Bosch

he Cathedral of Saint John in 's Hertogenbosch is called one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture in the Netherlands. It is known, as shown in records cited earlier, of Bosch's close association with the cathedral by virtue of his artistic contributions to its decoration.

The cathedral had burned in the early part of the century and the repairs were still in progress in the painter's youth. He probably grew up watching the wood and stone carvers at work in the churchyard.

The most obvious result of such an observation was his love of the chimeras and grotesqueries that enjoy self-sufficient life in his works. A more important contribution of Gothic art to Bosch, however, lay in its mode of expression.

Although he worked in oil paint as they did, he did not employ their elaborate glazing method and, perhaps, had no knowledge of it. His was an alla prima technique, which some people believe to be his application to oils of a fresco painting manner, conceivably resulting from his admiration for the frescoes in the cathedral of 's Hertogenbosch.

here were many other factors at work in the formation of Bosch's artistic modus. De Tolnay made the point that the artist's very originality in technique and ideation may have resulted from his physical isolation from the main artistic currents of his time. There is no record of his ever having traveled outside his hometown. If he had never seen the paintings of the great Flemish masters, his most immediate influences would be those found in a provincial town. The content of his paintings seems much closer to popular sources, such as illumination and incunabula, than to that of the Flemings.

n 1959, Ludwig von Baldass identified several of the artist's patrons as being eminently respectable: Philip the Fair of Brabant and his sister the Archduchess Margaret, William of Orange and the Archduke Ernest, as well as more common (but undoubtedly affluent) citizens of Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Antwerp - including Rubens in the 17th century. Baldass also mentioned Bosch's influences among his great Flemish forebears (assuming that he did not know those from Ghent - mainly Eyck or Goes) as Weyden, Bouts, Geertgen, and Memling, as well as several International Style artists (through a vignette from Italy, perhaps?).

The same subjective religious spirit which brought about the mystical movements of the Brothers of the Common Life [the Ruysbroek followers] ... fills the works of the Dutch painters, whether they go in a realistic direction, like Geertgen tot Sint Jans, or in a fantastic and visionary one, like Bosch." Benesch called this direction "Dutch Flamboyant Gothic," but it was part of a movement of wider dispersion than this name would indicate. De Tolnay pointed out that there was a Neo-Gothic current spreading throughout Europe during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, appearing "simultaneously at Florence with Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, at Venice with Crivelli and Vivarini

Its members called themselves Brothers and Sisters of the Free (or High) Spirit in the belief that they were the incarnation of the Holy Ghost and through its power exalted to a state of spirituality that was immune from sin even in the flesh, with its subjection to lusts, so that on earth they lived in a state of paradisiacal innocence.

Fränger concentrated on the second group, proposing that they could not have been made for a church congregation since they contained anti-clerical polemic, such as would be implied by monks and nuns depicted in disgusting attitudes. Nor could these altarpieces have been made for pagan worship, since they also attacked pagan "priests" and their ritualistic excesses.

Fränger found that the deviant content existed only in a clearly defined group of altarpieces - the three large triptychs of The Garden of Earthly Delights (p. 26-27), the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony (p. 52-53), and the Hay-Wain (p. 35). In contrast, there was only a small amount of this symbolism in such paintings as the Epiphany (p. 16) triptych in the Prado and the Venice Martyrdom of Saint Julia (p. 17). The remaining paintings, including those of the Passion and Adoration of the Magi themes, had little or none

The work of de Tolnay, together with the increasing interest in Surrealism, had inspired popular interest in Bosch as a painter

He made a strong case for association between Bosch's ideology and that of the fourteenth-century Netherlandish mystic Jan van Ruysbroek. A Ruysbroek follower, Gerard Groote, had spread his master's teachings by founding the Association of the Brethren of Life in Common, numerous orders of which flourished in the fifteenth-century Netherlands.