Painter of our greatest fears

FOR centuries the received wisdom was that the Renaissance started in Italy. Ever since Giorgio Vasari, one of the first art historians, wrote in 1550 of a new naturalness in painting—as opposed to medieval mannerism—the idea of the Renaissance has been linked with frescoes in Florence or the sinuous forms painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Now, an important show of work by Hieronymus Bosch, one of the finest Dutch painters, in his home town of ’s-Hertogenbosch, challenges that view. It shows how an artist usually associated with the medieval was using a naturalist style at least 50 years before Vasari.

The exhibition, which marks the 500th anniversary of Bosch’s death, has been over a decade in the making, and is the culmination of six years of work by the Bosch Research and Conservation Project, in which experts analysed the paintings of Bosch in piercing detail. It is a remarkable achievement. Of the 24 paintings known to be by Bosch, 17 are on display, while 19 of his drawings are also shown, making it the largest exhibition of his work to date. Managing to get all of these paintings together, often from large and possessive museums in Madrid, New York and Venice, is a coup for a small, regional gallery which owns no Bosch pictures of its own.

Bosch’s work has inspired many different interpretations: from the idea that he belonged to a sexual sect to the notion that his paintings, often full of fantastical creatures, could have been created only while on psychedelic drugs. This show is blissfully free of heavy-handed interpretation. Instead it presents his work alongside documents (bibles, books of hours and missals) which help put his paintings in context. But the commentary is minimal. The work is allowed to speak for itself.

The result is outstanding. Bosch came from a long line of artists. His grandfather was a painter, as was his father and three of his uncles. Painting was their way of understanding the world. Bosch’s work is deeply religious: with a few exceptions, his pictures depict moments from the Bible and the lives of the saints, or scenes of heaven, hell and the bits between. Many were commissioned by a local church, St John’s, where in 1487-88 he became a “sworn brother” of the Brotherhood of Our Lady, a religious fraternity.

The energy of his devotion can be felt in the scathing social commentary of “The Haywain”, where crowds of people, including nuns, grasp at a haystack which is being led to hell by creatures that are half-fish and half-man. Or it can be glimpsed in “The Ascent of the Blessed”, where angels guide people from purgatory up to heaven—their arms outstretched—and jubilantly push these souls upwards (see picture).

But this exhibition also shows how his work is rooted in the everyday. His drawings, with all their vitality and observed detail, have a special sharpness. His religious works, too, are grounded in reality. In “The Last Judgment” the instruments of torture are crafted out of funnels, barrels, jugs and bells. In “Ecce Homo”, which depicts the moment Christ is condemned to death, in the background a man and a woman peer over a bridge, oblivious to what is going on near them.

This mix of the extraordinary and the mundane appears even more original when comparing Bosch’s work with that by members of his workshop. This exhibition often invites such comparisons. Bosch’s luminous “The Adoration of the Magi”, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, hangs next to a work of the same name by one of his followers. Bosch’s painting is full of life and details: daisies sprouting out of the base of a wall and two men warming their hands over a fire in the background. By contrast, although his follower’s work is a later painting it seems stiffly medieval. No such details of life exist in it, while its perspective is skewed. So too with one of the workshop editions of “Ecce Homo”: Bosch presents a Christ who is bowed and lacerated with whippings and dripping with blood, whereas his follower presents Christ standing upright, seemingly unhurt.

Earthly delights

Not all of Bosch’s works are on display. “The Garden of Earthly Delights”, perhaps his best-known painting, still hangs in the Prado in Madrid. Two other works from the Prado were withdrawn at the last minute, after the Bosch Research and Conservation Project found they were likely to be by one of his followers instead. This is a shame. But the experience of seeing so many of Bosch’s paintings and drawings together, and in the town where they were first created, mostly makes up for these losses. There are images that run throughout the work: owls, long associated with evil, appear often.

What is remarkable is how modern Bosch’s work feels. He was “on the brink of the new time,” says Charles de Mooij, the director of the Het Noordbrabants Museum. This feels too modest. Bosch’s scenes of hell and damnation may not have the same spiritual impact on a largely secular society. But there is a sense of urgency to his paintings that demands attention, and which feels distinctly new. His figures, whether saints or mischievous sinners, are depicted with a naturalness which makes them stand apart from those of other painters of his time. This exhibition suggests that half a millennium ago, in a small town once considered an artistic backwater, the Renaissance began with Bosch.