We were thrilled to see several pieces from our own American “backyard.” A painting that had been in storage at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City was confirmed by the Bosch Research and Conservation Project (BRCP) to be an authentic Bosch–and we got the chance to see it at its “coming out party” in the exhibit. Similarly, we had never seen Bosch’s Death and the Miser at the National Gallery in Washington, DC. But the Noordbrabants Museum put this piece together with the other presumed fragments of a lost triptych–one part from the Yale Art Museum in New Haven ( An Allegory of Intemperance ), one from the Louvre in Paris (the Ship of Fools ), and one from the Boijmans in Rotterdam–revealing the first view (at least theoretically) of a complete version of these re-united fragments since the original masterpiece went missing hundreds of years ago.
industrial world order of the 20 th century to the new digital/ social/global order of the 21 st . A constant critic of hypocrisy and corruption wherever it is evidenced, Bosch’s biting satire in his paintings is analogous to our late night comedians like Jon Stewart and John Oliver. Our comedians “skewer” politicians verbally; Bosch “skewered” them literally–often depicting swords and knives and other sharp killing machines slicing through the flesh of hypocrites and sinners in his visions of Hell. Bosch scholarship has undergone an enormous arc of change over the last fifty years. When I first encountered the Garden of Earthly Delights –at the height of 1960s counter-culture–more than a few leading experts were convinced Bosch must have been munching on magic mushrooms. A German art historian, Wilhelm Fraenger,
wrote a book about the Garden of Earthly Delights in the late 1940s that suggested Bosch was a member of a secret heretical humanistic cult practicing free love and sacred sexual rights. There was next to no evidence for Fraenger’s claims, but they resonated with the times in the 1960s. The leading Bosch experts today tend to see him in a much more conservative light. Bosch is described by contemporary scholars as a deep religious believer; a traditional member of a traditional church; a severe moralist; a painter committed to depicting the deadly sins not to excite us with the rich and varied nature of human experience, but to warn us of the horrific Hell
So now we only have one more confirmed Bosch to see on our list: Bosch’s Last Judgment in Vienna (and our son David has already seen it). Of course the index of authenticated Bosch paintings is constantly changing. The Prado in Madrid disagrees with some of the judgments made about some of their pieces by the BRCP. They are currently staging their own 500 th anniversary show with their own catalog of what they believe is authentic and not according to their own experts–and as I write this, I am planning our family trip to the Prado’s show. Several other museums are fighting for their favored pieces to be declared authentic. What is by Bosch’s own hand, what defines a piece as done by his “workshop,” and what makes a piece deemed to be done by his “followers” will continue to be debated, but the BRCP has tried to draw at least a few clear conclusions by using “dendechronology”–the forensic effort to date the wood panels used by Bosch for most of his
BOSCH DESIGNS AND MOTIFS IN DECAL FORMAT IN THE STREETS OF ’S- HERTOGENBOSCH AS PART OF THE CELEBRA- TIONS FOR THE 500TH YEAR OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH’S DEATH IN 1516. © 2016 JULIE O’CONNOR PHOTO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
paintings. If the dendechronology suggests that the panel comes from a tree that wasn’t even felled in Bosch’s lifetime, it’s a pretty good bet the piece is by one of his followers or imitators. Our family Bosch Tour has been a joy. Julie sees the paintings with her own artist/photographer eyes–and finds images and clues within them that I have missed even after looking at a painting for hours. David sees all of this historywith the fresh eyes of aMillennial. He understands how our 21 st century time period–characterized by massive technological and social change–resonates and is reflected in Bosch’s era. As we talk over good meals in fine restaurants in Den Bosch (a regional dining capital of the Netherlands featuring several highly innovative farm-to-table restaurants), I test out ideas I am developing: Bosch’s epoch was a time when northern Europe was going through a wrenching change–moving from a millennium of medieval values to the following half millennium of Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the birth of modern capitalism and modern ideas. In Bosch’s art, you can see this clash of civilizations. To me, this makes Bosch highly relevant to our world today, which is undergoing a similar transition from the
that awaits us if we stay on the sinner’s path. Personally, I think the reality lies somewhere in the middle. Art historians have tried to decode the meaning of Bosch’s paintings for centuries. I am not so presumptuous as to believe I will arrive at “the answer.” Like all great art–Leonardo, Michelangelo, Shakespeare–there aremanydifferentanswersandmanyenigmasthatwilldoubtlesslyendure forever in Bosch’s work. But I believe that Bosch possessed a slightly deeper insight into ways of the world than was typical of the average person of his time, and that his paintings reflect that understanding. Maybe, just maybe, I can come to understand the essence of that insight. When I do, I will be ready to write that book about Bosch that has been in development in my mind for the last 45+ years. --- Dan Burstein and Julie O’Connor live in Weston. Dan is a venture capitalist and the author of 14 books. Award-winning photographer Julie O’Connor created the first non-Western door poster with “Doors of Tibet” in 2003, which became the basis for her interest in doing her book, Doors of Weston: 300 Years of Passageways in a Connecticut Town, published in partnership with the Weston Historical Society. * WESTONMAGAZINEGROUP.COM 77
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