Ruyffelaere 2006
“Jheronimus Bosch” (Peter Ruyffelaere) 2006
[in: Leen Huet et al., Kijken naar schilders uit de Lage Landen. Ludion, Gent, 2006, pp. 105-152]
Nine painters from the Low Countries are introduced to the general reader. The chapter on Bosch was written by Peter Ruyffelaere. Modern research no longer considers Bosch an alchemist, heretic or lunatic, but focuses on the technical study of his panels and on a reassessment of the pictorial, written and printed sources that may have inspired the artist. Bosch mainly painted triptychs and usually, these had a liturgical function, as altarpieces. Bosch is a moralist who criticises the folly and sins of mankind. A number of art historians have pointed out affinities between Bosch’s oeuvre and the spirit of the Modern Devotion. Nevertheless, his work also has an eschatological, pessimistic component that hardly agrees with the spirituality of the Modern Devotion.
[explicit 6th September 2017]
