Nies 2023a
HET EINDE DER TIJDEN VOOR OGEN
Het werk van Jheronimus Bosch bezien in het kader van
de apocalyptische eschatologie en de hervormingsbewegingen
(Frans Nies) 2023
[Nijmeegse Kunsthistorische Studies – XXXI, SPA uitgevers-Jheronimus Bosch Art Center, Liederholthuis-’s-Hertogenbosch, 2023, 304 pages]
This is the commercial edition of Frans Nies’ dissertation defended at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen on April 25, 2023. The advisor (promotor) was Jos Koldeweij. Translation of the Dutch title: Facing the End of Times – The art of Jheronimus Bosch considered in the context of apocalyptic eschatology and the reform movements.
Chapter 1 : The works of Jheronimus Bosch [pp. 14-71]
The character of Bosch’s oeuvre is largely eschatological and often testifies of a fear of the end of times, but a thorough analysis of his works from an apocalyptic-eschatological perspective is still lacking in the literature on Bosch. Nies intends to study in how far the art of Bosch reflects the religious spirit of his era and the fear of the end of times which was part of it. More in particular, he wants to examine in how far the critical rendering of the clergy and the descriptions of the Antichrist can be related to Christian reform movements which would lead to the Reformation. This chapter offers an elaborate status quaestionis of earlier research on those works of Bosch that have an eschatological dimension. These works are…
The author pays a lot of attention to the negative representation of members of the clergy in these works (it should be noted, though, that his identifications of clergymen are sometimes debatable, as he himself admits in some cases). Nies has a profound knowledge of the existing secundary literature concerning these works (although every now and then he focuses too much on interpretations that are clearly unconvincing, such as Sullivan’s 2014 article in which she argues that the Christ figure in the left interior panel of the Garden of Delights is actually the Antichrist: the article gets no less than five pages), and he does not shy away from taking personal stands (for example when he concurs with the authors who consider the so-called ‘Fourth King’ in the Prado Adoration of the Magi the Antichrist or when he writes that Aragonès Estella’s approach of this figure is ‘totally inconvincing’). Nevertheless, the risk remains that for those who have not read this secundary literature themselves the large quantity of often contradictory approaches and opinions becomes confusing after a while.
Bosch’s critical rendering of the clergy can be related to earlier and contemporary reformatory movements that saw the misbehaviour of clergymen as a sign of the approaching end of times. A second indication in this context was the expected arrival of the Antichrist. It is remarkable that De Bruyn’s dissertation (De Bruyn 2001a) is largely ignored in the discussion of the Haywain. This is all the more remarkable because in this dissertation it is argued that the figure with the turban and the fat belly in the central panel is the Antichrist (see pp. 203-204). This interpretation is not even mentioned by Nies, whereas he pays a lot of attention to the Antichrist figure in the art of Bosch.
Chapter 2 : The Antichrist: the origin of the legends [pp. 72-151]
Although it would have been enough to describe the ideas concerning the Antichrist during and before Bosch’s lifetime, the author chooses to present an elaborate history of the Antichrist legends in this chapter. This history (from early Judaism until the sixteenth century) shows that in Bosch’s times the Antichrist concept had become deeply rooted in the collective consciousness. Earlier Bosch literature paid too little attention to this history.
Nies frequently uses the phrase apocalyptic eschatology, which at first seems somewhat problematic (in the eyes of the author himself). The specialized literature dealing with this phrase is said to be confused and unclear (pp. 74-76). Nevertheless, we may assume that ‘eschatology’ means: the ideas about the ‘last things’ (death, Last Judgment, the End of Times). The addition ‘apocalyptic’ then refers to texts which supply (‘reveal’) further information about these ‘last things’. In the first place the Revelations of St John (the last book of the Bible), but there are more textual sources in this context.
Whoever wants to gather information about the Antichrist concept will greatly profit and learn a lot from this chapter, something for which the author deserves the highest praise. It is a downright wonderful performance that is being delivered here based on long and persevering research. However, it does not really result in a pleasant, smooth reading experience. The reader is almost engulfed by a tsunami of consecutive facts and details presented in a very compact and terse manner and supplemented with often very elaborate footnotes that could fill a book of their own. Thus, this chapter almost becomes an encyclopedia, but as such it surely is impressive. Those who are only interested in Bosch, though, will soon find the dry, page-long enumerations a hard nut to crack. When at the end the reform movements (Modern Devotion, Hussites, Luther) are discussed, Bosch does come somewhat closer.
Nies concludes that until the period of the Reformation no clearly defined image of the Antichrist existed, but under the influence of the reform movements the ideas about the Antichrist and the End of Times showed more and more criticism on the Church and even on the pope. The pope was sometimes considered the Antichrist. Thanks to translations in the vernucalar, plays performed in public, and preachers the common people also became familiar with this subject matter around 1500.
Chapter 3 : The development of the Antichrist iconography [pp. 152-207]
What has been said above about chapter 2, is also true for chapter 3, but this time the author offers an elaborate survey of Antichrist iconography, from the early Middle Ages until the beginning of the Reformation.
Chapter 4 : Last Judgment or Apocalypse? [pp. 208-235]
This chapter is the most important one, at least for those who are primarily interested in the art of Bosch. Nies first offers a concise survey of the Last Judgment theme in the visual arts before and during (and at the end of the chapter also after) Bosch’s lifetime, after which he focuses on Bosch’s Last Judgment triptychs in Bruges and Vienna. These triptychs deviate from the traditional representation of the Last Judgment because we do not see the dead rising from their graves and because almost everybody ends up in Hell. According to Nies, these triptychs were mainly inspired by Revelations, chapter 20 where we read that that the ‘elected’ will be the first to rise from their graves (the so-called ‘first resurrection’) and that after 1,000 years the devils will war against the followers of Christ. Only after that will the Last Judgment begin.
The main theme of the central panels of both these triptychs is not the Last Judgment but the Apocalypse, i.e. the period of chaos preceding the Last Judgment when the devils fight against Christ’s followers. The few souls who are being saved in Bosch’s triptychs are the ‘elected’ of the first resurrection going straight to Heaven, and the Bruges left interior panel, showing the Earthly Paradise, represents the purified souls of those who had not sinned too much, probably inspired by the writings of Dionysius the Carthusian. In both left interior panels (Bruges and Vienna) evil (still) plays a role, with which Bosch wanted to express that evil was already present at the start of creation.
Aware of the impending end of times, Bosch (or his commissioner) saw the period immediately before the Last Judgment as an image of his own times and wanted to warn his contemporaries of sinful behaviour, in particular of the clergy’s bad conduct. This criticism of the clergy announces the Reformation, which does not necessarily mean that Bosch belonged to a reform movement. A similar message (warning of sinfulness and advising pious behaviour) can be found in Bosch’s Haywain and Garden of Delights triptychs.
Some comment on this chapter
On page 212 Nies refers to a study of Beat Brenk (1966) arguing that the rising of the dead is often a part of representations of the Last Judgment, but this motif is not an absolutely necessary ‘Elementarprinzip’ of the Last Judgment iconography. Sometimes the rising of the dead was ‘implicitly assumed’. Nies agrees with this approach, and yet the absence of the rising of the dead is for him one of the reasons why Bosch’s Last Judgment triptychs do not show the Last Judgment (see page 221). This cannot but confuse the reader.
The major textual source for the thesis that Bosch’s Last Judgment triptychs do not represent the Last Judgment but the Apocalypse (the period preceding the Last Judgment) is Revelations, chapter 20, verses 4-10. But these verses are very compact and not very clear at all. According to the Biblical text the devils will battle against ‘the camp of the saints and the beloved city’ (Revelations 20, 9: et circumierunt castra sanctorum et civitatem dilectam in the Vulgate), i.e. against the followers of Christ. But in the Bruges and Vienna central panels the devils do not fight against the followers of Christ, they punish and torture the sinners. What Bosch painted does not agree with the text in Revelations.
