Hieronymus Bosch : time and transformation in the "garden of earthly delights" /
Margaret D Carroll.
Bok Engelsk 2021
| Omfang | pages cm
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| Utgave | First.
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| Opplysninger | "Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights in Madrid's Museo Nacional del Prado offers its viewers the experience of looking into an alien and entrancing world. The large scale of the open triptych (over 10 feet wide and 7 feet high) requires the viewer to stand at a distance to take it all in (fig. 1). The profusion of meticulously painted details also make it irresistible to examine at close range every centimeter of the surface. One is drawn into a rhythm of approaching and withdrawing, of moving from one side to another in an attempt, not only to grasp the aesthetic coherence of the whole, but also to reach an understanding of what it all "means." Although unsigned and undated, the folding triptych has been dated c. 1495-1505 and is unanimously attributed to Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516), an artist patronized by elite citizens of his native town, 's Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch), and by members of the Burgundian court. It is identified with a work described in 1517 by Antonio de Beatis a visitor to the palace of Count Henry III in Brussels. Beatis marveled at the panels on which "bizarre things" were painted, "so pleasing and fantastical that there is no way of describing them well." This study approaches Bosch's triptych not as a riddle to be solved, but as an enigmatic set of panels designed to promote speculation about the past and future of the created world. To be sure, a broad sequence is discernible. The shutters, displayed when the wings are closed, depict God in the upper left hand corner creating the cosmos (fig. 2). The open view follows the course of world history from the Garden of Eden on the left, to the end of the world on the right. But like that early viewer of the panels, we are often at a loss to describe exactly what we see, let alone articulate the far-reaching questions that the triptych invites us to ask. Hieronymus Bosch: Time and Transformation in the Garden of Earthly Delights views the triptych as a field for speculation about the origin o f the cosmos, the life-history of the earth, and the transformation of humankind from the first age of world history to the last. Whereas most studies of the triptych narrate a sequence of events that turn upon intrusions by Satan into the natural world and human affairs, this study takes a more positivist approach, one pursued by late medieval natural and moral philosophers who asked: by what process did the world come into being? How did the earth appear both at the peak of its generative powers and in its decline? How has human behavior changed from the primordial era to the "present" day? I posit that, like philosophers who theorized about the life-history of the earth and its inhabitants, Bosch was concerned to depict how the world might have looked and changed in appearance over time, and how humans might have felt and behaved before and after the encroachment of civilization"--
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| Dewey | |
| ISBN | 9780300255324
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