Five hundred years ago Hieronymus Bosch died in the city of his birth, s'Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands. The son and grandson of painters named Aken, he took his home town's name for his own; an ambitious man he may have thought this would flatter local burghers and churchmen who would be more likely, therefore, to give him commissions. This they surely did. Bosch was enormously successful; his workshop prolific. His triptychs and portraits decorated churches, religious fraternities, grand houses and the palaces of Philip II of Spain who king of the Spanish Netherlands, too. Today only 24 of his paintings and 20 of his drawings survive. (How this figure was arrived at and which works are deemed to be by his hand and which not, leads us to the saga of the current sometimes petulant; sometimes prideful disagreements between art experts in the Netherlands and Spain. Later for that; first to what is most important.) "Visions of Genius," at Het Noordbrabants Museum is a great show. On view are 17 of Bosch's paintings and 19 of drawings as well as works by contemporaries and objects from the period to provide a bit of context. By the time I left the exhibition my ideas about Bosch, what he showed me through his work, had changed dramatically.
Since my teens I had seen the artist as a freak; a wild but masterful traveller into nightmare land; a surrealist before surrealism; an interpreter of dreams centuries before Dr Freud. In Den Bosch my eyes grew up. The artist's vision has not changed of course. It remains singular, extraordinarily imaginative, thrilling and disturbing, But now I grasp that these creatures with fish heads or insect bodies are not the hallucinations of a deranged mind or an inspired dreamer. Bosch's visions of good and heave; heaven and hell were real to him and he used his great talent and skill to make them real to us.
The drawings too, many of them exquisite in their own right, are studies for birds and rodents,bearded men with crab claw limbs.as detailed--as carefully observed--as if they were posing for the artist in his studio.. The show had other surprises for me, too, including some beautiful portraits of Christian saints. Of these my favourite is his St Christopher (c.1490-1500) above. I felt the struggle and the grandeur of the giant swathed in lavish red cloak and the serenity and trust of Christ child on his back as he is carried across the river. In the background a hunter, his cross bow to one side, struggles to hoist a newly killed bear from the limb of a tree; To one side a small figure (a hermit?) sits inside a jug that nestles in the branch of a barren tree as if lighting the way for the travellers. The lifelike and the imaginary all equally "real."
The Prado Museum in Madrid holds 6 paintings by Bosch in its permanent collection. Or so it did before, as a result of a decade long Dutch based research project, two were demoted. The project with its own website well worth checking out, has developed dazzling high- tech tools for analysing paintings. This has led to statements of absolute certainty in the Dutch catalogue of the works which may not be accepted elsewhere. The degree to which technological investigations should be depended upon for attribution remains a matter of debate. Certainly the Prado does not seem to share the convictions about attribution made in the Den Bosch show. This may have more than a little to do with the Prado's refusal at the last minute to lend two works and perhaps to the National Gallery in London's choice to lend only to Madrid. What is more, somewhere along the way, the Prado decided to do its own major Bosch exhibition. I follows on from the Dutch show, opening in Madrid on May 31. Both museums claim theirs is the greatest show ever of the artist's work.
So Bosch lovers: Should you travel to the Netherlands or to Spain to see a show that, unusually, more than lives up tot the hype? To limit the decision only to what else is in the museums, Madrid is the obvious choice with the Prado's collection of works by Titan,Velazquez, Goya and more. Yet I am glad I saw the exhibition in the painter's home town. Its lack of distractions may be a hardship for its tourist board but it was a plus for me. My focus was and remained on Bosch. I was able, at least, to taken in how he went to show us the world he lived in; the world we live in today. With all the media imagery of romances and disasters that envelop us; his vision has unsurpassed power.