Nies’ approach of the Bruges left interior panel (representing the Garden of Eden as some sort of ‘waiting room’ before Heaven) offers some valuable insights but is eventually unsatisfactory because a lot more can be said about this theme than is done in his book. This is not the proper place to elaborate on this matter. Let us just point out that the Last Judgment triptych (Valencia, c. 1457) painted by Vrancke van der Stock before Bosch is nót mentioned (whereas elsewhere in the book the reader is avalanched with textual and visual sources). The central panel of this triptych does not represent the rising of the dead either (it shows St Michael weighing the sins and the virtues) and its left interior panel also depicts the Garden of Eden as a waiting room before Heaven.
On page 235 Nies writes (in translation): Even in the paradisiacal scenes in the left panel [i.e. in the Bruges and Vienna left interior panels] he showed that evil, which flourishes and is being punished in the other panels, was present from the beginning of creation. The phrase ‘paradisiacal scenes’ is superficial and even debatable. Because the represented themes are totally different: in Vienna we see the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man, whereas in Bruges we see the Garden of Eden after the Fall as a waiting room before Heaven. Referring to Dionysius the Carthusian, Nies interprets the souls ascending to Heaven in the Bruges left upper panel as the just who have been judged in a positive way at the iudicium particulare (i.e. immediately after their death) and the figures in the Garden of Eden as the souls that have been purified in Purgatory and are now waiting for the Last Judgment (p. 224). This sounds contradictory and confusing.
Nies concludes that Bosch’s view on mankind and on the world was pessimistic and that that is why he focused on the apocalyptic scenes (p. 234). Again, this is debatable. On the next page Nies himself writes (in translation): Convinced that his own time, characterized by catastrophes and the works of the devil, was the end of times preceding the decline of the world, Bosch warned the viewer that within short notice he would be summoned to account for his behaviour during lifetime. Could this not be considered the message of an optimist or at least of someone who wants the best for mankind? To warn of sinful behaviour and to propagate piety are the explicit intentions of many contemporary texts that deal with the Last Judgment.
One of these texts is an anonymous and rhymed Last Judgment treatise (c. 1445-50) that can be found in the so-called Tübingse Sint-Geertrui-handschrift [Tübingse Sint-Geertrui-handschrift ed. 1996: 86-123 (Text 3)]. Middle Dutch texts such as this one nicely represent what people in the Low Countries around 1500 thought about the Last Judgment. The verses 715-727 read (in translation):
'With St Paul I can declare that all the elected will rise up into the sky with Christ, for in his letters we read: when the Lord comes, we who live will be lifted up into the clouds, towards Him. That is why I can also assure you that only the bad ones, who cherish earthly things, will be standing on the earth in the valley mentioned above [i.e. in the Valley of Josaphat] and its surroundings, and their number will be so large that they will need more space than Holland, Sealand and Gelderland together.'
The elected in the sky and the doomed in large numbers down on the earth: does this not nicely agree with what Bosch painted in the Vienna central panel? Would it be possible that Bosch was more inspired by texts such as this one (not necessarily by this one) than by Revelations 20?
All-in all and for now, it does not seem necessary to change the title of Bosch’s Bruges and Vienna Last Judgment triptychs into Apocalypse triptychs.
Chapter 5 : The end of times in religious drama [pp. 236-267]
This chapter offers an overview of medieval religious drama (including the mystery plays) from the tenth until the sixteenth century and intends to show that through this art form the apocalyptic-eschatological ideas could reach broad layers of the population and thus became part of the collective consciousness. Also the authors and performers of religious plays considered the end of times an urgent and current theme. The critical attitude toward the clergy is largely absent, though, probably because these plays were supervised by clerical and worldly authorities. Again, this chapter offers a lot of interesting information about the subject it deals with, but the works of Bosch do not play a role in it.
Chapter 6 : Conclusion [pp. 268-282]
In two languages (Dutch and English) Nies summarizes the major conclusions of his study.
Conclusion
Het einde der tijden voor ogen is an instructive and very sound dissertation that totally justifies Nies’ doctoral promotion. In an exemplary and convenient way, the author has brought together a large number of textual and visual facts concerning the End of Times, the Antichrist, and the Last Judgment, and he does not shy away from defending personal views with the intention to open up new horizons concerning the art of Bosch. However, not everyone will concur on his major point of view, i.e. that Bosch did not paint Last Judgments but Apocalypses.
Let us also point out that the book has an extremely attractive layout with some striking technical gimmicks. Something for which Nies, who according to the ‘Afterword’ has quite some experience with graphical design, was personally responsible. However, the idea to print the footnotes in small letters and in a light-blue colour was less rewarding: under a particular incidence of light they are almost illegible. Deserving praise, though, is Nies’ clear and accessible writing style which stands out positively against the supererudite, highly academical way of arguing of some other recent Bosch authors.
Finally, it can alo be pointed out that Nies, when dealing with the art of Bosch, uncritically adopts the insights of the BRCP team (see BRCP 2016a), which is perhaps not surprising taking into account who his supervisor was. One example confirming this, is the stubborn choice of still calling the protagonists of the Rotterdam tondo and of the exterior wings of the Haywain ‘wayfarers’ instead of ‘pedlars’. Another even more striking example is when the Bruges Last Judgment is attributed to ‘Jheronimus Bosch’, whereas the Vienna Last Judgment is attributed to ‘Jheronimus Bosch ánd workshop’.
[explicit December 8, 2024 – Eric De Bruyn]
Devitini Dufour 1998
BOSCH
Follia, vizi e virtù: alle deriva tra realtà e fantasia
(Alessia Devitini Dufour) 1998
[Leonardo Arte, Milan, 1998]
[French translation: Alessia Devitini Dufour, Bosch, Art-poche – 2, Éditions de la Martinière, Paris, 1999, 143 pages]
[Dutch translation: Alessia Devitini Dufour, Bosch, Knack kunstreeks, Roularta Books, Roeselare, 2004, 143 pages]
This publication belongs to a popularizing pocket series about painters. Each volume consists of three alternating sections: life and work of the artist, the cultural-historical context, and an analysis of the major works. It would be wrong to expect much from all this: the book has many (small) illustrations and little text, basically it all boils down to pictures with subtitles. Furthermore, its structure is very messy and confused, and the comment is always superficial and often of a dubious quality.
The funnel on the head of the quack in the Madrid Cutting of the Stone panel is called a symbol of wisdom. The scenes in the lower central panel of the Haywain triptych are interpreted as ‘scenes from the country life’. The author is favourably disposed towards Fraenger’s foolish theories, and Bosch is called a Fleming. These few examples clearly show that the scholarly value of this book is negligible. The layout did get a lot of attention, though.
The author’s Italian roots lead to the momentary highlighting of a fresco in an abbey near Milan, attributed by some to Bosch (as the photos on page 59 show: completely unjustified), and to the unfounded assertion that Bosch and Leonardo da Vinci met each other in Milan. In short, an utterly unimportant and amateurish little monograph,
[explicit December 26, 2006 – Eric De Bruyn]
Van Schendel 1948
DE HOLLANDSCHE SCHILDERKUNST
VAN JEROEN BOSCH TOT REMBRANDT
Keuze van Meesterwerken uit de Nederlandsche Musea
(A. van Schendel) 1948
[Editions de la Connaissance, Brussels, 1948, no pagination]
[not mentioned in Gibson 1983]
115 black-and-white illustrations of paintings in Dutch museums, with a short introduction by A. van Schendel, back then curator of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. Bosch’s St Christopher panel and Pedlar tondo, both in the Rotterdam Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, are reproduced. One paragraph of the introduction is spent on Bosch. In translation it reads…
'At the turn of the century, a number of artists appear who rise above the crowd and who cannot be reckoned either exclusively Flemish or exclusively Dutch. Hieronymus Bosch combines the decorative sensitivity of the South with the freshness of a spontaneous technique of the North, but the boldness of his vision is unique and belongs only to him. He creates his own world, a bedazzling dream, where phantasy and truth are inextricably interwoven, where religious compositions and allegories are surrounded by fanciful parades of half-human, half-bestial monsters. This inexhaustible finder of bizarre but meaningful forms evolved out of the rich vein of narrators which has nourished the complete Middle Ages and which will revive once more through Bruegel the Elder. Whether his eye explores the immeasurably small or sees heavenly empires, the creations of his imagination always show a visionary power of expression.'
