Cat. Brussels 1984
Bosch – Prado. Kleurenfoto’s op ware grootte van de H. Bosch-collectie van het Prado [Robert De Smet (ed.)] 1984
[Exhibition catalogue, Europalia, Brussels, 1984, 79 pages]
This is the catalogue of a small exhibition in the Brussels Royal Library: on display were real-size photographic reproductions made by Alfons Dierick of all the Bosch paintings owned by the Madrid Prado. In the introduction Arnout Balis warns of what he calls a ‘tendency to normalize’, by which he refers to authors who want to make Bosch and his oeuvre fit in with the typical middle-class, late-medieval, Brabantine environment. Although the general outline of Bosch’s ideas was undoubtedly ‘orthodox’, ‘heterodox elements’ may have influenced his work. At the end of the Middle Ages a lot of tendencies were existing next to each other and the purifications of the Counter Reformation came only much later. Moreover it cannot be denied that Bosch treated his themes with a very personal touch and that he created new genres which until then had only existed in an embryonic form, namely as ornaments in books and in architecture.
This catalogue offers twelve colour illustrations of good quality, but the text does not open up new horizons.
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