Table Of ContentWORLD OF ART
Hieronymus Bosch
Walter S. Gibson. 151 illustrations, 26 in colour
No one can look at the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch
without amazement and bewilderment. What made the artist
fill his canvases with such scenes of torture, such monsters,
such leering devils? Why does a sense of misery and
foreboding pervade all his works? Professor Gibson shows
that what seems inexplicable to us today was perfectly
intelligible to the fifteenth-century viewer. The subjects of
Bosch's paintings were in fact the overwhelming concerns of
late medieval Europe: the LastJudgment, original sin, death,
temptations of the flesh. The author describes each picture in
detail, explaining how the complicated symbolism can be
understood by reference to medieval folklore and religion. He
also points out that many of the acts portrayed in the pictures
were visual translations of verbal puns or metaphors. 'Well
produced and well written ... a wise and friendly exposition'
(Arts Review) 'An exceptional book, sensible, illuminating
and readable .. . probably the best straightforward account of
Bosch and his works which we shall have for some time'
(Times Literary Supplement)
Thames and Hudson
ISBN 0-500-20134-X
On the cover:
Garden of Earthly Delights
(dctaiJ from centre panel)
Musco dcl Prado, Madrid
Primed in Singapore
Walter S. Gibson
was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1932.
He obtained his BFA (cum laude) and MA at Ohio State
University and was awarded a Harvard PhD in 1969 for his
dissertation on The Paintings ef Cornelius Engebrechtsz. He has
spent cwo periods of research at the Kunsthistorisch lnstituut
Rijksuniversiteit, Utrecht, and his awards and honours
include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978-'79 and a Fulbright
research grant to Belgium in 1984. Professor Gibson's special
interest lies in sixteenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting,
and his other books include Bruegel (World of Art), Pieter
Bruegel the Elder: Two Studies, and Mirror ef the Earth: The
Flemish World Landscape of the
Sixteenth Century.
ea
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151 illustrations, 26 in colour
THAMES AND HUDSON
Frontispiece
Contents
I HIERONYMUS BOSCH
St Anthony Carried by Two Companions
detail of ill. 124. The right-hand figure is Preface 7
possibly a self-portrait of Bosch
Introduction
9
CHAPTER ONE
Life and Milieu 13
CHAPTER TWO
Artistic Origins and Early Biblical Scenes
19
CHAPTER THREE
The Mirror of Man 33
CHAPTER FOUR
The Last Judgment 49
CHAPTER FIVE
The Triumph of Sin
Any copy of this book issued by the publisher as
a paperback is sold subject to the condition that CHAPTER SIX
it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, The Pilgrimage of Life IOI
resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without
the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is CHAPTER SEVEN
published and without a similar condition The Imitation of Christ I II
including these words being imposed on a
subsequent purchaser.
CHAPTER EIGHT
© L973 Thames and Hudson Ltd, London The Triumph of the Saints
129
Reprinted 1997
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication CHAPTER NINE
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or Style and Artistic Heritage I 53
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording or any other information
storage and retrieval system, without prior List of Illustrations 170
permission in writing from the publisher.
Selected Bibliography 175
ISBN 0-500-20134-x
Printed and bound in Singapore by C.S. Graphics Index 177
Preface
To the Memory of When I began research some years ago on the Garden ef Earthly Delights
triptych of Hieronymus Bosch, I was soon convinced that his enigma
Leon M. J. Delaisse
tic art was inspired not by medieval heresies or hermetic practices, but
by the common and quite orthodox religious experiences of his age.
Teache r and Friend
An invitation to write a book on this artist gave me the opportunity
to investigate his other works, and subsequent research has amply
confirmed my original conviction. Bosch's conceptions of Heaven
and Hell differ little from those of his contemporaries, and his repre
sentations of sinful humanity can be understood only if we tum to late
medieval sermons and didactic literature.
This is no new discovery. Many scholars, especially the Dutch, have
long explored Bosch's art in these terms. Their sober and conscientious
work, however, has been often eclipsed by more sensational theories
whose total lack ofhistorical foundation has not prevented their wide
spread acceptance by the public. The present book attempts to redress
this situation by studying Bosch within his historical context. In
particular, I have sought to demonstrate that much of Bosch's imagery,
even the most bizarre, was a typical expression of the culture which
Johan Huizinga has so brilliantly described in his Waning of the Middle
Ages.