[explicit November 17, 2024 – Eric De Bruyn]
Koldeweij/Cornelissen 2023
Jheronimus Bosch – His Workshop and His Followers – 5th International Jheronimus Bosch Conference, May 11-13, 2023, Jheronimus Bosch Art Center, ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands [Jos Koldeweij and Willeke Cornelissen (eds.)] 2023
[Jheronimus Bosch Art Center, ’s-Hertogenbosch, 2023, 448 pages]
During the three days of the 5th International Jheronimus Bosch Conference (’s-Hertogenbosch, May 11-13, 2023, Defining Boundaries: Jheronimus Bosch, His Workshop, and His Followers) 24 lectures were delivered by art historians from all over the world. This book publishes the text of 20 of these lectures. Four of the conference’s presentations (those delivered by Eric De Bruyn, Geert Van der Snickt, Hugo van der Velden, and Daan Van Heesch) are not published in this volume. One paper which was not presented during the conference (the one by Joanna A. Tomicka) was added.
For more details about each paper, see: Aikema 2023, Van Benthum 2023, Berdoy 2023, Harada/Vandivere 2023, Hobill 2023, Hsu 2023, Koldeweij 2023, Koreny 2023, Kubies 2023, Lafontaine 2023, Michael 2023, Nies 2023b, Salsi 2023, Scholten 2023, Spronk 2023, Hoogstede 2023, Tamis 2023, Tomicka 2023, Vázquez Dueñas 2023, Van Wamel 2023, and Withee 2023.
The titles of the four presentations which were not published…
[explicit May 30, 2024 – Eric De Bruyn]
Hirsch 1954
Hieronymus Bosch – De Tuin der Lusten (Wolfgang Hirsch) 1954
[Van Ditmar, Amsterdam-Antwerp, 1954, 44 pages. Dutch translation of: Wolfgang Hirsch, Hieronymus Bosch – The Garden of Delights, Longmans Green, London, 1954]
[Also mentioned in Gibson 1983: 90-91 (E106)]
This thin but large-sized book on Bosch’s Garden of Delights triptych has four short chapters. A very brief introduction to Bosch’s life (chapter I) is followed by a long quotation from Friedländer 1941 offering a general sketch of the art of Bosch (chapter II). Chapter III tells some things about Bosch’s influence and fame in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Chapter IV confronts the reader with the view of four Bosch authors on the Garden triptych. In the case of De Tolnay and Von Baldass we get long literal quotations (from Tolnay 1937 and Baldass 1943), whereas Bax [1949] and Fraenger [1947, 1950] are extensively summarized.
Hirsch’s own point of view is not really represented in this monograph. In the afterword we read:
'The choice offered above comprises very diverging explanations of Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘The Garden of Delights’. A uniform, generally accepted explanation remains impossible as long as the major sources, which were important for the painter himself, are inaccessible or no longer available. The mutually contradictory explanations mirror the problems regarding the art of Bosch which art history still has to solve.' [p. 44, translated from the Dutch]
Thus, Hirsch seems to be an early representative of the ‘non-interpretability trend’ that partially dominated the exegesis of Bosch, in particular between 1970 and 1980. Nevertheless, the first chapter (written by Hirsch) also notes:
'The character of the preserved works is largely religious or moralizing. In fact, the illustrated teachings regarding the reprehensible character or the despicability of sin were of major importance for Bosch’s choice of motifs. The ideas which can be derived from his works make a medieval impression, in spite of the originality of the artistic vision and style.' [p. 5, translated from the Dutch]
A text on the protective cover informs us that this book reproduces (sixteen) colour illustrations of Bosch’s Garden for the first time.
[explicit October 15, 2023]
Cat. Saint-Germain-en-Laye 2016
Tours et Détours de L’Escamoteur de Bosch à Nos Jours (Blandine Landau, Patrick Le Chanu, Pierre Taillefer and Agnès Virole) 2016
[Exhibition catalogue (Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Espace Paul-et-André-Vera, 16th November – 31st December 2016), Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 2016, 52 pages]
At the end of 2016, this small catalogue accompanied a small exhibition focusing on the Boschian Conjurer panel which is preserved in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It has four short contributions. In L’Escamoteur et son donateur Patrick Le Chanu and Agnès Virole tell something more about the man who bequeathed the panel to the city in 1872, the local notary Louis-Alexandre Ducastel. The painting dates from the sixteenth century and was most likely produced in Brabant (Antwerp). On December 13, 1978 the panel was stolen by the terrorist faction Action Directe. On February 2, 1979 it was regained.
L’Escamoteur est-il toujours une star en 2016? (is The Conjuror still a star in 2016?) is a question that Le Chanu then tries to answer. Most authors concur on the meaning of the panel: a satire on folly and credulity. Currently, the painting is attributed to a talented artist from the first half of the sixteenth century working in the manner of Bosch. According to dendrochronology, the wood may have been painted from 1498 on. Is the painting therefore less worth? In the sixteenth century, good copies were more valued than they are today.
In L’Escamoteur, les copies et le marché Blandine Landau offers an overview of the 18 versions of this Boschian Conjurer known to us today, 15 if we exclude repetitions (see the list on pp. 24-25). Apparently, since her lecture during the Bosch Conference in ’s-Hertogenbosch (April 2016) one new version has turned up.
Finally, in La figure de l’escamoteur de la Renaissance à nos jours Pierre Taillefer offers a concise overview of conjurers that appear in art and literature after 1500. In fact, the motif was already known in ancient Greece.
[explicit 17 April 2023]
Hitchins 2014
Art as history, history as art – Jheronimus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder – Assembling knowledge not setting puzzles (Stephen Graham Hitchins) 2014
[Nijmegen Art Historical Studies – XXI, Brepols, Turnhout, 2014, 420 pages]
This is the commercial edition of Stephen Graham Hitchins’ (°Rochester, 1949) doctoral dissertation, which was defended at the Radboud University Nijmegen on 27th November 2014. The supervisor (promotor) was professor A.M. Koldeweij. The central thesis of the book, to which the main title refers, is that the works of Bosch (and Bruegel) reflect the political, religious, and economic climate of their time. Yet, no monograph on Bosch (and Bruegel) has ever carried a subtitle more ironical than this one (assembling knowledge not setting puzzles), at least when it is not applied to Bosch (and Bruegel), as the author intends it to be, but to the dissertation itself. To briefly and properly summarise the contents of this book is namely not possible. To assess its value for the study of Bosch (and Bruegel) certainly is, though. In this review, I will only focus on Hitchins’ approach to Bosch.
The Garden of Delights triptych
As a standard, monographs on Bosch can best be judged by what they tell us about the Garden of Delights. As is clearly shown by the style of writing used throughout this book, Hitchins seems to believe that he is an (art) philosopher and even a poet. He may be both, but then (unfortunately) a mediocre philosopher and a minor poet, at least in my opinion. The 25 pages dedicated to the Garden [pp. 135-150] are largely filled with pseudo-intellectual twaddle and conceited fine writing. In order to account for this harsh view, I will quote two passages, so the reader can judge for himself. On page 137 we read (about the male and female figures in the Garden’s central panel):
'The audience may recognise in the characters of this play a persistent and unrealisable pursuit of satisfaction and pleasure and where that might lead. The figures they stare at are mere shadows of time past, suspended moments that can only be possessed in memory, abstractions of past events and personalities, surrogates for lived experience: they are an acknowledgement of absence.'
And page 147 has the following lines:
'In that Bosch was attempting to transcend himself, to overcome his limitations, this work is not merely a reflection of anything, but has become something that transformed the artist and the recipient, unlocking the transcendental potential that resides in us all as he sought to open up his audience to another world.'
Roger Marijnissen liked to call verbal eruptions such as these Gelehrtenquatsch.
