Product Description

Four hundred little people frolic au naturel with overgrown songbirds and raspberries; a pudgy blue demon serenades a fashionable young couple with a tune piped through his own elongated nose; a knife-wielding set of disembodied ears stalks the damned through hell. The phantasmagoric imagery of Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) has been the source of widespread interest ever since the painter’s lifetime, and is still so enigmatic that scholars have theorized that it contains hidden astrological, alchemical, or even heretical meanings. Yet none of these theories has ever seemed to provide an adequate understanding of Bosch’s work. Moreover, the considerable professional success that the artist enjoyed in his native s’Hertogenbosch, not to mention his membership in a traditional religious organization, suggests that he pursued not a sinister secret agenda but simply his personal artistic vision.

This intriguing new monograph by noted art historian Larry Silver interprets that artistic vision with admirable lucidity: it explains how Bosch’s understanding of human sin, morality, and punishment, which was conceived in an era of powerful apocalyptic expectation, shaped his dramatic visualizations of hell and of the temptations of even the most steadfast saints. Silver’s account of Bosch’s artistic development is one of the first to benefit from recent technical investigations of the paintings, as well as from the reexamination of the artist’s drawings in relation to his paintings. Hieronymus Bosch is also unique in how securely it places its subject’s work in the broader history of painting in the Low Countries: Silver identifies sources of Bosch’s iconography in a wide range of fifteenth-century panel paintings, manuscript illuminations, and prints, and describes how, despite their own religiousness, Bosch’s pictures helped inspire the secular landscape and genre scenes of later Netherlandish painters. Augmented by 310 illustrations, most in color, including many dramatic close-ups of Bosch’s intricately imagined nightmare scenes, this is the definitive book on a perennially fascinating artist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95188 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 424 pages

From Booklist
Bosch's elaborately, often monstrously detailed art remains bewitching and bewildering lo these many years since his death, in 1516. Books about this influential Netherlandish painter and his most famous work, the endlessly surprising Garden of Earthly Delights, are many. Why, then, produce yet another volume on Bosch? Because the more one looks at his intricate paintings, the more one sees, especially in the nearly 300 magnificent color reproductions, including breathtaking close-ups, that distinguish this top-of-the-line tome. North Renaissance art historian Silver's fresh and far-ranging commentary interweaves biography with discussions of Bosch's aesthetic breakthroughs and responses to his social, religious, and political milieu. Silver traces the inspirations for, and seeks to decode, Bosch's complex iconography, carefully analyzes Bosch's depictions of saints, and avers that Bosch's "most original innovation was his production of triptychs dedicated to moral issues." In Leap (2000), naturalist Terry Tempest Williams used binoculars in the Prado to scrutinize the panoramic wildness of Garden of Earthly Delights; here all is in exquisite and intimate focus, bringing Bosch to light as never before. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Every page proclaims high seriousness. This is the scholarly volume on the artist for our time. -- Arizona Daily Star, January 29, 2007

Hieronymus Bosch carefully explores the often-nightmarish mind of this ever-illusive artist. Enormously impressive in its scholarly detail. -- Art Times, Jan/Feb 2007

About the Author
Larry Silver, a historian of Northern Renaissance art, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and is currently Farquhar Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania. His other books include the general survey Art in History and the recent Landscapes and Peasant Scenes: The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market.

Customer Reviews

Hieronymus Bosch
I've always been fascinated by Hieronymus Bosch's work, but I've never been satisfied with reproductions. In this book there are amazing reproductions that aren't too small or too dark or too fuzzy. The close-ups of Bosch's works are great. They really let you see the minutiae - the brushwork, attention to detail and the sheer amount of activity going on in his paintings. Well worth the cost - if you buy on book about Bosch, it should be this one.

A MUST for any Bosch fan.
This book has the absolute best reproductions of Bosch's surreal masterworks, plus a boatload of other images that help demystify the peculiar themes and images that have dazzled art lovers for so long. It gives the artist a human face without taking anything away from the art.

My only complaint would be that the layout is a bit cumbersome(it is annoying to be on page 194 and have to look back at figure 2A on page 3)and at times the text can be a bit hard to wade through. That being said, I urge anyone interested in Bosch to face the text head on, stick to it, and you will not be disappointed.

Beautiful and scholarly
This is a beautiful art book. If you are a fan of Bosch you will relish the gorgeous color plates and the insightful window into this artist's life. Very well done!