Hieronymus Bosch

Zoe
4 min readOct 3, 2022

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. I guess in the 21st century all people know what art is. It is a very bright and versatile type of self-expression. But have you ever thought that an artist could paint a melody on someone’s back? In today’s article I will tell you about Hieronymus Bosch- one of the most famous, but at the same time frightening and undiluted painters of all time.

. Hieronymus Bosch was born in approximately 1450–1516 in Holland. He was born in a family of artists, where he took his first lesson. Really not a lot of things are known about Bosch, but there are a lot of guesses and some data, for sure. After his dad’s death, he owned the family studio/workshop and started creating… Not a secret that he had a wife, but no children at all. Hieronymus Bosch- isn’t the real name of an artist, but just a pseudonym, otherwise his real name was Jeroen Antonison van Aken.

. Now let’s move to the main course of the article, because I guess we are already done with appetizers. Let’s talk about his works, which lead absolutely everyone astray.

Looking at all of his pictures makes me really anxious, because the amount of details and different perspectives make me go crazy. If we take a more precise look at this particular picture, we can see that it is divided into three parts. In the first one, there are different species of animals on the back-ground and on the front plan we can see Jesus with presumably Adam and Eva. In the second picture utter chaos is happening. Thousands of people depicted there, doing a lot of strange things. Starting from eating berries from the bird’s claw, ending with climbing into an enormous egg. The last part represents hell. A lot of people die there ( in different extra-weird ways ) and as we can see, the whole picture is in darkness. So what can I say, using all this information. It is really complicated to find sense in Bosch’s paintings, because they are, to put it mildly, strange, but anyway, there are a lot of theories about what all these creatures mean. Many people think that Bosch was a really talented, but not mentally healthy person. Others think that in his paintings he tried to represent the image of hell, death and the apocalypse. In short, dystopias or maybe fully opposite… But the only thing we can admit is that he was a really significant painter during the renaissance. Now let’s talk, why he was so important.

. “I call him the first heavy-metal artist.”

Bosch’s works were really extraordinary, comparing to average pieces of art, during the renaissance. People perceived art as the embodiment of all the best and ideal on this planet, but Bosch put this idea upside down and impressed humanity this way. Even Salvador Dali inspired by Bosch’s works, because of its uniqueness and absurdity/incomprehensibility:

In conclusion I would like to say that Boch was, is and will be the most confusing, but also therefore famous painter of all the time. Because his creations make people feel. Confused or indifferent. Inspired or scared.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abayev Alice, «What you need to know about Hieronymus Bosch ?», Moscow24, last seen: 30 September 19:50 https://www.m24.ru/articles/iskusstvo/16102018/153908

Tim Wainwright, “Hieronymus Bosch, the Trendiest Apocalyptic Medieval Painter of 2014”, The Altlantic, last seen: 29 September 20:15 https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/11/hieronymus-bosch/381852/

Inga Esterkin, “Bosch and surrealists, or what does the author smoke?”, Arthive, last seen: 1 October 17:16 https://arthive.com/ru/hieronymusbosch/stories/2544

LINKS ON PHOTOS

1) https://gallerix.ru/storeroom/1400476940/N/1051001873/

2) https://vk.com/@journalsmart-bosh-kak-rodonachalnik-surrealizma.

3) https://kosyakova.net/tpost/b7zlg07py1-gde-iskat-dyavola-u-ieronima-bo

sha

4) https://cameralabs.org/4913-salvador-dali-salvador-dali-i-ego-syurrealisticheskie-kartiny

5) https://artchive.ru/publications/1543~Doktor_Kto_Kem_na_samom_dele_byl_Ieronim_Boskh

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