The paragraphs which make more sense than these two contain a lot of echoes from Falkenburg’s 2011 monograph on the Garden, including the use of the phrase conversation piece. Hitchins concurs with Falkenburg (and many others) on the interpretation of the central panel as a depiction of sinful lust, and when it is heralded (on the back flap, in the author’s summary, on pages iv and 145) that this central panel has always been misinterpreted, it hardly comes as a surprise that St Augustine (according to Falkenburg one of Bosch’s pivotal sources) and his De Civitate Dei are summoned up as the providers of a new ‘key’. Such a defiant claim raises the hope that finally someone has been able to solve the Garden’s manifold enigmas, based on sound research and convincing arguments. Alas, Hitchins’ new ‘key’ boils down to the following:
'The cycle of history is complete. As Augustine saw evil as a disorder in a good creation, a direct consequence of the misuse of human freedom, so with Bosch; as Augustine argued that evil was the result of human beings attempting to become something they were not, little gods with the power to give and take away the lives of others, so with Bosch. Augustine argued that we cannot diminish the moral responsibility for our actions, and should pray that good may come out of evil. Praying that good may come out of evil is a hard task, but that is the hope embodied in The Garden of Earthly Delights.' [p. 146]
By which Hitchins basically means – if I understand him correctly – that both St Augustine and Bosch brought an optimistic message: they both warned of sin and evil, and through this warning they both wanted mankind to stay away from evil and to follow the good path towards Salvation. Probably, I am not the only reader who had expected a ‘key’ with some more explanatory details instead of this general, albeit correct, observation.
Unfortunately, when the author does offer some rare, more detailed observations regarding Bosch’s painting, a number of them are clearly wrong. The Christ in the left interior panel is not the only figure in the triptych to look back at the viewer [p. 138]. Obscenity and perversions are definitely not absent in the central panel [p. 140]. And the Garden was not located ‘in a room with an enormous bed’ inside Henry III’s Brussels palace in 1517, at least not as far as we know [p. 147].
The reviews of Fischer and Rothstein
Hitchins’ approach to the Garden is confused and confusing, superficial, and at the same time far too categorical. The same is true for the remainder of the text. In his 2015 review of the book, Stefan Fischer points out that this is not ‘a real work of research’ (keine Forschungsarbeit im eigentlichen Sinne), but rather some kind of essay (eine Art Essay) with a philosophical-esthetical (philosophisch-ästhetische) character. He writes:
'Der rote Faden ist die Grundthese, die schon der Titel des Buches deutlich artikuliert: Bosch und Bruegel sammeln das Wissen ihrer Zeit, vor allem das religiöse und allgemein menschliche, in ihrem jeweiligen zeitpolitischen Kontext. Im Vergleich der beiden Künstler sieht Graham Hitchins Bosch als denjenigen, der die Dinge noch fast ausschliesslich aus dem Blickwinkel der Religion wahrnimmt, während er Bruegel für den Realistischen hält, ja fast für einen politischen Künstler.'
[The leitmotiv is the basic thesis which is already clearly announced by the title: Bosch and Bruegel assemble the knowledge of their times, particularly the religious and the universal humane knowledge, within their contemporary political context. When he compares both artists, Graham Hitchins sees Bosch as the one who observes things almost exclusively from the perspective of religion, whereas he considers Bruegel the realistic, almost political artist.]
Fischer is being friendly when he calls Hitchins’ book ‘inspiring’ (anregend), but he also thinks that a lot of patience and effort are needed to discover the connections between all the themes and ideas (man muss schon viel Geduld und Musse mitbringen, um Verbindungen zwischen all den Themen und Materialien herzustellen), and he also points out that the author only rarely focuses on Bosch’s works in detail (relativ selten steigt der Autor in eine detaillierte Deutung von Werken ein).
In his 2017 review, Bret Rothstein is even more friendly. He writes:
'While some may find (his) answers unpersuasive, Stephen Graham Hitchins deserves praise for defining his discipline as an instrument with which to address the world emphatically, rather than as one with which to perform ever-finer sorts of cultural dissection in the service of ever more recondite abstraction.'
He calls the depth of Hitchins’ research ‘striking’, at the same time pointing out that many readers will find the book ‘maddening’, and that ‘it will undoubtedly come in for its share of hammering’ (referring to the colloquial U.S. saying that ‘the nail that stands up gets hammered down’).
Purple prose
It is never a pleasure to ‘hammer down’ a doctoral dissertation, yet in this case it is impossible not to write down the following critical remarks. From the start, the author announces that he will principally focus, as far as Bosch is concerned, on the Vienna Last Judgement, the Lisbon Tribulations of St Anthony, and the Prado Garden of Delights. Isn’t that a bit strange for a monograph on the art of Bosch? And calling the Lisbon triptych The Tribulations of St Anthony, whereas everybody refers to this painting as The Temptations of St Anthony, isn’t that a little bit arrogant?
Hitchins starts from a premise which sounds fair enough: The historical framework that is essential for an understanding of any period of art history is a prerequisite for an examination of Netherlandish art from 1450 to 1550 [p. iii]. And: I have always thought, and still believe, that to comprehend what Bosch and Bruegel were painting, it is essential to have the social, political, and religious context [p. vi]. Yet, in my opinion, the way in which this premise is worked out for Bosch is indeed ‘maddening’. The structure of the book is hopeless, with its accumulation of (often obscure and woolly) titles for each chapter, accompanied by mottos that in most cases do not enlighten what follows and have nothing to do with Bosch but are apparently only intended to demonstrate the author’s widely-read erudition. References to and (often redundant) quotes from other writers (Bosch authors, but also modern novelists such as Proust, Einstein, even Miep Gies, the ‘helper’ of Anne Frank, is mentioned, see p. 157, note 196) are strewn all across the text itself, and so are the omnipresent references to endnotes, in some cases running over half a page or more, in which the reader can easily drown.
And then there is also the style of writing, always partial to the use of difficult words, to hazy formulations, and to endless digressions. It is a perfect example of what in English is called purple prose: ‘Overly ornate prose text that may disrupt a narrative flow by drawing undesirable attention to its own extravagant style of writing’ (Wikipedia). It makes very tiresome reading, and in Art as History, History as Art it does not bring us much closer to Bosch, apart from a few observations that may inspire further discussion (such as the question of whether the art of Bosch is basically of an optimistic or pessimistic nature).
There are definitely far too many words that say far too little in this dissertation, causing a reader’s indigestion. In fact, this is not a book about Bosch. This is a book about an author writing on Bosch while he is looking into the mirror standing on his writing desk. The result is an almost impenetrable stronghold of (pseudo-) scholarship. I am not a fan of this type of Bosch books.
Other reviews
[explicit 1st October 2022 – Eric De Bruyn]
Cat. Budapest 2022
Between Hell and Paradise – The Enigmatic World of Hieronymus Bosch [Bernadett Tóth and Ágota Varga (eds.)] 2022
[Exhibition catalogue (Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts, 8 April- 17 July 2022), Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 2022]
The lavishly illustrated and attractively presented catalogue of the 2022 Bosch exhibition in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts (Szépmüvészeti Múzeum). The actual catalogue of items on display is preceded by four introductory essays (see Silver 2022, Pokorny 2022, De Bruyn 2022c, and Falkenburg 2022) and has seven sections with comments by various authors (Bernadett Tòth, Larry Silver, Erwin Pokorny, Nils Büttner, Reindert Falkenburg, Eric De Bruyn, and others). Some of the entries on display in the exhibition are presented without a comment in the catalogue.
Because the large triptychs were lacking, this exhibition was not as rich as the ones in ’s-Hertogenbosch and Madrid (both 2016), but with 16 Bosch originals (11 paintings and 5 drawings), 28 works by followers (18 paintings, 4 drawings, 1 tapestry, 5 engravings), and many other works of art, a visit to Budapest was definitely worthwhile, and so is the information in the catalogue. Because the copy of the Garden’s central panel in a private collection is hard to access, its display in Budapest offered an excellent opportunity to get more acquainted with this highly remarkable painting.
