- the fantastic Hieronnymous Bosch
detail: The Musician's Hell." |
The work of the Flemish painter Hieronymus (Jerome) Bosch has long been closely identified with a demonic strain of the fantastic. In Bosch's great triptych masterpiece, The Garden of Delights (Madrid, The Prado) scenes of edenic beauty stand side by side with the teeming suffering of "The Musician's Hell" from which these selections have been taken. Bosch combines the frightening strangeness of his stagings with the utter conviction of the dreamer that the vision must be real, can't be real. The presence of hybrid creatures, the topos of the world turned upside down, the looming sense of a brutal awakening are among Bosch's favorite devices in his fantastic visions. All are nonetheless spiced with Bosch's cruelly intelligent humor. |
