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Essay on Hieronymus Bosch
Introduction
Hieronymus Bosch or Jerome Van Aken is considered to be a painter who is not only a great painter but also a very popular painter, perhaps due to the assistance of the Church. Bosch was born in the town of Hertogenbosch which is in the Netherlands, near the present day Belgian border, in 1450 to a family of painters and he inherited the talent that was to make him famous and keep his name alive through the ages. He lived in Hertogenbosch all his life and painted a number of large oil paintings which were allegorical and mystical works filled with both religious and mythological symbolism. He is better known by a shortened Latin version of his name, Hieronymus Bosch (7).
Bosch’s popularity in Europe was at its peak in the year 2001 as a result of a major exhibition of his work in Rotterdam. Since then, he has also been criticized for his controversial work such as The Garden of Earthly Delights, which was painted c. 1500. Bosch’s artistic paintings influenced the Surrealists school (9).
Little is known of Bosch’s personal life and we know him mostly by his paintings. It is known that he was a devout Catholic and a member of a local religious brotherhood. In the 1480s he inherited some property and married a woman from a good family. Bosch’s paintings are not dated and everything that is known about him, his artistic capability, his technical expertise, his genius, his fears and his outlook on mankind's ultimate future is interpreted from his work. All those who have seen Bosch’s work including the kings, the commoners, the bishops and the heretics have come up with their own conclusions and meanings. Bosch is, however, thought to have held strong and conservative religious views and these views are thought to be represented in his paintings which are said to contain moral messages for the viewers....
