Bosch. Virginia Pitts Rembert

delight in mere form and was turning toward an interest in naturalistic illusionism.

      From either point of view he would have found Bosch’s work unacceptable. Even though Pacheco’s concern was with Bosch as an artist, he passed him off as an oddity, and this reputation clung round the painter for two and a half centuries to come.

      Christ Mocked also called The Crowning with Thorns

      ca. 1490–1500

      Oil on oak panel, 73.8 × 59 cm

      The National Gallery, London

      During this period there was little attention given by scholars to Northern art at all; when it was considered, Bosch was obscured by the great Netherlandish painters ranging from Van Eyck to Brueghel. It was not until the end of the last century that any respectable scholarship was brought to bear upon the painter.

      The Pedlar

      1490–1505

      Oil on panel, 71 × 70.6 cm

      Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

      Perhaps this was a consequence of the realistic impulse that entered mid-nineteenth-century painting. Historians began to look for precursors to this realism in the past. They turned again to an interest in Northern art and in reemphasising Brueghel, “discovered” Bosch.

      Such historians as Ebeling and Mosman sorted through the aged registers of his native town ‘s-Hertogenbosch, a Dutch town near the German border, but the result was disappointing.

      The Ship of Fools

      After 1491

      Oil on panel, 58 × 33 cm

      Musée du Louvre, Paris

      The date of Bosch’s death was discovered in a registry of names and armorial bearings – listed as 1516.

      His birth date was not found, but because his portrait, which was discovered in the Arras Codex, showed a man of about sixty, his birth was assumed to have been around 1450.

      Allegory of Intemperance

      ca. 1495–1500

      Oil on panel, 35.9 × 31.4 cm

      Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven

      There are a few references to Bosch between these dates in the archives of the Brotherhood of Our Lady at ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

      Several items referred to his having been paid various sums for works commissioned of him. None of this was very informative about essential details of Bosch’s life, save that, since he was referred to once as “illustrious painter”, he was obviously held in repute as an artist by his fellows.

      Owl’s Nest

      Pen and bistre, 14 × 19.6 cm

      Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

      There is no reason to think, from these references at least, that his friends considered Bosch either a wizard or a madman. As to his ancestry, since Bosch’s name often bore the suffix Van Aken, it was believed that his forebears were from Aachen, just over the Dutch-German border. Five Van Akens were mentioned in the town records before the time of Hieronymus.

      Singers in an Egg

      Oil on panel, 108.5 × 126.5 cm

      Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille

      One, a teacher named Jan Van Aken, was noted in the archives of ‘s-Hertogenbosch’s Cathedral of Saint John in references covering several years (1423–1434).