|
Life and Milieu
|
|
|
|
Hieronymus Bosch lived and worked in 's-Hertogenbosch,
the place from which he takes his name, an attractive but
fairly quiet Dutch city not far from the present-day Belgian
border. In Bosch's day, 's-Hertogenbosch was one of the four
largest cities of the duchy of Brabant, which formed part of
the extensive territories of the ambitious dukes of
Burgundy. The other chief Brabantine cities, Brussels,
Antwerp and Louvain, lie to the south, in what is now
Belgium; 's-Hertogenbosch is in the north, geographically
close to the provinces of Holland and Utrecht and the Rhine
and Maas rivers. In the late Middle Ages, 's-Hertogenbosch
was a thriving commercial town, the centre of an
agricultural area, with extensive trade connections with
both Northern Europe and Italy. Although its cloth industry
was important, the city was especially famous for its organ
builders and bell founders.
The predominantly middle-class commercial population must
have determined much of the city's character, for 's-Hertogenbosch
lacked the active court life of Brussels or Malines; unlike
Louvain, it possessed no university, nor was it the seat of
a bishopric, as were the other major cities of Brabant. Yet
a vigorous cultural life was by no means absent. 's-Hertogenbosch
had a famous Latin school and, by the end of the fifteenth
century, could boast of five »rederijker kamers« or chambers
of rhetoric, literary associations which presented poetic
and dramatic performances on various public occasions.
Religious life seems to have been particularly flourishing;
a great number of convents and monasteries were situated in
and around the city. Of special interest are the two houses
established by the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life.
A modified religious order without vows, this brotherhood
originated in Holland in the late fourteenth century in an
attempt to return to a simpler and more personal form of
religion, which was called the »Devotio Moderna«. Its
character is well exemplified in the famous devotional
treatise, the limitation of Christ«, generally attributed to
Thomas a Kempis, which, as we shall see, must have been well
known to Bosch and his patrons. The »Devotio Moderna« played
an important role in the religious revival of the fifteenth
century and probably contributed to the extraordinary
increase in the number of religious foundations in 's-Hertogenbosch.
Indeed, by 1526, just ten years after Bosch's death, one out
of every nineteen persons in 's-Hertogenbosch belonged to a
religious order, a much higher proportion than can be found
in other Netherlandish cities at that time. The presence of
so many cloisters and their economic competition seem to
have attracted considerable hostility from the townspeople,
an attitude which we shall also see reflected in Bosch's
art.
Despite frequent criticism of the religious order, however,
the moral authority of the medieval Church had not, as yet,
been seriously shaken. Religion still permeated all aspects
of everyday life. Each guild had its own patron saint, and
every citizen participated in the great feasts of the Church
and in the annual religious processions. The two impulses of
life in 's-Her-togenbosch, the sacred and the secular, found
their finest expression in the great church of St John, at
once the symbol of the still-intact medieval faith and a
testimony to the civic pride and commercial prosperity of
the city. Begun in the late fourteenth century on the site
of an older structure and only completed in the sixteenth,
it is a fine example of Brabantine Gothic, noteworthy for
its wealth of carved decoration. Of particular interest are
the rows of curious figures, monsters and workmen, sitting
astride the buttresses supporting the roof, some of which
bring to mind the fantastic creatures of Bosch.
The church of St John was in the early phases of
construction when Bosch's ancestors settled in 's-Hertogenbosch
in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. Their
family name, Van Aken, suggests that they originally came
from the German town of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle). In 1430 -
31 appears the first certain reference to Bosch's
grandfather, Jan van Aken, who died in 1454. Jan had five
sons, at least four of whom were painters; one of these,
Anthonius van Aken (died c. 1478), was the father of
Hieronymus Bosch.
Unlike Albrecht Durer, Bosch left no diaries or letters.
What we know of his life and artistic activity must be
gleaned chiefly from the brief references to him in the
municipal records of 's-Hertogenbosch and especially in the
account books of the Brotherhood of Our Lady. These records
tell us nothing about the man himself, not even the date of
his birth. A portrait of the artist, perhaps a
self-portrait, known only through later copies, shows Bosch
at a fairly advanced age. On the assumption that the
original portrait was done shortly before his death in 1516,
it has been supposed that he was born around 1450. Bosch
first appears in a municipal record of 1474, where he ist
named along with his two brothers and a sister; one brother,
Goossen, was also a painter. Some time between 1479 and
1481, Bosch married Aleyt Goyaerts van den Meervenne,
evidently some years his senior. She came from a good
family, however, and had considerable wealth of her own; in
1481 there occurred a lawsuit between Bosch and Aleyt's
brother over family property. It is assumed that Bosch and
his wife lived in 't Root Cruys (the Red Cross).
|
|
|
|

