Copplestone 1995
THE LIFE AND WORKS OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH
(Trewin Copplestone) 1995
[Shooting Star Press Inc., New York, 1995, 79 pages]
In spite of the bragging title, a very superficial, popularizing little book that boils down to (short) explanatory captions and (a lot of) pictures. Bosch is considered a moralizing painter with a highly original, still not fully understood pictorial language, but the comments accompanying the illustrations are hardly interesting, the suggested chronology of the paintings is highly debatable, and sporadic blunders are not lacking. The Prado Epiphany is said to date from before 1480 (p. 8), the Vienna Last Judgment triptych is called Bosch’s largest painting (p. 29), and the Garden of Delights triptych might well have been painted for a religious sect that believed in free love (p. 53). The summit of amateurism: the illustration on page 67 is not the original central panel of the Lisbon St Anthony triptych but the mediocre São Paulo copy, represented mirrorwise. To top it all, this illustration also ‘adorns’ the cover.
[explicit December 23, 2024 – Eric De Bruyn]
