Nauhaus 2020
“Vier Jahre als Direktorin der Kunstsammlungen der Akademie der bilden Künste Wien oder: Hieronymus Boschs Weltgerichts-Triptychon – eine Herausforderung / Four Years as Director of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Art Collections or The Challenge of Hieronymus Bosch’s Last Judgment Triptych” (Julia M. Nauhaus) 2020
[in: Julia M. Nauhaus (ed.), Hieronymus Boschs Weltgerichts-Triptychon in seiner Zeit – Publikation zur gleichnamigen internationalen Konferenz vom 21. bis 23. November 2019 in der Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna, 2020, pp. 10-42 (German version) / 43-63 (English version)]
In this introductory essay (published in a German and an English version), Nauhaus briefly describes the history of the Vienna Akademie der bildenden Künste. Bosch’s Last Judgment triptych was part of the collection of count von Lamberg-Sprinzenstein that was bequeathed to the museum in 1822. Nauhaus draws attention to a short publication on the triptych, written by Büttner, Silver, and Pokorny in 2016 (translated into English in 2017, reprinted in an expanded form in 2020). When the museum was closed during three months in 2017, the BRCP team was invited to examine the painting in depth. The triptych was also scanned with state of the art technological equipment by Geert Van der Snickt and a team from the University of Antwerp.
From May 2017 on and under the title Korrespondenzen / Correspondences, Bosch’s triptych was confronted with the works of modern artists in a series of small exhibitions. These artists were Sjon Brands, Jonas Burgert, Anna Hofbauer, Alraune, Maxim Kantor, Maria Legat, Susanne Kühn, Ali Banisadr, Agathe Pitié, Christine Schlegel, and Julia Hanzl (the last exhibition planned for 2020 but cancelled because of the Covid19 pandemic).
In November 2019, some months before the outbreak of the pandemic, an international conference was dedicated to Bosch’s Vienna triptych. The delivered lectures were published in 2020. This volume hopes to stimulate further discussions and insights. For now, only hypotheses can be presented concerning the patron of the altarpiece, the question of whether the painting was ever displayed in a church, the whereabouts of the painting before 1659, the dating and the authenticity of the work, and the underdrawing. Further remaining issues are: were the outer panels originally planned in a different arrangement, and who commissioned the very exact copy produced by Lucas Cranach?
All the images made by the BRCP team in 2017 are freely accessible in high resolution on http://www.jheronimusbosch.org/.
[explicit 30 January 2023]