At every stage in the preparation of this book I have greatly bene
fited from the help and interest of colleagues and students. My warmest
thanks are extended to Dr Charity Cannon Willard, Miss Jean Anne
Vincent and Dr James F. O'Gorman, who read and commented on an
earlier draft of the text. Dr Willard's knowledge of fifteenth-century
culture proved especially valuable. I have also had many fruitful dis
cussions with Dr Robert Calkins, Dr Phillips Salman and Dr Thomas
Tomasic, as well as with Mr and Mrs Charles Scillia whose extensive
knowledge of medieval theology provided me with many clues for
interpreting Bosch. Mr Scillia's identification of several figures in the
Prado Epiphany has been adopted in Chapter Eight; it is hoped that he
will publish his theories in extenso in the near future. Two graduate
7
seminars on Bosch allowed me to expound my ideas to an interested
and critical audience; for their valuable observations, I am grateful to
Mr Thomas Donaldson, Mr Allen Farber, Mr Henry Kleinhenz,
Mr John Leidenfrost, Mrs Edith Murray, Miss Sara Jane Pearman, Mr
and Mrs Scillia and Mrs Wendy Wood.
Introduction
I am indebted to Dr Marie-Jose de Mendonc;:a, Director of the Museu
Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, for her kind permission to view
Bosch's St Anthony triptych while it was still undergoing restoration The strange world of Hieronymus Bosch is best studied in the Museo
in the laboratory. For their unfailing assistance in obtaining books and del Prado in Madrid. Here, in one of the upper galleries, are gathered
periodicals, thanks are extended to Mrs Georgina Toth, of the Cleve no less than three major altarpieces and several smaller pictures by
land Museum of Art, Mrs Alice Loranth, of the John G. White Bosch and his workshop. They present a dramatic contrast to the
Collection, Cleveland Public Library, and Miss Charlotte Vanderveer other Netherlandish paintings hanging in the room. The coolly
formerly of the Cleveland Museum of Art. observed and precisely rendered details of Robert Campin's Betrothal
Mrs Ida Brisky deserves a large vote of thanks for her patient typing of the Virgin and the dignified restraint of Roger van der Weyden's
of the numerous earlier drafts of the manuscript; the final draft was Descent from the Cross have nothing in common with the devil
ably prepared by Miss Carolyn Moore. My mother spent the better infested landscapes of Bosch's Haywain or his Garden of Earthly 60, 63
part of the summer vacation in proofreading the final draft; to her I Delights. The art of the older masters is firmly rooted in the prosaic,
am particularly grateful. substantial world of everyday experience, but Bosch confronts us
My warmest gratitude, however, must be expressed to one who is with a world of dreams, nightmares in which forms seem to flicker
no longer here to receive it, the late Professor L. M.J. Delaisse. His and change before our eyes.
constant interest and encouragement has inspired me for many years; Bosch's pictures have always fascinated viewers, but in earlier
without him this book would never have come to be written and its centuries it was widely assumed that his diabolic scenes were intended
pages reflect, however inadequately, many ofhis ideas. The dedication merely to amuse or titillate, rather like the grotteschi of Italian Renais
will express, I hope, some measure of my debt to him. sance ornament. Philip II, it is true, collected his works more for edifi
cation than for entertainment, but the Spanish were in the minority.
W.S.G. As the Spaniard Felipe de Guevara complained in the earliest account
of Bosch's art, written about 1560, most people regarded him merely
Cleveland, Ohio
as 'the inventor of monsters and chimeras'. About a half-century later,
JI July 1972
the Dutch art historian Karel van Mander described Bosch's paintings
chiefly as 'wondrous and strange fantasies ... often less pleasant than
gruesome to look at'.
In our own century, however, scholars have come to realize that
Bosch's art possesses a more profound significance, and there have
been many attempts to explain its origins and meaning. Some writers
have seen him as a sort of fifteenth-century Surrealist who dredged
up his disturbing forms from the subconscious mind; his name is
frequently linked with that of Salvador Dali. For others, Bosch's art
reflects esoteric practices of the Middle Ages, such as alchemy,
astrology or witchcraft. Perhaps most provocative, however, are
8 9
the attempts to connect Bosch with the various religious heresies different from the Brethren of the Free Spirit. Bosch executed several
which existed during the Middle Ages. An example can be found in commissions for this brotherhood and was also patronized by highly
the thesis proposed by Wilhelm Fraenger. Because of their popularity, placed members of the Church and nobility, one of whom probably
Fraenger's theories deserve consideration; they also vividly illustrate commissioned the Garden ef Earthly Delights itself The religious
the problems encountered in interpreting Bosch. orthodoxy of these patrons can scarcely be doubted. After the middle
According to Fraenger, Bosch was a member of the Brethren of the of the sixteenth century, a number of Bosch's works, including, once
Free Spirit, a heretical group which flourished throughout Europe
for several hundred years after their first appearance in the thirteenth
century. Little is known about this sect, but it is supposed that they
2 HIERONYMUS BOSCH Garden of Earthly Delights detail of central panel
practised sexual promiscuity as part of their religious rites, through
which they attempted to achieve the state of innocence possessed by
Adam before the Fall; hence they are also called Adamites. Fraenger
assumes that the Garden of Earthly Delights was painted for a group of
Adamites in 's-Hertogenbosch, where Bosch lived, and that the un
abashedly erotic scene of the central panel represents not a condemna
tion of unbridled sensuality, as is generally believed, but the religious
practices of the sect. Fraenger has also linked other works by Bosch to
the Adamites and their doctrines.
