Van Wamel 2019
“De Calvarie met schenker door Jheronimus Bosch” (Marieke van Wamel) 2019
[in: Matthijs Ilsink, Bram de Klerck, and Annemarieke Willemsen (eds.), Het einde van de middeleeuwen – Vijftig kunstwerken uit de tijd van Bosch en Erasmus. Nijmeegse Kunsthistorische Studies – XXV, Uitgeverij Vantilt, Nijmegen, 2019, pp. 280-285]
In this contribution, Van Wamel focuses on Bosch’s Crucifixion panel (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 6639), and in particular on the position and the outlook of the donor figure, which was once overpainted, after which the overpainting was removed leading to considerable damage of this part of the painting.
For a devotional painting, it is quite exceptional that the donor and the biblical figures share the same reality. Probably, the panel first functioned as a devotional piece, and after the donor’s death as an epitaph. In the times of Bosch, striped clothing was worn by all classes of society, and the negative social connotation of this type of clothing had strongly diminished. The donor seems to have belonged to the low nobility, and he may have been a military man.
[explicit December 19, 2023]
