Hieronymus Bosch

Hieronymus Bosch was born about 1450 in 's-Hertogenbosch, in the Duchy of Brabant, as Jheronimus van Aken; the name Bosch comes from his home town. His grandfather Jan van Aken, who died in 1454, was a painter, and his father Anthonius, who died about 1478, served as artistic adviser to the Brotherhood of Our Lady. A relative probably taught him, though no work by his father or uncles survives. He first appears in the municipal records in 1474. Between about 1479 and 1481 he married Aleyt Goyaerts van den Meervenne, who came from a wealthy family, and the couple moved for a time to Oirschot, where she had inherited property. In the late 1480s he joined the Brotherhood of Our Lady, and in 1504 Philip the Handsome commissioned a Last Judgement from him. He died in 's-Hertogenbosch in 1516, and a funeral mass was held for him at the church of Saint John on 9 August.

Bosch painted in oil on oak panels, often in the form of triptychs, and worked in a comparatively sketchy, rapid manner, with a rough paint surface rather than the smooth finish of earlier Netherlandish painting. He rarely dated his pictures and only about seven are signed, so the order of his works rests largely on tree-ring dating of the panels. Moral and religious teaching runs through his work, often by turning proverbs and verbal metaphors into images. The Garden of Earthly Delights (about 1500, Museo del Prado, Madrid) sets Eden, a crowded garden of nude figures and oversized fruit, and a burning hell side by side, with the Creation in grisaille on the closed shutters. The Temptation of Saint Anthony (about 1501, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon) shows the saint amid the torments and visions of the desert. The Ship of Fools (about 1505-1515, Louvre, Paris) is a fragment of a triptych wing.

Bosch's imagery was copied and imitated during his lifetime and long afterwards, and its devilish inventions spread through Antwerp. Pieter Bruegel the Elder is his best-known follower, and the Surrealists later claimed him as a forerunner. He taught pupils in his workshop, and several pictures once given to him are now attributed to it. About 25 paintings are generally accepted as his own. Philip II of Spain bought several of them in the later sixteenth century, which is why the Prado holds the largest group. In 1560 Felipe de Guevara described him as the inventor of monsters and chimeras. For a painter in oils, these panels offer a great deal to follow: quick, visible brushwork, tiny figures set in pale, airy landscapes, and fiery hells where glowing reds and oranges burn against dark ground.

Biographical details on Wikipedia.