[explicit 6th September 2022 – Eric De Bruyn]
Vandenbroeck 2017
Utopia’s Doom – The Graal as Paradise of Lust, the Sect of the Free Spirit and Jheronimus Bosch’s so-called Garden of Delights (Paul Vandenbroeck – edited by Barbara Baert) 2017
[Art & Religion – 8, Peeters, Louvain-Paris-Bristol (CT), 2017, 345 pages]
This important book (important if only because a number of ideas and interpretations of an important Bosch author are now available in English) only deals with the iconography of the central panel of Bosch’s Garden of Delights triptych. It is an addition to and a partial revision (and translation) of Vandenbroeck 1990a (an article of 193 pages in the annual of the Antwerp Royal Museum of Fine Arts), with lots of new material. The author points out that his analyses of the exterior panels, of the left interior panel, of twelve major details of the central panel, and of the right interior panel have already been published in Dutch (see i.a. Vandenbroeck 1989) or have yet to be published. According to the preface by Barbara Baert and Jan Van der Stock Vandenbroeck’s interpretation method combines ‘art history with cultural anthropology and civilization history in its broadest sense’ [p. 1]. This means that Vandenbroeck’s approach is basically of a cultural-historical nature, a choice that can only be endorsed, as more than 100 years of modern Bosch exegesis have taught us.
I Dreams of boundless pleasure: the medieval folk myth of the paradise of delights or ‘grail’ [pp. 7-48]
In this first chapter (an adaptation of and addition to Vandenbroeck 1990a: 133-140, VDB 1990a from now on) the author elaborately and convincingly argues that from the thirteenth until the sixteenth centuries there was a widespread popular belief in a semi-worldly, semi-supernatural sex paradise (sexual utopia), which was originally called ‘graal’ (not the Holy Grail from Arthurian literature!) and later also ‘Venusberg’ (Mountain of Venus) and ‘mountain of Sibyl’. It was situated inside a mountain (sometimes also on a plain) and was ruled by a fairy or queen who was usually called ‘Venus’ (in particular in the Germanic-speaking countries) or ‘Sibyl’ (in particular in the Romanic-speaking regions), but sometimes also ‘Frau Vrene’, ‘Abondia’, ‘Satia’, ‘Saelde’, ‘the mistress of the game’, or ‘abbess’. In this paradise, one could indulge in sexual pleasures, but those who stayed there longer than one year, could no longer escape from it until Doomsday, and after that ended up in Hell. About fifty allusions to this sexual paradise have been found in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Dutch and German literature. Virtually all contemporary descriptions written by highly-educated (learned, non-popular) authors stress the pagan, sinful and diabolical nature of this imaginary sexual utopia.
That is one thing. Another thing then is that Vandenbroeck argues that in the central panel of his Garden Bosch painted such a graal or false love paradise. Bosch was inspired by popular culture, but approached this popular subject matter from the perspective of the elite culture. In other words: he depicted a false love paradise (graal, Venusberg), but thought of it as something diabolical.
Some questions can be asked regarding the second point. Why should the central panel represent precisely a ‘graal’, when the majority of the textual sources situate this ‘graal’ inside a mountain, whereas with Bosch we see a plain? And where did Bosch represent Venus or queen Sibyl? Could she be the hirsute woman who is pointed at in the lower right corner? Vandenbroeck says nothing about this. Furthermore, we know about other medieval false love paradises. In chapters 40-41 of his Divisament dou Monde (1298-1299), Marco Polo already writes about an erotic pleasure garden near the Caspian Sea. Other Christian sources tell with malicious delight about the sexual paradise promised by Muhammed to his followers. And in his long poem De uure vander doot (The Hour of Death, circa 1516), the Brussels rederijker Jan van den Dale allegorically describes his sinful youth as a wonderful garden in which he meets five charming young ladies (his five senses). Van den Dale calls this garden a dobbel eerts paradijs (false earthly paradise).
II The amoral utopia here and now: the ‘Sect of the Free Spirit’ in the late middle ages and their ‘worldly paradise’ [pp. 49-79]
This chapter offers new material. From the thirteenth till the fifteenth century there were heretical groups in Europa that wanted to create a concrete ‘love paradise’ in real life. These were different movements that can all be brought together under one name: the Sect of the Free Spirit. Its members wanted to reach an ideal life here on earth, wished for absolute freedom and pleasure, speculated about the original status of man in Eden, had fantasies about the end of the world, and were looking for the true identity of God and man. The use of violence was not uncommon. Vandenbroeck explicitly notes the ‘masculinism’ and phallocentrism of these groups, for whom women were merely objects of pleasure and utility. Of course, we know these sects from the writings of Wilhelm Fraenger, the German Bosch author who argued in 1947 and later that Bosch was a member of a Free Spirit sect. It is noteworthy that in this chapter the name Fraenger does not appear, not even in the footnotes (also see infra, though).
The mutual relations between all these heretical groups and their ideas (sometimes differing, sometimes not) are of a complex nature, yet Vandenbroeck points out that the way in which they organized their orgies is strongly remindful of the free love fantasies focusing on the Venusberg and the mountain of Sibyl. Mainly active in the Netherlands and in Bohemia were the homines intelligentiae or Adamites, who wanted to live here on earth as Adam was believed to have lived. They practised nudism, praying and gathering in the nude, and sexual promiscuity, although we know less about the Adamites in the Netherlands than about those in Bohemia. In Bohemia they clearly had revolutionary objectives: they combined extreme sexual libertinism with extreme violence, condemned all ecclesiastical and civil institutions, and rejected the most sacred elements of Catholic doctrine.
During Bosch’s lifetime these heretical Free Spirit ideas were still well-known. These ideas and the popular belief in a ‘Graal’ shared a preference for total sexual freedom, which played an important role in fantasies about both the earliest history of mankind (the period from Adam till Noach) and the end times.
Before we move on to the (much longer) third chapter, some words about the style, the approach, and the method of Vandenbroeck. In chapters 1 and 2, the author has brought together an overwhelming amount of knowledge in an admirable way, based on wide reading, regarding the popular Graal myth and the Free Spirit sects. The well-documented information about the Free Spirit sects in the second chapter will vainly be looked for in the writings of Wilhelm Fraenger, who receives a (be it posthumous) lesson in thorough research from Vandenbroeck here. A problem, though, is the fact that Vandenbroeck largely relies on secondary sources, which are continuously referred to in footnotes but (once again) are so numerous (and sometimes also hard to access) that it is virtually impossible to control and double-check everything that the author writes.
Furthermore, the information gathered from secondary sources is presented to the reader in a very compact and meandering style, which sometimes makes it difficult to follow the argument in a concentrated way. Here and there, the reader would have benefitted from a clearer and more concrete approach (more analyses and examples, less synthesis and fewer concise statements). This goes for both chapter 1 and chapter 2. One example of such a hard to access (modern) book, yet constantly used by Vandenbroeck in chapter 1, is: Philip Barto, Tannhäuser and the Mountain of Venus – A study in the legend of the Germanic paradise, New York, 1916. I have not been able yet to lay hands on it (although I did try). Of minor importance is that the first two chapters, in particular chapter 2, are livened up by a number of illustrations, among them details from the Garden and depictions of naked dancers, of which it is not really clear what they have to do with the running text.
III Utopia dreamed and castigated: Jheronimus Bosch’s Triptych of the Grail or False Love Paradise, commonly called the Garden of Delights (c. 1480-5) [pp. 80-291]
This (long) chapter is a translation of Vandenbroeck 1990a: 11-166, with some small adaptations but sometimes also with major changes. Some authors interpret the Garden’s central panel negatively as a representation of luxuria, according to others we see the innocent joys of (earthly) paradise. Vandenbroeck informs the reader that in 1989 he published an article (Vandenbroeck 1989) in which he focused on twelve details from the central panel. A number of these details could only be interpreted in a negative way, whereas some other motifs alluded (positively) to a paradisaical state. Therefore the conclusion was, so Vandenbroeck writes in 2017, that the central panel cannot have a sheer positive nor a sheer negative meaning.
For Bosch black people, wild men, mermaids, and sea-knights were negative figures. He associated them with an asocial and cultureless life, far from his own (late medieval, bourgeois) society, and with instinctive behaviour, in particular regarding sexuality [pp. 82-106 = VDB 1990a: 11-30]. In the central panel a circle of naked riders is turning around a pond with naked women. The men behave in a wild way because of the women. Their wildness is shown by the fact that they ride animals without reins, which refers to their passions, and by the fact that they move around within a circle turning anti-clockwise, which refers to sinfulness and wrongness [pp. 106-116 = VDB 1990a: 30-43]. The women stand in the centre and the men turn around them, which confirms the medieval (male) idea that woman is en eternal seductress. The visual motif was probably inspired by i.a. representations of morris dancers in which male dancers are circling around a desired woman [pp. 116-121 = VDB 1990a: 43-47].
-oOo-
Dealing with the ‘wild man’ motif, Vandenbroeck also focuses on the hirsute figures in the lower right corner (on pp. 96-100). Here we notice an essential deviation from Vandenbroeck 1990a. In 1990 we read (translated from the Dutch):
'To the hirsute wild people also belongs a couple in a cave in the lower right corner. Since Bax, these have been interpreted as Adam and Eve. (…) Apparently, the humans’ ‘becoming wild’ is traced back to the first couple: it is the result of the Fall of Man for which woman is to blame (Adam is pointing at Eve).'
In 2017 this has become:
'The couple in the cave has been identified since Bax as Adam and Eve. (…) It is questionable, though,whether the ‘wild woman’ in the cave is actually a woman at all.' [pp. 96-97]
And three pages further the figure is suddenly bound to be a man:
'The young wild man with the apple is partially hidden behind a hollow glass cylinder.' [p. 100]
Because in 1990 the figure behind ‘Adam’ was identified as Noach, again following Bax, and the apple was linked up with the Fall of Man, Vandenbroeck’s argument back then was sound: Adam and Noach were the founding fathers of humanity and the central panel represented the period between Adam and Noach. In 2017 Eve is no longer Eve, but Adam is still Adam, Noach is still Noach, the apple is still the apple of the Fall of Man, and the central panel still represents the period Adam-Noach (the Sicut erat in diebus Noe theme). It is clear that the argument is no longer sound in 2017, for who is now this ‘young wild man with the apple’ and why is ‘he’ being pointed at?
-oOo-
The next pages deal with the intermingling of natural and artificial forms and elements in the central panel. In 2017 the author adds that some have related this to alchemy, that he does not believe that Bosch depicted alchemical theories, but that probably some parallels with alchemy may be present [pp. 123-124]. The combination of organic and anorganic elements refers to the sexual and according to Bosch diabolical character of Nature. Nature has been corrupted by man (at the instigation of the devil), because the whole of Nature obeys to God’s laws and commands, except man (since the Fall of Man): mankind does not only have sexual intercourse in order to procreate. How the upper region of the central panel is composed (four ‘buildings’ and a central fountain) is remindful of descriptions of the heavenly and earthly paradise. And yet, Bosch cannot have represented the heavenly paradise here, because too many chaotic and negative things can be observed [pp. 123-156 = VDB 1990a: 47-72].
These pages, which we have very briefly summarized in the above paragraph, make tough reading and sound very abstract and theoretical, although in the end all this does seem to lead to correct general conclusions, at least in my opinion. The ‘heaviness’ of these pages is mainly due to the fact that the author continuously confronts the reader with dry enumerations of textual and in particular visual sources which show similarities to what Bosch painted or may have inspired him, not always showing illustrations of all these (visual) sources. Footnotes do signal where such illustrations can be found, but their number is so large that not many will feel inclined to double-check everything, supposing that this immense secondary literature would be easily accessible, which is not (always) the case. Unfortunately, reading about visual sources that cannot be seen at the same time, is tiresome.
Vandenbroeck argues that a lot can be said in favour of the hypothesis according to which the central panel depicts the Sicut erat in diebus Noe theme (compare Matthew 24, 37-39) and thus mankind before the Flood. By representing sinful mankind from the times of Noach, Bosch wanted to warn the viewer and incite him to a vigilant and more virtuous life. According to medieval sources this period was dominated by the sin of unchastity. Circa 1600 the Sicut erat in diebus Noe theme was very popular in the Low Countries. There is no evidence that Bosch was influenced by astrological and prophetic predictions of the end of the world around 1500 [pp. 157-182 = VDB 1990a: 72-91]. When on page 175 Vandenbroeck suddenly writes: ‘All the same, it is still doubtful whether this really is the subject of Bosch’s panel’ (a sentence lacking in VDB 1990a: 87), the reader is bound to feel confused.
The left interior panel focuses on the idea of marriage (Adam and Eve). According to the author the figures in the lower left corner of the central panel are pointing at the scene with Christ, Adam, and Eve. The Sicut erat and false paradise themes shed a negative light on human sexuality. The author points out that in the Middle Ages God’s order ‘be fruitful and multiply’ was often abused in order to account for licentious sex, whereas actually sexuality should serve as a means of procreation. Bosch’s view on this matter is traditional: marriage was instituted by God in Eden but perverted by mankind [pp. 182-188 = VDB 1990a: 91-98].
In Bosch’s times some people still believed in the function of earthly paradise as some sort of waiting room before Heaven and as the final phase of Purgatory. Bosch painted this in panels in Bruges and Venice, with some details referring to sinfulness and pointing out that these souls have not been fully liberated from their desire for earthly vanities. New is that in 2017 Vandenbroeck thinks that these souls will also have to atone for their sins after the Last Judgment, thus avoiding the problem that in Bruges and Venice the earthly paradise appears within a Last Judgment context, whereas all medieval sources confirm that after Doomsday there will no longer be a Purgatory [see pp. 199 / 201, and compare VDB 1990a: 109]. The plain which Bosch painted in the central panel is not a garden: there is no wall around the plain and it is not cultivated. It is a false paradise in which sexuality plays a pivotal role. The pursuit of lust in the present (and in the days before the Last Judgment) was compared to a similar pursuit ‘in the days of Noach’ and considered a fall-back on uncontrolled, primitive instincts. The scene in the lower part of the central blue fountain (a man touches a woman’s genitals) points out that the central panel is dominated by the idea of sinful lust. The mermaids, the sea-knights, and the phallus-shaped animal in the circle with male riders point out the same [pp. 188-228 = VDB 1990a: 98-129].
The pages 229-237 (in 2017) add new elements to the argument of 1990. This time, Vandenbroeck signals a number of scenes referring to group sex and sodomy. He also elaborates on Lorenzo Valla’s treatise De voluptate, which may have inspired Bosch, and he rebukes those authors who consider the central panel a depiction of a hypothetical paradise, the earthly paradise as it could have been without the Fall of Man.
The pages 237-256 then match VDB 1990a: 140-153. Similarities are pointed out between the Sicut erat theme and the Golden Age topos (the mythical primaeval age of mankind), which was popular again in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The author argues that Bosch (in the Garden) linked life in primaeval times to the Golden Age, but that he (and some of his contemporaries) also associated this Golden Age with sinfulness, in particular with luxuria (unchastity) and with the supposedly sinful life of mankind in the End of Times which ‘just as in the days of Noah’ will believe to live in some sort of paradisaical state. The link primaeval times / End of Times is already present in the quotation from Matthew with the Sicut erat line. Again, these pages (which we have summarized here in a very concise way) testify to an impressive wide reading and knowledge concerning the Middle Ages, but on the other hand the numerous facts and references often burden the argument, making Bosch’s Garden disappear behind the horizon. Anyway, these pages will not be enjoyed by the average reader, and the more specialized reader also has to make an effort.
The pages 257-267 largely correspond with VDB 1990a: 129-140 (which pages have been put in a different place in 2017). The central panel represents a pagan earthly paradise, a ‘Graal’ or ‘Venusberg’ where people can enjoy unbounded sexual pleasure. A Venusberg was not always described as a mountain, it could also be a plain. No depictions of it have come down to us, but archival sources do mention performances of Venusberg celebrations in the late Middle Ages. We do not know any visual or textual sources which are similar to what Bosch painted in the central panel of the Garden, but Vandenbroeck argues that some analogies can be observed in Triumphus Veneris (The Triumph of Venus, printed in 1509), a treatise by the German humanist Heinrich Bebel. The author offers a large summary of this text, which is considered a failure by historians of literature because of the chaotic amount of incorporated material (!). Judging by this summary and with the best will of the world, I myself can discern few or no similarities to Bosch’s central panel.
Meanwhile, we have arrived at the eighth section of chapter II (title: The purpose and patron of Bosch’s Grail triptych). As compared to VDB 1990a: 153-166, the pages 267-291 have been adapted, changed, and expanded in such a way that we are dealing here with new material and as far as the patron is concerned even with a completely new hypothesis. Vandenbroeck rejects Fraenger’s approach: in many places Bosch’s oeuvre shows that Bosch can never have been a member of a Free Spirit sect. The Garden theme comprizes a conglomerate of ideas focusing on the primaeval age, marriage (sexuality) and the End of Times. The manifest main subject is perhaps (!) the Sicut erat in diebus Noah idea: Bosch considered the period from Adam till Noah a (pseudo-) paradisaical age during which mankind interpreted marriage and sexuality in a wrong way (as a means of lust and not of procreation). If this interpretation would prove to be incorrect, Vandenbroeck writes [p. 271], the idea of a false love paradise still remains valid.
It is remarkable how Vandenbroeck after 270 pages or erudite analyses is still keeping his options open, which he already did in 1990: see VDB 1990a: 162-163 where literally the same can be read… The pages 271 and 273 (in 2017) inform us that ‘recent research suggests’ that the Garden was painted in 1480-85 (a footnote explaining that this ‘research’ concerns the dendrochronological and stylistic findings of Bernard Vermet and Peter Klein). In 1990 it was still claimed that the triptych was probably painted in 1503 or 1511 (on the occasion of the first or of the second marriage of Henry III of Nassau). Now we read [p. 273]: ‘This hypothesis has to be rejected’.
The pages 273-291, where the author discusses the potential patron of the Garden, are among the most interesting of the entire book. They have also been written in a clearer style than many preceding passages (because they were written at a more mature age?). With some sound arguments, Vandenbroeck argues that it is not very probable either that Engelbrecht II of Nassau, Henry III’s uncle, was the patron. He then introduces a new hypothesis, again with some sound arguments: Engelbrecht’s wife, Cimburga of Baden, may have commissioned the triptych with Bosch. With the painting she may have wanted to rebuke her husband’s licentious walk of life, and thus the triptych could be considered a ‘marriage mirror sub specie aeternitatis’ after all, but in another way than argued by the author in 1990. Furthermore, Vandenbroeck shows that Cimburga may very well have been aware of the Graal story by referring to the books in her possession, in particular to the Middle German text Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal by Der Stricker. Today, this Daniel is better known as Tannhäuser.
Vandenbroeck also points out a miniature in another manuscript (circa 1449) showing naked men and women flirting with each other between green vines who look like prefigurations of Bosch’s nudes, and among the figures in Bosch’s central panel he spots a man who indeed shows some vague resemblance to the portrait of Engelbrecht in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. Meanwhile, the author seems to concur with Reindert Falkenburg, who in 2011 argued that the Garden functioned as a ‘conversation piece’ around 1500. Personally, I am very partial to Vandenbroeck’s new hypothesis, even though for now there is no conclusive evidence. I know for sure that long before 2017 I discussed this idea off the record with Jos Koldeweij, and I seem to remember that somewhere in the nineties I also talked about it with Vandenbroeck himself, of course without the nice argument which he delivers here.
IV The repression of physical experience and the rise of new artistic genres. Beauty and/from madness. An existential and aesthetic connection, fifteenth-sixteenth century [pp. 293-314]
In this short and last chapter (with a title that is much too long), which partially harks back to Vandenbroeck’s (Dutch-written) books from 1987 and 2002, the author no longer deals with the Garden’s iconography (what did Bosch paint?) but with its iconology (why did Bosch paint what he painted?). Vandenbroeck thinks that in the Garden Bosch’s fantasy worked in an associative way and that the triptych contains elements referring to dreams, to the ‘topsy-turvy world’, to the themes of folly and madness, and to ideas about uncontrollably proliferating nature. He argues that this shows similarities to contemporary culture (in popular dances, in absurd poetry, in grotesque marginal illuminations, in humanist word play, but also in micro-architecture, in metal work and sculptures, in Gothic polyphony).
Around 1500 aesthetics were dominated by two desires: the desire to imitate and emulate the generative powers of nature in works of art, and the desire to suspend reason through dreams and folly. The context of all this is the late medieval bourgeois culture whose ideas on art were influenced and inspired by lower, popular, ‘subaltern’ cultural layers which at the same time it assessed in a negative way. Thus, folly could lead to beauty. According to Vandenbroeck Bosch did exactly the same: his phantasmagorical, irrational, non-sensical images were often inspired by popular culture, but being a moralist he eventually made these influences fit in with his bourgeois-urban set of values and his Christian message.
Again, the tone of this last chapter is very erudite, compact, and heavy, and only few readers will read it from a to z, let alone understand it. Personally, I also find that here Vandenbroeck sounds as if he can teach the fish to swim and that he often goes too far. In these pages, only the reference to grotesque marginal illuminations seems really relevant to me. In my opinion, the author had better left this last chapter away. The book would then have ended on page 291 with the following nicely phrased passage:
'Although Bosch clearly propounded and fiercely defended a particular set of values throughout his oeuvre, he left scope – in spite of himself – for him to express himself ambiguously and for us to read between the lines. This irreducible paradox makes Bosch a figure not only of half a millennium ago, but also of our own time.'
In the last chapter (and not only there) Vandenbroeck reads a bit too often ‘between the lines’. Meanwhile, it is nice to see that on page 310 Vandenbroeck approvingly refers to Falkenburg’s ‘discovery’ [2011: 88] that the lower part of the Fountain of Paradise in the Garden’s left interior panel shows a ‘grimace’.
Conclusion
Let us first clearly point out that after 2017 no author will be able to write about Bosch’s Garden of Delights without referring to this extremely rich and important book (the same was already true for the article in the Antwerp annual from 1990). At the same time it is also a fact that this monograph contains an abundance of material that stupefies the reader, and because of which the argument sometimes becomes silted up and Bosch himself disappears behind the horizon. Yet, in spite of the high academic purport and in spite of the fact that the author sometimes writes debatable things, one can only observe that here Vandenbroeck is doing at least one hundred times better than many other Bosch researchers. Which is why it can only be applauded that this book is published in English.
Unfortunately, one of the results of the high ‘academic’ purport is that very few authors in the past have felt the need to engage upon a dialogue with Vandenbroeck. This sometimes leads to halfhearted passages such as this one:
'I admit freely that I have not attempted to incorporate, let alone compete with, the magistral contributions of Paul Vandenbroeck to this essential subject, in writings many times the length of the present book' [Schwartz 2016: 240 (endnote 5 to page 233)].
For now, I have only been able to find two reviews of Vandenbroeck 2017. Lynn Jacobs’ review (2018) is positive and superficial (she only points out the book’s meagre illustrations department). Michael Meinhard’s review (also 2018) is less shallow and also more critical, but his summary of Vandenbroeck’s ideas makes a somewhat confusing impression (admittedly, it is not easy to summarize those ideas).
Neither can it go unmentioned that since 1990 not a single Bosch author has been prepared to concur on Vandenbroeck’s proposal to change the Garden’s title into Triptych of the Grail. If I understand Vandenbroeck correctly in spite of the ‘oscillations’ in his argument mentioned above, his interpretation basically boils down to this: thematically the central panel represents the period of mankind before the Flood, whereas the formal depiction was inspired by the false paradise tradition, in particular by the Graal subject matter. Without adducing a long argument here, in my opinion Vandenbroeck’s interpretation is largely correct. I am also convinced that the central panel shows a false love paradise, but I do not see why it should be more precisely a Graal (or Venusberg). ‘Venus mountains’ are not the only medieval ‘false paradises’ known to us. To round off, let us reiterate and stress once more: Vandenbroeck 2017 is indispensable lecture for whoever wants to venture on an interpretation of the (so-called!) Garden of Delights.
