Hieronymus Bosch by Nils Büttner

Author:Nils Büttner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

35 Hieronymus Bosch, Two Monsters, c. 1505, pen and brown ink.

36 Detail from Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (see illus. 4).

37 Hieronymus Bosch, Tree-Man, 1505–10, pen and brown ink.

38 Hieronymus Bosch, Death and the Miser, c. 1500–1510, brush with grey and black ink, heightened with white, on grey paper.

Just like The Hearing Forest and the Seeing Field, Tree-Man embodies a type of graphic art that was new in this period.15 Preparing for a painted composition by means of a preliminary drawing was largely unheard of in Bosch’s day. As a rule, even in Bosch’s case, one began by applying charcoal or brush and ink directly onto the surface of the picture. Unsatisfactory results were simply wiped off or, as is often the case with Bosch, simply ignored. What one might call isolated visualizations have survived as preparatory drawings for paintings, to show clients or those commissioning expensive altarpieces what they would look like later. Such drawings might have formed part of the contract made between painter and client.

We have every reason to believe that the drawing of Death and the Miser (illus. 38) started life in the form of visualizations.16 The drawings done on dark-backed paper using dark grey ink, with their raised white sections, correspond to the type of drawing whose pictorial composition was popular in Bosch’s day. Their style is to a large extent in harmony with the underdrawing of the painting of the same subject (illus. 39), visible to the naked eye.17 The composition appears more concentrated in the painting: the left-hand wall, which is shown in the foreground in the drawing, is left out, allowing more of a focus on the relation between the crucifix in the window at the top and Death, who is coming to fetch the old miser. Thus not only the composition of the subject but the expression of the idea behind the picture is more successful in the painted version. This clearly suggests that we should not take the drawing to be a copy of the painting.

Quite apart from the question of attribution that remains unsettled even now, it is obvious that this drawing served a different purpose in respect to form and composition from that of the small sketch in Berlin (see illus. 35). The way it is drawn links it in terms of pictorial composition to Tree-Man and other drawings attributed to Bosch, occupying a unique position in the art of their time, quite apart from the use of motifs. Up until now no precursors have been identified for Bosch’s loose, free style of drawing, or anyone who immediately followed on from where he left off. His followers drew monsters and hybrid creatures, as is shown by the sketch in Berlin, but the loose hatching and the barely rounded contours that suggest they were done in haste clearly differentiate this drawing from the work of imitators and admirers who are focused more on the visual taxonomy of his formal language. With them the individual motifs look as

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