Bosch

A beautiful, celebratory edition of the words of Hieronymus Bosch

Medieval Europe finished on an August day in 1516 in the ’s-Hertogenbosch market square, when Hieronymus Bosch, perhaps in his studio, where he worked on all his paintings, and which overlooked the square, died. It was not until then that the Middle Ages became aware of having bled the last drop of its visionary religiousness; imagery that in medieval times, particularly in Northern Europe, had persisted for a considerable length of time. Only then could the rationalist humanism of the Italian Renaissance take foot and spread across an increasingly urbanised and discerning Europe.
Hieronymus Bosch (‘s-Hertogenbosch 1453-1516) is the artist who, more than any other between the Medieval time and modernity, has given life to a fantastical and unsettling imagery in his painting, fed by infernal visions and dazzling paradises, vices and redemptions, exemplary punishments and feelings of guilt, religious obsessions and superstition. In 2016, the five-hundredth anniversary of his death, the whole world dedicated events, exhibitions, conventions and cultural initiatives to him. This book is a must for those who love Bosch’s bizarre compositions, teeming with fantastical beings, complex symbolism, fine details to be analysed centimetre by centimetre; works that are thoroughly explained and analysed in the light of latest research.
It is an opportunity to see in detail the The Haywain Triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Ship of Fools, Death and the Miser, The Cure of Folly (The Extraction of the Stone of Madness) and all the masterpieces that spark a passion in all of us, as it did at the time for Philip the second of Spain, and then a great twentieth century writer such as Margherite Yourcenar.

Marco Bussagli, art historian and artist, teaches artistic anatomy at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. He received a scholarship from the University of London, and has taught at the Sapienza University in Roma. He is a specialist in iconography, drawings, nudes and 15th and 16th century art, particularly Michelangelo. He has published several essays on the history of art, curated exhibitions and regularly writes for “Art e Dossier”.

Available product forms