Although most scholars object vigorously to Fraenger's thesis, it
has received widespread attention in the public press and popular
magazines where, in fact, the central panel of the Garden of Earthly
Delights is reproduced almost as frequently as the Mona Lisa and the
Night Watch. The great appeal of this interpretation lies partly in its
novelty and its sensational character, but even more in the fact that it
accords well with twentieth-century conceptions of free love and
uninhibited sexuality as positive values in themselves, and as remedies
for various psychic and social ills. Indeed, one advocate of what might
be called 'therapeutic sexuality', Norman 0. Brown (Lo11e's Body,
1966), points to Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights as an illustration of
his own theories put into practice.
Despite the attraction which Fraenger's interpretation exerts on
modem sensibilities, however, his basic premise is very questionable.
We have no historical evidence that Bosch was ever a member of the
Adamites or that he painted for them. In fact, the last certain reference
to this group in the Netherlands appears at Brussels in 141 I. But even
if the Adamites survived somehow undetected into the early sixteenth
century, Bosch himself can hardly have been anything other than an
orthodox Christian. He was a member of the Brotherhood of Our
Lady, a guild of clergy and laity devoted to the Virgin Mary and quite
10
more, the Garden of Earthly Delights, were acquired by the most CHAPTER ONE
conservative Catholic of them all, Philip II of Spain. This was the time
of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, when the Inquisi
tion took on new life and men everywhere were peculiarly sensitive
to questions of dogma and doctrine. Thus, it is highly unlikely that
Life and Milieu
Bosch's pictures would have been acquired so avidly had there been
any suspicion that he was associated with any heretical sect. Only
towards the end of the sixteenth century were his works regarded by Hieronymus Bosch lived and worked in 's-Hertogenbosch, the place
some in Spain as 'tainted with heresy', but this charge was soundly from which he takes his name, an attractive but fairly quiet Dutch city
refuted by the Spanish priest Fray Jose de Siguenza in 1605. not far from the present-day Belgian border. In Bosch's day, 's
Fraenger's theories may thus be dismissed for lack of historical Hertogenbosch was one of the four largest cities of the duchy of
proof The attempts to see Bosch as a secret adept of one of the more Brabant, which formed part of the extensive territories of the ambi
esoteric arts can be challenged on similar grounds. This is not to deny tious dukes of Burgundy. The other chief Brabantine cities, Brussels,
that he may have derived some ofhis imagery from these sources; but Antwerp and Louvain, lie to the south, in what is now Belgium;
the assertion by some writers that he was a practising alchemist, for 's-Hertogenbosch is in the north, geographically close to the pro
example, cannot be proved. Equally unfounded are suggestions that vinces of Holland and Utrecht and the Rhine and Maas rivers. In the
Bosch painted under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. late Middle Ages, 's-Hertogenbosch was a thriving commercial town,
Finally, the tendency to interpret Bosch's imagery in terms of the centre of an agricultural area, with extensive trade connections
modem Surrealism or Freudian psychology is anachronistic. We with both Northern Europe and Italy. Although its cloth industry was
forget too often that Bosch never read Freud and that modem important, the city was especially famous for its organ builders and
psychoanalysis would have been incomprehensible to the medieval bell founders.
mind. What we choose to call the libido was denounced by the medi The predominantly middle-class commercial population must have
eval Church as original sin; what we see as the expression of the sub determined much of the city's character, for 's-Hertogenbosch lacked
conscious mind was for the Middle Ages the promptings of God or the the active court life ofBrussels or Malines; unlike Louvain, it possessed
Devil. Modem psychology may explain the appeal Bosch's pictures no university, nor was it the seat ofa bishopric, as were the other major
have for us, but it cannot explain the meaning they had for Bosch cities of Brabant. Yet a vigorous cultural life was by no means absent.
