Hieronymus Bosch

Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516), one of the most individual Netherlandish artists, known for his enigmatic panels illustrating complex religious subjects with fantastic, often demonic imagery.

The documents about Bosch indicate that he followed the predictable life of a prominent Roman Catholic artist in 's-Hertogenbosch, a prosperous provincial town located in Brabant (now the Netherlands). His father and grandfather were both painters in the same town before him, and apparently Bosch lived all his life there. He married a local woman and joined the lay organization of the Confraternity of Notre Dame. Bosch was responsible for designing a stained-glass window, among several other works, for the town church. His art was well known outside 's-Hertogenbosch during his lifetime.

In his paintings, Bosch interwove references to astrology, folklore, witchcraft, and alchemy, the theme of the Antichrist and episodes from the lives of exemplary saints. The result is a labyrinth of late medieval Christian iconography. Scholars differ in their interpretation of Bosch's art, but most agree that his pictures show a preoccupation with the human propensity for sin in defiance of God, as well as with God's eternal damnation of lost souls in hell as a fateful consequence of human folly.

Bosch worked in a manner called alla prima, a method of applying paint freely on a preliminary ground of brownish paint. He was familiar with Dutch manuscript illumination and with foreign prints, and many of his images can be traced to these sources.

No dated works by Bosch are known and, of those panels that bear his signature, many may be by his followers. His pictures were widely imitated well into the later 16th century. During the 1550s, a veritable Boschian revival occurred in Antwerp, involving artists such as Pieter Huys and Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who openly produced variations on his paintings. Some of his works were described by Don Felipe Guevara, a 16th-century Spanish nobleman. Among other sources, these writings have aided modern art historians in identifying those paintings that are works genuinely by Bosch rather than imitations of his style.

Of the many paintings in Boschian style, those generally accepted as being genuinely by Bosch include the following: The Marriage at Cana (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam), The Seven Deadly Sins (Prado, Madrid), Crucifixion (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), The Hay Wain (Prado), The Death of the Miser (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), The Temptation of St Anthony (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon), The Garden of Earthly Delights (Prado), The Adoration of the Magi (Prado), and Christ Carrying the Cross (Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent).