of “origins.” Bosch himself thematized creativity on the grisaille exterior ( fig.

2 Jheronimus Bosch, Creation of the World, exterior, Garden of Earthly Delights triptych, oil on panel, 220 x 389 cm. For all the emphasis on Bosch’s originality and unique genius, it is thus also quite important to recall that even for him “nothing can be made out of nothing.” As we shall see, Bosch’s formulations also lay securely founded in Christian theology, chiefly as articulated by the church father Saint Augustine, as well as other late medieval manifestations. 4 Such imagery had long informed cathedral portals ever since the Romanesque–a commonplace, familiar to readers of this Journal. This imagery certainly had firm foundations in the region, as revealed by even a cursory review of Craig Harbison’s dissertation on the Last Judgment in Netherlandish painting. His essential repertoire consists of God, Satan, angels, and the demons of hell, especially when taken together to form the entire concatenation of the Last Judgment. Of course, the cultural inheritance of Christian thought and imagery was retained by Bosch as well: the life of Christ as well as the Christo-mimetic lives of later Christian saints, particularly hermit saints, provided him with some of his most basic themes ( fig. 1 Jheronimus Bosch, Saint Jerome in Prayer, oil on panel, 80.1 x 60.6 cm. Bosch also follows inherited convention in employing grisaille or brunaille tones for the exteriors of many of his triptychs, including the presentation of conventional saint figures on the outside of his Vienna Last Judgment as well as less conventional narrative scenes in monochrome on the outside of the Lisbon Saint Anthony, the Prado Epiphany, and the Garden of Earthly Delights. 3 The use of a bell-shaped Antwerp triptych model suggests both the later date and probable workshop status of one contested triptych, the Bruges Torments of Job.

Even the shapes of his triptychs range from standard fifteenth-century rectangular wings and centers for most of his triptychs to the rounded tops more typical of sixteenth-century Antwerp.

Even though he stemmed from a family of painters, what strikes all observers most about Bosch is his originality, conventionally described in modern terms as his “genius.”Īs the Latin saying declares, ex nihilo nihil fit, or “nothing is made out of nothing.” And as Lynn Jacobs and others have noted, Bosch utilizes the same formats as his Netherlandish predecessors, particularly triptychs. He seems to defy such connections and to break with all precedents, particularly in terms of what he might have taken from earlier models of painting in either Flanders or Holland. This thinking proves particularly unsatisfying for trying to explain a uniquely original artist like Jheronimus Bosch. 2 In an attempt to elucidate something more essential about Bosch’s artistic mission and the core of his spirituality, I offer the following essay.Īrt historians always worry about origins–in the form of genealogies of training or in concerns about artistic influence. 1 Reviews of that book were consistent with most of the criticisms addressed to books on Bosch: all such volumes provide interesting discussions of context and content, but somehow none has gotten at the essence of this unique and puzzling artist. Several years ago I added my voice to the vast chorus of scholarly commentary on Bosch.