Gibson 1983
Hieronymus Bosch – an annotated bibliography (Walter S. Gibson) 1983
[Reference Publications in Art History, G.K. Hall & Co., Boston (Ma.), 1983, 212 pages]
This bibliographical publication tries to offer a survey of the books and articles about Bosch (including reviews and exhibition catalogues) that were published up to 1983, in order to make them accessible to art historians, students, librarians and the general reader. The approximately 1,000 titles (approximately 620 of these published before 1967) are classified in ten thematical subsections (general studies, biographical sources, collectors and critics before 1800, paintings etc.). This does not always make it easy to find a particular book or article, but the three indexes (authors, paintings and drawings, subjects and symbols) provide a welcome helping hand here. The bibliographical body is preceded by a concise survey of Bosch exegesis from the sixteenth century up to 1983.
Every entry (book or article) is accompanied by a basic summary of the contents. Gibson has explicitly chosen (p. xv) not to evaluate the quality of a given work or the validity of its conclusions (only obvious errors of fact are pointed out). Everybody who is familiar with the often complex literature about Bosch will understand this, but everybody who is not familiar with the often complex literature about Bosch will probably deplore it. In any case, Gibson 1983 is an indispensable bibliographical tool for both Bosch scholars and enthusiasts.
[explicit 15th March 2016]
