Weekly Links 2022-04-06: Hieronymus Bosch Edition
I recently came across “The Boschian Horror of Elden Ring” which sent me back into the rabbit hole that is Hieronymus Bosch.
Here’s some fun facts about Bosch. He died around 1516, and we know almost nothing about his life. Oh, also he painted completely insane stuff like this:
Why yes, that is a man farting birds from his ass-trumpet, why do you ask? Don’t worry though, the egg-demon will end his misery when he lets that arrow loose.
We don’t know from where Bosch took inspiration for his, uh, unique style. Maybe some of the weirder medieval “grotesque” art.
You can stare at The Garden of Earthly Delights for an hour and keep finding new details. Here’s one part in the lower right “hell” section:
Few notes:
We see recurring themes in Bosch. Feet trapped in jars and farting birds are a leitmotif across his work.
A demon eats the bird-farting people and poops them whole into a pit.
Plague victims are encouraged to vomit into said pit. At least, you may also get some people pooping coinage (?) into your sceptic death trap.
In unrelated news, a woman is being raped and impregnated by a fox-demon and a 1500’s astronaut-demon near the death pit
You can try dissecting the insanity at your leisure, or read others: “The 10 Absolute Worst Ways to Die in a Hieronymous Bosch Painting”. Even the tiny silouhettes in the upper right make for cool frames:
Sadly, although he was apparently quite popular in his time, Bosch’s style more or less disappeared within a few decades. Bosch did influence future painters: Pieter Bruegel the Elder studied Bosch drew some Boschian hellish scenes. Bruegel largely went back to “normal” artwork, but Bosch’s influence is evident in “The Triumph of Death”, the most metal painting in history:
