Hieronymus Bosch (; Dutch: [ɦijeːˈroːnimʏz ˈbɔs] ; born Jheronimus van Aken [jeːˈroːnimʏs fɑn ˈaːkə(n)]; c. 1450 – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oak wood, mainly contains fantastic illustrations of religious concepts and narratives. Within his lifetime, his work was collected in the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and widely copied, especially his macabre and nightmarish depictions of hell.
Little is known of Bosch's life, though there are some records. He spent most of it in the town of 's-Hertogenbosch, where he was born in his grandfather's house. The roots of his forefathers are in Nijmegen and Aachen (reflected in his surname, Van Aken). His original, fantastical style cast a wide influence on northern art of the 16th century; Pieter Bruegel the Elder was his best-known follower. Today, Bosch is seen as a highly individualistic artist who offered profound insights into humanity's desires and deepest fears. Attribution of his work has been especially difficult; today only about 25 paintings are confidently identified as his, along with eight drawings. About another half-dozen paintings are confidently attributed to his workshop. His most acclaimed works consist of three triptych altarpieces, particularly The Garden of Earthly Delights.
Hieronymus Bosch's first name was originally Jheronimus (or Joen, respectively the Latin and Middle Dutch form of the name "Jerome"), and he signed a number of his paintings as Jheronimus Bosch.
The surname Bosch derives from his birthplace, 's-Hertogenbosch ('Duke's forest'), which, in the Netherlands, is commonly called "Den Bosch" ('the forest').
Little is known of Bosch's life or training. He left behind no letters or diaries, and known references to him have been taken from brief mentions in the municipal records of 's-Hertogenbosch, and in the account books of the local religious confraternity, the order of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady. Nothing is known of his personality, nor of his thoughts on the meaning of his art. Bosch's date of birth has not been determined with certainty. It is estimated at c. 1450, on the basis of a hand-drawn portrait (which may be a self-portrait) made shortly before his death in 1516. The drawing shows the artist at an advanced age, probably in his late sixties.
Bosch lived all his life in and near 's-Hertogenbosch, in the Duchy of Brabant. His grandfather Jan van Aken (died 1454) was a painter and is first mentioned in the records in 1430. Jan had five sons, four of whom were also painters. Bosch's father, Anthonius van Aken (died c. 1478), acted as artistic adviser to the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady. It is generally assumed that either Bosch's father or one of his uncles taught the artist to paint, but none of their works survive. Bosch first appears in the municipal record on 5 April 1474, when he is named along with two brothers and a sister.
's-Hertogenbosch was a flourishing city in 15th-century Brabant, in the south of the present-day Netherlands, which at the time was part of the Burgundian Netherlands. It was originally under the control of the Duchy of Brabant before being passed through marriage to the Habsburgs. In 1463, 4,000 houses in the town were destroyed by a catastrophic fire, which the (approximately) thirteen-year-old Bosch presumably witnessed. He became a popular painter in his lifetime and often received commissions from abroad. In 1486/7, he joined the highly respected Brotherhood of Our Lady, a devotional confraternity of some 40 influential citizens of 's-Hertogenbosch, and 7,000 "outer-members" from around Europe.
Sometime between 1479 and 1481, Bosch married Aleid Goyaerts van den Meervenne, who was a few years his senior. The couple moved to the nearby town of Oirschot, where Aleid had inherited a house and land from her wealthy family. An entry in the accounts of the Brotherhood of Our Lady records Bosch's death in 1516. A memorial funeral mass was held in the church of Saint John on 9 August of that year.
Bosch produced at least sixteen triptychs: of them, eight survive fully intact with another five surviving in fragments. Bosch's works are generally organised into three periods of his life dealing with the early works (c. 1470–1485), the middle period (c. 1485–1500), and the late period (c. 1500 until his death). According to Stefan Fischer, thirteen of Bosch's surviving paintings were completed in the late period, with seven attributed to his middle period. Bosch's early period is studied in terms of his workshop activity and possibly some of his drawings. Indeed, he taught pupils in the workshop, who were influenced by him. The recent dendrochronological investigation of the oak panels by the scientists at the Bosch Research and Conservation Project led to a more precise dating of the majority of Bosch's paintings.
Bosch sometimes painted in a comparatively sketchy manner, contrasting with the traditional Early Netherlandish style of painting in which the smooth surface—achieved by the application of multiple transparent glazes—conceals the brushwork. His paintings with their rough surfaces, so-called impasto painting, differed from the tradition of the great Netherlandish painters of the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries, who wished to hide the work done and thus suggest their paintings as more nearly divine creations.
Bosch did not date his paintings, but—unusually for the time—seems to have signed several of them, although some signatures purporting to be his are certainly not. About twenty-five paintings remain today that can be attributed to him. In the late 16th century, Philip II of Spain acquired many of Bosch's paintings. As a result, the Prado Museum in Madrid now owns the Adoration of the Magi, The Garden of Earthly Delights, the tabletop painting of The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things and The Haywain Triptych.
Bosch painted his works mostly on oak panels using oil as a medium. Bosch's palette was rather limited and contained the usual pigments of his time. He mostly used azurite for blue skies and distant landscapes, green copper-based glazes and paints consisting of malachite or verdigris for foliage and foreground landscapes, and lead-tin-yellow, ochres and red lake (carmine or madder lake) for his figures.
The Garden of Earthly Delights
One of his most famous triptychs is The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1495–1505) whose outer panels are intended to bracket the main central panel between the Garden of Eden depicted on the left panel and the Last Judgment depicted on the right panel. It is attributed by Fischer as a transitional painting rendered by Bosch between his middle period and his late period. In the left-hand panel God presents Eve to Adam. Innovatively, God is given a youthful appearance. The figures are set in a landscape populated by exotic animals and unusual semi-organic hut-shaped forms. The central panel is a broad panorama teeming with nude figures engaged in innocent, self-absorbed joy, as well as fantastical compound animals, oversized fruit, and hybrid stone formations.
The right panel presents a hellscape: a world in which humankind has succumbed to the temptations of evil and is reaping eternal damnation. Set at night, the panel features cold colours, tortured figures, and frozen waterways. The nakedness of the human figures has lost any eroticism suggested in the central panel. Large explosions in the background throw light through the city gate and spill onto the water in the panel's midground.
Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony
Bosch's Temptation of St. Anthony triptych is one of his most famous works, along with The Garden of Earthly Delights. It shows Saint Anthony being tempted or assailed in the desert by demons, whose temptations he resisted. Strictly speaking, there are at least two different episodes deriving from Athanasius's Life of St. Anthony, as well as later versions of the life, which may be depicted.