and his contemporaries. Likewise, it is doubtful that modem psycho 's-Hertogenbosch had a famous Latin school and, by the end of the
analysis can help us to understand the mental processes by which fifteenth century, could boast of five rederijker kamers or chambers of
Bosch developed his enigmatic forms. Bosch did not intend to evoke rhetoric, literary associations which presented poetic and dramatic
the subconscious of the viewer, but to teach him certain moral and performances on various public occasions.
spiritual truths, and thus his images generally had a precise and pre Religious life seems to have been particularly flourishing; a great
meditated significance. As Dirk Bax has shown, they often represented number of convents and monasteries were situated in and around the
visual translations of verbal puns and metaphors. Bosch's sources, in city. Of special interest are the two houses established by the Brothers
fact, should rather be sought in the language and folklore of his day, and Sisters of the Common Life. A modified religious order without
as well as in the teachings of the Church. If we examine the Garden of vows, this brotherhood originated in Holland in the late fourteenth
Earthly Delights and his other pictures within the contemporary century in an attempt to return to a simpler and more personal form of
culture, we will discover that, no less than the altarpieces of Robert religion, which was called the Devotio Moderna. Its character is well
Campin and Roger van der Weyden, Bosch's art mirrored the hopes exemplified in the famous devotional treatise, the Imitation of Christ,
and fears of the waning Middle Ages. generally attributed to Thomas aK empis, which, as we shall see, must
12 13
have been well known to Bosch and his patrons. The Devotio Moderna 3 Cloth Market at 's-Hertogenbosch c. 1525
played an important role in the religious revival of the fifteenth
century and probably contributed to the extraordinary increase in
the number of religious foundations in 's-Hertogenbosch. Indeed,
by 1526, just ten years after Bosch's death, one out of every nineteen
persons in 's-Hertogenbosch belonged to a religious order, a much
higher proportion than can be found in other Netherlandish cities at
that time. The presence of so many cloisters and their economic
4 Cathedral of St John, 's-Hertogenbosch
competition seem to have attracted considerable hostility from the
townspeople, an attitude which we shall also see reflected in Bosch's
art.
Despite frequent criticism of the religious orders, however, the
moral authority of the medieval Church had not, as yet, been seriously
shaken. Religion still permeated all aspects of everyday life. Each guild
had its own patron saint, and every citizen participated in the great
feasts of the Church and in the annual religious processions. The
inextricable mingling of religion and commerce is strikingly illus
trated in a crudely painted little panel, done about 1525, which shows
3 the cloth market as it must have appeared in Bosch's time. The city
square is occupied by rows of stalls sheltering the cloth merchants and
their wares; behind those can be seen the steeply gabled fa~ades of
patrician houses and warehouses, typical of any late medieval city
in Northern Europe. The foreground, however, is dominated by the
youthful St Francis of Assisi, dressed in the fashionable costume of the
early sixteenth century; at his feet lie bales of cloth, a reference to
the saint's father who had been a cloth merchant. A pair of shears the buttresses supporting the roof, some of which bring to mind the
painted on the reverse suggests that this picture was painted for a guild fantastic creatures of Bosch.
of weavers or cloth cutters. Because ofhis father's profession, St Francis The church of St John was in the early phases of construction when
would have been an appropriate patron for such a guild, while his Bosch's ancestors settled in 's-Hertogenbosch in the late fourteenth or
charitable act would have reminded its members of their Christian early fifteenth century. Their family name, Van Aken, suggests that
obligation to the needy. they originally came from the German town of Aachen (Aix-la
These two impulses of life in 's-Hertogenbosch, the sacred and the Chapelle). In 1430-31 appears the first certain reference to Bosch's
4 secular, found their finest expression in the great church of St John, grandfather,Jan van Aken, who died in 1454. Jan had five sons, at least
at once the symbol of the still-intact medieval faith and a testimony to four of whom were painters; one of these, Anthonius van Aken (died
the civic pride and commerical prosperity of the city. Begun in the c. 1478), was the father of Hieronymus Bosch.
late fourteenth century on the site of an older structure and only Unlike Albrecht Diirer, Bosch left no diaries or letters. What we
completed in the sixteenth, it is a fine example of Brabantine Gothic, know of his life and artistic activity must be gleaned chiefly from the
noteworthy for its wealth of carved decoration. Of particular interest brief references to him in the municipal records of 's-Hertogenbosch
6 are the rows of curious figures, monsters and workmen, sitting astride and especially in the account books of the Brotherhood of Our Lady.
14 15
