Hieronymus Bosch



Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) was a Dutch medieval painter, best known for his colorful and grotesque depictions of Hell. He made several paintings about the subject and nobody has ever come close to his vivid and creepy visions of the place: Ugly demons torturing people in complete agony and scenes which predate Surrealism by five centuries. Most of these strange scenes are the product of symbolism that might be clear and understandable to a viewer in Bosch's age, but now, centuries later, can be difficult to decipher. Bosch's paintings show mankind in all of his corruptness and meanspiritness, doomed to end up in Hell, while only a few chosen ones will be allowed in Heaven. Even the Church is not spared in his fatal vision. He was able to depict Western European society during The Late Middle Ages in a satirical and memorable light, that still inspires artists nowadays.


 * Always Night
 * And I Must Scream
 * Apocalypse Wow
 * Body Horror
 * Bizarrchitecture
 * Cold-Blooded Torture
 * Cool and Unusual Punishment
 * Corrupt Church: A common subject in his paintings:
 * "The Haywain Triptych" shows numerous people fighting to grab some hay from a large wagon. On the lower right side of the painting several nuns are collecting hay for a fat monk.
 * In the painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights" a pig is seen with a nun's habit on its head.
 * Dark World
 * Gorn
 * Grotesque Gallery: Consider his painting of Christ Carrying The Cross.
 * Hell Gate
 * Ironic Hell: Especially present in the third panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights. A notable example is the "musicians' Hell", which features musicians being impaled on the strings of their instruments.
 * Nightmare Face
 * Our Demons Are Different
 * Religious Horror
 * Riddle for the Ages: Some scenes are still a mystery for art historians. Part of the problem is that in a few cases, we know that his images are literal depictions of contemporary metaphors (or cultural in-jokes), which means that some of the things we haven't figured out are just sayings that are otherwise unattributed.
 * Satan
 * Self-Inflicted Hell: Suggested by The Garden of Earthly Delights and its Ironic Hells.
 * Seven Deadly Sins
 * Shrouded in Myth: Historians know almost nothing about Bosch, except that he lived in 's-Hertogenbosch (nowadays in The Netherlands). The real meanings and messages of his paintings are still a matter of dispute. Some claim he was mad, others call him a moralist, a satirist, a non-believer, a religious fanatic, a member of some secret cult, etc.
 * Spiritual Successor: Several: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Salvador Dali,...
 * Spooky Painting
 * Surreal Horror
 * World of Symbolism: A lot of scenes that we might call surreal are, in fact, symbolic allegories.