Fraenger 1957c
“Hieronymus Bosch – Der Büsser St. Hieronymus” (Wilhelm Fraenger) 1957
[in: Castrum Peregrini, XXXII (1957/58), pp. 5-13]
[Reissued in: Wilhelm Fraenger, Hieronymus Bosch, Prisma-Verlag, Gütersloh, 1975, pp. 335-339]
[Also mentioned in Gibson 1983: 124 (E299)]
According to Fraenger the Ghent St Hieronymus panel represents the doctrine of Joachim of Fiore, thus clearly showing the spiritual influence of Jacob van Aelmangien (according to Fraenger the heretical patron of Bosch). Reffering to a passage in the letters of St Hieronymus Fraenger suggests that the foreground of the panel symbolically refers to sleep: the sleep the saint had to struggle with during his vigils lest he be exposed to libidinous dreams. In Bosch’s panel, though, the saint sympathizes so much with the Passion of the Christ that for him ‘the wilderness around him becomes the Mount of Olives and the vigil of Good Friday expands into a vision of the three empires of Joachimite messianism’.
The pivotal colours of the panel are red, white and black and Fraenger wishes to interpret this as a reference to alchemical symbolism.
[explicit]
