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]
