Hieronymus Bosch: Visions and Nightmares(Renaissance Lives)

In his lifetime Hieronymus Bosch was already famous for his fantastic, unearthly creations. Today his name has become synonymous with the eerie, infernal and macabre. Bosch’s enigmatic paintings have resulted in numerous interpretations; some tried to understand his visual worlds through esoteric means, while others attempted to decode them through psychology and psychoanalysis. Now in paperback, Hieronymus Bosch: Visions and Nightmares traces the career of a painter who worked for the highest aristocratic and courtly circles, and explains Bosch’s paintings against the background of contemporary culture and society.

Table of Contents:
1 Visions and Nightmares 2 A Painter in Den Bosch 3 Pious Donations 4 From Christmas to Easter 5 Devout Examples 6 The Art of Invention and the Invention of Art 7 The Seven Deadly Sins and the Last Judgement 8 The Haywain and The Garden of Earlthy Delights 9 The Folly of the World 10 Interpretations References Bibliography Photo Acknowledgements Index

About the Author :
Nils Büttner is Professor of Art History at the State Academy of Art and Design, Stuttgart. His previous publications include Landscape Painting: A History (2006), The History of Gardens in Painting (2008) and Otto Dix and New Objectivity (2013).

Review :
An attractive little hardbound book with good color illustrations providing an inviting, judicious overview of Bosch in his historical environment. Büttner has written a handy, nearly ideal volume on the much-admired but little-understood Bosch. The author builds the historical context in which to view Boschs work without drowning readers in superfluous detail. In addition, he offers guidance in understanding how Bosch thought visually without telling readers what to think or frustrating them to the point of throwing up their hands . . . Bosch emerges as an early moral satirist rather than as a secretive, strange quasi heretic, which is to say as more normal and arguably more artistically important than he has previously been portrayed . . . a nicely illustrated quarto that neatly finds that sweet spot between casual and serious students of art . . . this book is an excellent start to the Renaissance Lives series The reader will appreciate Büttner’s detailed analysis of Bosch’s painting style and process (rarely discussed by other scholars), as well as his forensic approach to Bosch’s highly problematic oeuvre . . . As an exercise in methodology, Büttner’s text is a relevant addition to any Bosch bibliography. While favoring primary sources, Büttner effectively models a multi-pronged approach, also applying provenance and connoisseurship, together with technical (infrared reflectographic and dendrochronological) findings The art historian Nils Büttner offers a gateway to understanding Bosch’s art in his brief but thoughtful biography Hieronymus Bosch: Visions and Nightmares. This well-researched sketch is most welcome . . . [Nils Buttner’s] insights are often original rather than conventional wisdom . . . Its terse, clear prose provides the bare bones of Bosch biography, insofar as it is known, as well as documented early collecting of these works . . . Buttner emphasizes the unique vision, not the family workshop, of this distinctive painter. He does not see Bosch as emerging out of Flemish precedents, but instead lays out how his unique imagery could capture the imagination of his contemporaries as well as his numerous (often anonymous) copyists and followers.