Cohen 1910
“Bosch (van Aeken), Hieronymus” (Walter Cohen) 1910
[in: Ulrich Thieme and Felix Beckers (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Band IV (Bida-Brevoort), Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig, 1910, pp. 386-390]
[Also mentioned in Gibson 1983: 17 (A79)]
First Cohen offers a number of biographical and archival data. To analyse the evolution of Bosch’s oeuvre it is too early: we don’t even know the sources of his art. There are parallels with i.a. Geertgen tot Sint Jans and the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines. The religious compositions are only important in Bosch’s early period. His contemporaries mainly admired Bosch’s devils, and this is still the case today. In painting what the Spaniards called dreams he was without parallel. The large number of copies and imitations and also some literary sources attest to the great impact Bosch had on his contemporaries.
A catalogue of authentic paintings is one of the most urgent desiderata of Bosch scholarship. Cohen gives an initial impetus to it. The listings of Bosch paintings in sixteenth-century Spanish, German and Dutch inventories should be approached with caution.
[explicit]