Portrait of Hieronymus Bosch
Pencil and sanguine
Bibliotheque Municipale d'Arras, Arras
|
|
|
|
In 1486-87, Bosch's name appears for the first time in
the membership lists of the Brotherhood of Our Lady, with
which he was to be closely associated for the rest of his
life. This brotherhood was one of the many groups devoted to
the veneration of the Virgin which flourished in the late
Middle Ages. Founded sometime before 1318, the Brotherhood
at's-Herto-genbosch comprised both lay and religious men and
women. Their devotions were centred on a famous
miracleworking image of the Virgin, the »Zoete Lieve Vrouw«,
enshrined in the church of St John where the Brotherhood
maintained a chapel. Attracting members from all over the
northern Netherlands and Westphalia, this large and wealthy
organization must have contributed significantly to the
religious and cultural life of 's-Hertogenbosch. Its members
engaged singers, organists and composers
to supply music for their daily masses and solemn feasts.
They also commissioned works of art to embellish the chapel
of Our Lady, and in 1478 they decided to construct a new and
more splendid chapel attached to the north side of the
unfinished choir of St John. The project was entrusted to
the church architect, Alart du Hamel, who later engraved
some Boschian designs.
Most of Bosch's family belonged to the Brotherhood, and were
employed by them in various tasks, frequently to gild and
polychrome the wooden statues carried in the annual
processions. Bosch's father, Antho-nius van Aken, seems also
to have acted as a sort of artistic adviser to the
Brotherhood. In 1475-76, for example, heand his son were
present when the Deans of the Brotherhood discussed the
commission of a large wooden altarpiece, completed in 1477
for their chapel.
Hieronymus Bosch may have been one of Anthonius's sons
present at these negotiations. However, his first recorded
transactions with the Brotherhood occur in 1480-81, and
thereafter he received a number of commissions from them.
These included several designs, one in 1493-94 for a
stained-glass window in the new chapel, another in 1511-12
fora crucifix, and a third in 1512-13 for a chandelier. The
small fee he received for executing the last-named project
suggests that he did it mainly as a benevolent gesture.
There is no documentary evidence that Bosch ever left his
home town. However, a sojourn in Utrecht is suggested by
certain aspects of his early work, while the influence of
Flemish art on his mature style indicates that he may also
have travelled in the southern Netherlands. It has been
proposed that Bosch painted his »Crucifixion of St Julia«
during a trip to northern Italy, where the cult of this
saint was especially popular, but it is more likely that
this work was commissioned by Italian merchants or diplomats
residing in the Netherlands, as was, for example, the
Portinari triptych of Hugo van der Goes.
One final entry in the accounts of the Brotherhood of Our
Lady records Bosch's death in 1516; on 9 August of that
year, his friends in the Brotherhood attended a funeral mass
in his memory in the church of St John.
There are only a few other references to Bosch's works. From
several seventeenth-century sources we learn that other
paintings by him were to be seen in St John's church. In
1504, finally, Philip the Handsome, duke of Burgundy,
commissioned an altarpiece from »Jeronimus van Aeken called
Bosch«, the first time, incidentally, that the painter was
referred to by his place of origin. The altarpiece was to
depict the Last Judgment flanked by Heaven and Hell; its
huge dimensions (nine feet high by eleven feet wide) would
have approached those of Roger van der Weyden's »Last
Judgment in the Hospital at Beaune. This work is lost, but
some scholars believe that a fragment of it survives in a
small panel now in Munich, while others identify the »LastJudgment«
triptych in Vienna as a reduced replica by Bosch of Philip's
altarpiece. Neither suggestion is entirely convincing. Of
Bosch's paintings in the church of St John there remains no
certain trace today. They probably disappeared when 's-Hertogenbosch
was taken from the Spanish in 1629 by Prince Frederick Henry
and his Dutch troops, and Catholic splendour was replaced by
Calvinist austerity.
Numerous paintings bearing Bosch's name can be found in
museums and private collections in Europe and the United
States. Many of these are only copies or pastiches of his
original compositions, but over thirty pictures and a small
group of drawings can be attributed to him with reasonable
certainty. Except for his early works, however, the
chronology of these paintings is difficult to determine with
any precision. None are dated, and some have been so heavily
damaged and overpainted that it would be hazardous to base a
chronology on subtle nuances of style and technique. It is
more rewarding to study Bosch's paintings according to their
subject-matter; only after a thorough examination of his
imagery may some insight be gained into the nature of
Bosch's artistic development.
|
|
|
|

Two Male Heads
Oil on panel, 14,5 x 12 cm
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
|
|
|

Two Caricatured Heads
Pen and bistre, 133 x 100 mm
Lehmann Collection, New York
|
|