There was one Dutch artist whose art was on a poster on my bedroom wall as a child – Hieronymus Bosch. I had a poster of one part of the mad masterpiece that is the Garden of Unearthly Delights and was fascinated by it, albeit other images on the wall depicted (separately) Bryon and Neil Young (I was a weird eclectic kid). I didn’t discover until years later that the poster had only shown a tiny tiny part of the whole. He was more or less contemporary with the likes of Dürer in Germany or Botticelli in Italy, but his style was distinct, often startlingly hyper-religious, and depicted a LOT of sinning and punishment of sinning, often in extreme imaginative detail. The strange creatures who infest the corners of his work probably speak more to a modern viewer, but he’s been cited as an influence for everyone from Pieter Bruegel the Elder through Salvador Dali.
Anyway, I used to think I vaguely knew most of his surviving works but More Than Once this trip to Italy I’ve turned a corner in some Italian Gallery expecting more strange depictions of weird Baby Jesus, then found a whole Bosch artwork I didn’t know about. Or, at least a maybe-Bosch, something possibly by a follower that the gallery owning it likes to think is a Bosch, perhaps a copy of a lost work.
This very day, it was Venice, and the Museo Correr that caused me a fangirl moment of squeee. The Tentation de saint Antoine looks to have been quite tempting if you like very specific sorts of temptations, definitely bonus points to the saint for resisting them.
Being there means you can look closer and see delightful details and individual brush strokes – eg this cat from the right hand side, sitting staring at a roasting fish, while just above him an ear is roasting. So strange, so full of character.
When I get home … I promise to find out more, and let some of that wild whimsy inspire me to something.
[nb, this post was originally on Facebook, putting it here so it can keep company with other random art-that-inspires notes ]
A Little Art 