Kubies 2023
“Listening to the angels… or why the Last Judgement from the collection of the Wawel Royal Castle in Cracow was not painted by Jheronimus Bosch” (Grzegorz Kubies) 2023
[in: Jos Koldeweij and Willeke Cornelissen (eds.), Jheronimus Bosch – His Workshop and His Followers – 5th International Jheronimus Bosch Conference, May 11-13, 2023, Jheronimus Bosch Art Center, ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. Jheronimus Bosch Art Center, ’s-Hertogenbosch, 2023, pp. 182-203]
The art collection of the Wawel Royal Castle in Cracow owns a Boschian Last Judgement triptych (circa 1550), largely inspired by the right interior panel of Bosch’s Garden of Delights triptych. In this essay, Kubies focuses on the representation of the four trumpeting angels in the central panel. In Bosch’s Bruges and Vienna Last Judgement triptychs the angel-trumpeters do not announce the rising of the dead from their graves but the completion of time and punishment. After a long digression dealing with trumpets in the art of Bosch and of other late medieval artists, Kubies concludes that the way in which the angels and their trumpets are rendered in de Cracow triptych differs from how Bosch painted them. That is why the triptych has to be attributed to a Bosch follower. The same goes for the Boschian Last Judgement triptych in de Krona Museum (Uden, The Netherlands).
[explicit April 28, 2024 – Eric De Bruyn]
