In his lifetime Hieronymus Bosch was already famous for his fantastic, unearthly creations. Today his name has become synonymous with the eerie, infernal and macabre. Bosch's enigmatic paintings have resulted in numerous interpretations; some tried to understand his visual worlds through esoteric means, while others attempted to decode them through psychology and psychoanalysis. Now in paperback, Hieronymus Bosch: Visions and Nightmares traces the career of a painter who worked for the highest aristocratic and courtly circles, and explains Bosch's paintings against the background of contemporary culture and society.
In his lifetime the early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch was famous for his phantasmagoric images, and today his name is synonymous with the infernal. The creator of expansive tableaus of fantastic and hellish scenes-where any devil not dancing is too busy eating human souls-he has been as equally misunderstood by history as his paintings have. In this book, Nils Buttner draws on a wealth of historical documents-not to mention Bosch's paintings-to offer a fresh and insightful look at one of history's most peculiar artists on the five-hundredth anniversary of his death. Bosch's paintings have elicited a number a responses over the centuries. Some have tried to explain them as alchemical symbolism, others as coded messages of a secret cult, and still others have tried to psychoanalyze them. Some have placed Bosch among the Adamites, others among the Cathars, and others among the Brethren of the Free Spirit, seeing in his paintings an occult life of free love, strange rituals, mysterious drugs, and witchcraft. As Bttner shows, Bosch was-if anything-a hardworking painter, commissioned by aristocrats and courtesans, as all painters of his time were. Analyzing his life and paintings against the backdrop of contemporary Dutch culture and society, Bttner offers one of the clearest biographical sketches to date alongside beautiful reproductions of some of Bosch's most important work. The result is a smart but accessible introduction to a unique artist whose work transcends genre.
