Hieronymus Bosch

Fülszöveg

THE WORLD OF ART
Hieronymus Bosch
Walter S. Gibson 151 plates 26 in color
No one can look at the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch without amazement and bewilderment. What made the artist fill his canvases with such scenes of torture, such monsters, such leering devils? Why does a sense of misery and foreboding pervade all his works? Professor Gibson provides an answer by taking a historical approach to the question, arguing that what seems inexplicable to us in the twentieth century was quite intelligible to people living in the fifteenth. The subjects of Bosch's paintings were in fáct the overwhelming concerns of late medieval Europe: the Last Judgement, original sin, death, temptations of the flesh-. The author describes each picture in detail, explaining how the complicated symbolism can be understood by reference to medieval folklore and religion. He also points out that many of the acts portrayed in the pictures were visual translations of^verbal puns or metaphors. Equipped... Tovább

Fülszöveg

THE WORLD OF ART
Hieronymus Bosch
Walter S. Gibson 151 plates 26 in color
No one can look at the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch without amazement and bewilderment. What made the artist fill his canvases with such scenes of torture, such monsters, such leering devils? Why does a sense of misery and foreboding pervade all his works? Professor Gibson provides an answer by taking a historical approach to the question, arguing that what seems inexplicable to us in the twentieth century was quite intelligible to people living in the fifteenth. The subjects of Bosch's paintings were in fáct the overwhelming concerns of late medieval Europe: the Last Judgement, original sin, death, temptations of the flesh-. The author describes each picture in detail, explaining how the complicated symbolism can be understood by reference to medieval folklore and religion. He also points out that many of the acts portrayed in the pictures were visual translations of^verbal puns or metaphors. Equipped with Professor Gibson's book the reader can look at the pictures as Bosch's contemporaries would have done, and thereby appreciate both the full force of their visual imagery and the extent of Bosch's genius in transforming traditional themes and motifs.
' ¦ ("-.'- ¦¦¦¦ •.•¦'." ~~ . ¦ • ¦' "Walter Gibson has written an exceptional book, sensible, illuminating and readable. . . . The task which [he] . . . has attempted is the worthy and unusual one of attempting to de-mystify the enigmatic Bosch for the general reader. . . probably the best straightforward account of Bosch and his works which we shall have for some time" - The Times Literary Supplement
Walter S. Gibson has taught in the Department of Art, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, since 1966, and he is now Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department. His special interest lies in sixteenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting, and he has published a number of articles in this field.
On the cover: The Temptation of St. Anthony, Lisbon (detail from center panel) Vissza