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c. 1450-1516 • Netherlandish • Painter • Northern Renaissance
"The difference that, to my mind, exists between the pictures of this man and those of all others is that the others try to paint man as he appears on the outside, while [Bosch] alone had the audacity to paint him as he is on the inside." - Fray Jose de Siguenza; l544?-1606
Siguenza, quoted above, was librarian to the Spanish king Philip II (reigned 15 56-98), who collected works by Bosch during the century after the artist's death. Sigiienza goes into elaborate detail describing Bosch's bestknown work, called today (a modern invention) the Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1504). Siguenza believed that the "basic theme" is that man's evil ways are shown by "many allegories or metaphors that present them in the guise of tame, wild, fierce, lazy, sagacious, cruel, and bloodthirsty beasts of burden and riding animals." That is all certainly true, but still leaves unexplained how or why Bosch, who seems to have led a fairly conventional life as an upstanding citizen in the provincial town of 's-Hertogenbosch, came up with some of the most bizarre creatures of all times-ears that form the wheels of a cannon, a belly with a mouth in it and mixed them up with pornographic exotica as well as imported animals such as a giraffe and an elephant. Some of his sources are derived from alchemy, and some of his motivation must certainly have been wrapped up in the apocalyptic turn-of-the-century mentality, increased by political and religious disorder of the kind that would, by 1517, lead to the Protestant Reformation. It is known that an early owner of the painting, if not the first, was also noble, so it was an important work from the outset. Historians believe that Bosch traveled to Italy around 1505, and his maniacal inventions found their way into the work of Italian as well as other Northern European artists. It should be noted that he was also a landsca pist who could create vast, airy views of great beauty, and a caricaturist whose faces, though very occasionally beautiful and serene (e.g., the Virgin in Adoration of the Magi, c. 151 o), were as ugly, contorted, and expressive as any in history.
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