Larsen 1998
HIERONYMUS BOSCH
(Erik Larsen) 1998
[Master Artists Library, Smithmark Publishers, New York, 1998, 149 pages]
This book, written by the Austrian art historian Erik Larsen (1911-2006), offers a general introduction (focusing on Bosch’s cultural environment, his life, his sources, his modern commentators, and his oeuvre), 65 pages of colour plates, and a catalogue (authentic paintings, workshop paintings and paintings by imitators, drawings, and copper engravings: a total of 63 entries). According to Larsen, the art of Bosch is moralizing and satirical. Bosch sermonizes the beholder and instills sufficient fear so that eventual repentance might ensue. His approach is deeply pessimistic, though, and even degenerates into malicious pleasure about the misfortune of others. Bosch was also the first to lift hellish scenes from the pages of manuscripts onto large paintings.
When it comes down to matters of chronology, attribution, and Bosch’s stylistic development, new insights have turned Larsen’s approach largely obsolete since 1998. He may have a point, though, when he argues that Bosch’s style and artistic skills seem rather crude and simplified when compared with those of some of his contemporaries, not worthy of a genius, as often asserted. He stands out from those contemporaries by his inventive choice of subject matter in a great part of his oeuvre, not by the quality of execution, which explains the great success of his paintings in his own times. This is also why today Bosch still arouses curiosity and draws the attention of a large strata of the public, as well as of more sophisticated connoisseurs. Yet, he enjoys a reputation that far exceeds his purely artistic qualities. Most sixteenth-century Bosch followers degenerated into painters of more or less folkloristic diableries, whose aim was to frighten and terrify the spectator instead of inform and educate.
[explicit October 14, 2025 – Eric De Bruyn]
