Jheronimus Bosch: The Road to Heaven and Hell
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Jheronimus Bosch: The Road to Heaven and Hell Details
About the Author Gary Schwartz is an art historian with an abiding interest in the cultural context of art and its reception. Most of his work is dedicated to Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, especially Rembrandt, but he is also the author of an earlier book on Bosch, for young readers. Read more
Reviews
2016 is the year of Bosch or more precisely the 500th anniversary of his death. When I was in college, I pinned a poster of the ‘Garden of Delights’ to my dorm room wall. Twenty years later I saw the actual painting at the Prado in Madrid. Bosch is amazing in many ways; his inventiveness, his amazing skill, the warmth and realism of his human figures. It is impossible to catch everything going on in a painting. I can look at his work again and again and always found something new to admire.This is a coffee table book that I purchased because of the size and richness of the many illustrations. The text is much less impressive with lots of scattered ideas and references that didn’t add much to my appreciation of Bosch. Mostly I gazed with my mouth open at the illustrations and marvelled at how prescient I was at eighteen (of course it is all about me!). No doubt my vanity would cause Bosch to paint me with a beak wearing skates as I navigate Hell’s ice pond.