Hieronymus Bosch

by Virginia Pitts Rembert

  Long before computer games were invented, Hieronymus Bosch was painting terrifying yet strangely likable monsters, often with a touch of humour. His works are assertive statements about the mental dangers that befall those who abandon the teachings of Christ. With a life that spanned 1450 to 1516, Bosch was born at the height of the Renaissance and witnessed its religious wars. Medieval traditions and values were crumbling, paving the way for a new universe where faith had lost its power and much of its magic. Bosch set out to warn doubters of the perils awaiting all and any who lost their faith in God. Believing that everyone had to make their own moral choices, he focused on themes of hell, heaven and lust, brilliantly exploiting the symbolism of a wide range of fruits and plants which lent his imagery strong sexual overtones.

Genres: Art

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Daniel Polansky]

Two things about Jerome that cut against his Christian message and give his art a (probably unfairly) reputation for transgression. The first is that the characters in the hellish portions of his paintings don't seem usually to be that bothered by being shat out they sphincter of an anthropomorphic organ grinder (or whatever). The other is that the paradisaical portions of his paintings tend themselves to be so weird and horrifying, with crystalline towers and odd animals, that looking at it you're kind of going 'shit man, if that's paradise maybe I am better off with monkey-faced whores, drinking drafts of hellfire and playing dominoes with an obese cat-man.

[Rebecca]

Pictures were amazing to look at; I’ll pass on the writing though, reads like an elongated essay.

[D-Vid]

2,5 stars. Some parts of the book were very interesting to read but most of the chapters didn't give me enough appetite for reading. This has neither anything to do with the content of the text nor with the research conducted but only with the style of writing.

Another point of attention is the layout. I'm expecting that, when an artwork is described, the artwork is displayed somewhere near the topic about this artwork. But it's rather scattered, so I had to keep flipping the pages throughout the whole reading.