Van Schendel 1948
DE HOLLANDSCHE SCHILDERKUNST
VAN JEROEN BOSCH TOT REMBRANDT
Keuze van Meesterwerken uit de Nederlandsche Musea
(A. van Schendel) 1948
[Editions de la Connaissance, Brussels, 1948, no pagination]
[not mentioned in Gibson 1983]
115 black-and-white illustrations of paintings in Dutch museums, with a short introduction by A. van Schendel, back then curator of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. Bosch’s St Christopher panel and Pedlar tondo, both in the Rotterdam Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, are reproduced. One paragraph of the introduction is spent on Bosch. In translation it reads…
'At the turn of the century, a number of artists appear who rise above the crowd and who cannot be reckoned either exclusively Flemish or exclusively Dutch. Hieronymus Bosch combines the decorative sensitivity of the South with the freshness of a spontaneous technique of the North, but the boldness of his vision is unique and belongs only to him. He creates his own world, a bedazzling dream, where phantasy and truth are inextricably interwoven, where religious compositions and allegories are surrounded by fanciful parades of half-human, half-bestial monsters. This inexhaustible finder of bizarre but meaningful forms evolved out of the rich vein of narrators which has nourished the complete Middle Ages and which will revive once more through Bruegel the Elder. Whether his eye explores the immeasurably small or sees heavenly empires, the creations of his imagination always show a visionary power of expression.'
[explicit November 17, 2024 – Eric De Bruyn]