Other reviews
[explicit 29th July 2023 – Eric De Bruyn]
Van Wamel 2021
Opdrachtgevers en vroege eigenaren van het werk van Jheronimus Bosch (Marieke van Wamel) 2021
[SPA-uitgevers, Nijmeegse Kunsthistorische Studies – vol. XXVII, Zwolle, 2021, 315 pages]
On 20th September 2021 Marieke van Wamel was awarded her Ph.D. in Art History at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. Jos Koldeweij and Ron Spronk were the supervisors (promotor), Matthijs Ilsink was the co-promotor (third supervisor). This is the commercial edition of her dissertation, presented to the reader with an attractive layout. The introduction announces that this study is dedicated to the commissioners and early owners of the art of Bosch, all of them contemporaries of the painter or members of the following generations (up to around 1600) and belonging to three varying social ranks: the urban burgher elite, ecclesiastical institutions, and the high nobility. Almost four pages of the introduction deal with the theories on the reception of (modern) art drawn up by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (died 2002) and the museum curator Edward B. Henning (died 1993). However, in Van Wamel’s book the ideas of these two authors do not seem to play an important role, and it takes until chapter 11 before they are briefly mentioned again. Apparently, this boils down to little more than some academic trimmings.
Academic trimmings have completely disappeared from the rest of this dissertation. Using a very clear style of writing and with a lot of critical sense, Van Wamel analyzes the reception of Bosch’s art in the late fifteenth and in the sixteenth century. As was announed in the introduction, the various social groups are discussed one by one. Chapters 1-4 focus on the burghers. After an introductory chapter on the tradition of the bourgeois devotional portrait, chapter 2 deals with four works of Bosch in which the portraits of unknown patrons were once overpainted: the Ecce Homo panel from Frankfurt (with additional information on the copies), the St John the Baptist panel (Madrid), the Calvary panel (Brussels), and the St Wilgefortis triptych (Venice). Chapter 3 focuses on a number of works in which burghers can be identified through their portraits and/or coats of arms. These works are the Adoration of the Magi triptych in the Prado (with additional notice of some copies), the Ecce Homo triptych from Boston (produced by Bosch’s workshop), the Job triptych from Bruges (another workshop piece), and the copy of the Lisbon St Anthony’s interior panels from Berlin. In these chapters, the author more than once pays special attention to the clothes worn by some of the represented figures and to the wale of fabrics.
Chapter 5 deals with the ecclesiastical authorities, religious institutions, and clerics. The connection of most works discussed here with Bosch can only be derived from entries in chronicles and archival sources. These works were produced for the ’s-Hertogenbosch Church of St John, for the ’s-Hertogenbosch Fraternity of Our Lady, for the Dominican Order, for the Munster Church in Bonn (Germany), and for the Venetian Cardinal Domenico Grimani. There are also a number of works produced by followers of Bosch which have clerical devotional portraits: two wings with a Flagellation of Christ and a Carrying of the Cross (Philadelphia), the Crowning with Thorns panel (Antwerp), some versions of the Wedding at Cana, and the Jesus with the Pharisees panel (Castle Opocno).
The high nobility is the subject of chapters 6-11. This part of the book only uses the word ‘owners’, because in none of the cases it has been attested who were the commissioners of the works discussed here. These owners were mainly members of the Houses of Burgundy, Habsburg, and Trastámara, but also diplomats and advisers who were linked to their courts. Van Wamel’s study makes it very clear that most of these noble owners of Bosch works and their careers were very closely intertwined, so much so that one may readily speak of one or more networks within the early reception of Bosch’s art. In chapters 7 and 8 we read about: the counts of Nassau (Engelbrecht II / Henry III) and their relation to the Garden of Delights triptych,, Philip the Fair and courtier Hippolyte de Berthoz and their relation to the Vienna Last Judgement triptych and the Lisbon St Anthony triptych, the De Guevara family (in particular father Diego and son Felipe) and their relation to the Haywain triptych. Chapter 9 sums up the early owners of Bosch works that have been lost: Margareth of Austria, Mencía de Mendoza, the Van Bronckhorst-Van Boshuysen family, and Damião de Goís. Chapter 10 focuses on works which are attributed to Bosch in inventories of the possessions of noble persons, without us being able to check whether these attributions are correct today. Van Wamel notes: ‘The attribution of paintings to artists by means of inventories is a tricky affair’ [p. 252]. In this chapter we read about Isabella of Castile, Philips of Burgundy-Blatôn, the Van Croÿ family, and Juan Manuel (one of Philip the Fair’s advisers). Chapter 12 rounds off the book with some concluding observations.
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Opdrachtgevers en vroege eigenaren van het werk van Jheronimus Bosch (Patrons and early owners of the art of Jheronimus Bosch) is a very praiseworthy book, which is not aiming at the general reader but will be read by most Bosch students with pleasure and attention. Definitely meeting up with a high academic standard, Van Wamel has read through an impressive amount of secondary literature, which resulted in a very handy and welcome survey of what we know or think we know today about the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century reception of the art of Bosch. The biographies of noble Bosch owners and enthusiasts in the third part of the book, for example, are outstanding and bring us closer to the world of Bosch than many other publications on the painter.
Deserving praise is also the fact that Van Wamel does not hesitate to critically comment on other authors, when necessary. On Stefan Fischer’s social positioning of the portrayed patron in the Brussels Calvary, for example [p. 70]. On Hannele Klemmetilä, who incorrectly states that only executioners wore striped clothing in the Middle Ages [p. 71]. On Paul Vandenbroeck, whose claim that Peter Col was tortured by the Duke of Alba because he did not want to reveal the hiding place of the Garden of Delights in the Brussels palace of William of Orange, is questioned by Van Wamel, and rightly so it seems [p. 188]. Even her supervisor Jos Koldeweij does not escape her critical-objective eye, when doubt is thrown on his theory that the St John the Baptist and St John on Patmos panels were meant for the altarpiece of the Fraternity of Our Lady [pp. 64-65 / 162], or when we read on page 206 that ‘some authors’ positioning of Hippolyte de Berthoz as one of the major patrons of Bosch is incorrect, or at least incomplete’.
As far as the debit side of this dissertation is concerned, it could be mentioned that Van Wamel almost exclusively falls back upon existing secondary literature and not on personal archival research for example (even though the way in which this secondary literature has been collected and adopted is admirable). Furthermore, when it comes down to final conclusions (relating to the closer identification of patrons, the original function of some paintings, or the precise role of early owners), we often read ‘maybe’, ‘possibly’, ‘it is probable’, and ‘it is not unlikely’, but this is something to which every reader of books on Bosch has long been accustomed. Other points of criticism are nothing but small faultfindings. On page 48, for example, Pontius Pilate with his judge’s staff in the Frankfurt Ecce Homo is incorrectly called an ‘executioner with stick’ (beul met roede), although on page 54 this same figure is correclty referred to as Pontius Pilate. And when we read on page 225 that the iconography of the Haywain ‘has been thoroughly analyzed in many publications’, whereas the accompanying endnote does refer to Vandenbroeck 2002 but not to De Bruyn 2001a (a dissertation dealing with precisely this topic), this seems – said in all (false?) modesty – a bit strange.
Unfortunate, though, and not exactly small faultfindings, are the typing errors, incorrect grammar, and not-corrected textual inaccuracies, which (admittedly) do not appear on every page but do show up constantly throughout the book, something one does not expect when dealing with a doctoral dissertation. Nevertheless, and in spite of these flaws, no one who wishes to write or speak about the early reception of the art of Bosch in the future will be able to ignore Van Wamel’s study.
[explicit 20 April 2022]
