Hieronymus Bosch, Dutch Painter 1450-1516

Hieronymus, or Jerome, Bosch, b. c.1450, d. August 1516, spent his entire artistic career in the small Dutch town of Hertogenbosch, from which he derived his name.

At the time of his death, Bosch was internationally celebrated as an eccentric painter of religious visions who dealt in particular with the torments of hell. During his lifetime Bosch's works were in the inventories of noble families of the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and they were imitated in a number of paintings and prints throughout the 16th century, especially in the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Bosch was a member of the religious Brotherhood of Our Lady, for whom he painted several altarpieces for the Cathedral of Saint John's, Hertogenbosch, all of which are now lost. The artist probably never went far from home, although records exist of a commission in 1504 from Philip the Handsome (later king of Castile), for a lost Last Judgment altarpiece. None of Bosch's pictures are dated, although the artist signed many of them.

The extraordinary painter Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) stands apart from the prevailing Flemish traditions in painting. His style was unique, strikingly free, and his symbolism, unforgettably vivid, remains unparalleled to this day. Marvellous and terrifying, he expresses an intense pessimism and reflects the anxieties of his time, one of social and political upheaval.

Very little is known about Bosch, which somehow seems fitting since his work is so enigmatic. We know that he adopted the name of the Dutch town of s'Hertogenbosch (near Antwerp) as his own, that he belonged to an ultra-orthodox religious community called the Brotherhood of Mary, and that in his own day he was famous. Many of his paintings are devotional, and there are several on the theme of the Passion.

Hieronymus Bosch, also Jeroen Bosch, (1453 – 1516) was a prolific Dutch painter of the 15th and 16th century. Many of his works depict sin and human moral failings; they contain complex, highly original, imaginative, and dense use of symbolic figures and iconography, some of which was obscure even in his own time. He is said to have been an inspiration to the surrealism movement in the 20th century.

His true name was Hieronymus (or Jeroen) van Aken. He signed some of his paintings with Bosch (pronounced as Boss in Dutch), derived from his birthplace 's-Hertogenbosch. In Spanish he is often called El Bosco.

BOSCH'S YOUTH

Born to a family of a Flemish painters, he spent most of his life in 's-Hertogenbosch, a town in the south of today's Netherlands, near Tilburg. In 1463, some 4000 houses in the town were destroyed by a catastrophic fire, which the then about 13-year-old Bosch may have witnessed. He became a popular painter and even received commissions from abroad. In 1488 he joined the Brotherhood of Our Lady, an arch conservative religious group of some 40 influential citizens of 's-Hertogenbosch.

BOSCH'S ART

He produced several triptychs, works of three paintings on wooden panels that are attached to each other. Among his most famous is The Garden of Earthly Delights. This triptych depicts paradise with Adam and Eve and many wonderous animals on the left panel, the earthly delights with numerous nude figures and tremendous fruit and birds on the middle panel, and hell with depictions of fantastic punishments of the various types of sinners on the right panel.

These paintings have a rough surface from the application of paint; this contrasts with the traditional Flemish style of paintings, where the smooth surface attempts to hide the fact that the painting is man-made.

Bosch never dated his paintings and signed only some of them. All in all, about 25 paintings remain today that are attributed to him. Philip II of Spain bought many of Bosch's paintings after the painter's death; as a result, the Prado Museum in Madrid now owns several of his works, including the Garden of Earthly Delights.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder was influenced by Bosch's work and produced several paintings in a similar style, for instance the 1562 work Triumph of Death.

BOSCH'S LAST YEARS

Towards the end of his life, Bosch's style changed and he created paintings with a small number of large figures who appear to almost leave the painting and stand close to the observer. An example is The Crowning with Thorns. Hieronymus Bosch died in 1516, evidently childless, and was buried in 's-Hertogenbosch on August 9 th of the same year.

http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Hieronymus_Bosch/biography.html