Landau/Virole 2016
“The Conjurer in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a fascinating quasi-Bosch piece” (Blandine Landau and Agnès Virole) 2016
[in: Jo Timmermans (ed.), Jheronimus Bosch – His Life and His Work – 4th International Jheronimus Bosch Conference – April 14-16, 2016 – Jheronimus Bosch Art Center – ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. Jheronimus Bosch Art Center, ’s-Hertogenbosch, 2016, pp. 200-215]
Bosch scholars no longer attribute the St-Germain-en-Laye Conjurer panel to Bosch himself but to a follower of Bosch and date the painting ‘after 1525’. In spite of this new art-historical status, it still attracts artists, comments, and viewers and is still presented by the city of St-Germain-en-Laye as a masterpiece. There are currently 17 known versions of the Boschian The Conjurer, 14 if we exclude possible repetitions or resales (a list on page 209). In all likelihood, they all stem from the sixteenth-century Antwerp art market, where they were produced to satisfy the preferences of local art lovers who were looking for ‘Boschian’ paintings (representing fantastic, weird, and demonic scenes) at an acceptable price. The sixteenth-century concept of ‘originality’ differed from our modern concept: good copies of famous and attractive originals were more valued back then than they are today.
[explicit 17 April 2023]
