Hieronymus Bosch had a distinctive view of our debased humanity, most distinctly expressed in his paintings of Christ’s Passion, says Michael Prodger
Carl Jung described the painter Hieronymus Bosch as ‘the master of the monstrous…the discoverer of the unconscious’. He was, however, only half right. While it is true that Bosch has no peers as a conjurer of phantasms and grotesques, he was no proto-psychologist: he was a man of his times.
Bosch lived c.1450–1516 so his times were the late Middle Ages and there was no such thing as the unconscious then — there was the Bible. All human behaviour, good or ill, could be ascribed either to God or to the Devil. And, in Bosch’s worldview at least, the Devil was in the ascendant. His was a deeply pessimistic view of human nature and his paintings — of which there are only 25 certified examples known — all deal in one form or another with the triumph of sin and the pervasiveness of evil.
Whether Bosch was a misanthrope in life or just in his art is impossible to know. Although he was celebrated in his own lifetime and his work collected by the Burgundian and Habsburg overlords of his native Low Countries, little is known of the painter’s personality. He died at a point at which religious certainties were beginning to unravel — only a year before Martin Luther wrote The Ninety Five Theses — but seems himself to have been a staunch Catholic. He was a lifelong member of the ultra-orthodox Brotherhood of Our Lady in his hometown of s’Hertogenbosch (from which he took his name) and produced paintings, decorative work and stained glass for them. The anti-clericalism that appears in his art is perhaps no more than him extending his stern morality to include erring priests as well as a bestial laity.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in