Читать книгу Surrealism - Nathalia Brodskaya - Страница 10

The artist Hieronymus Bosch was born in the mid-fifteenth century in a tiny Dutch town not far from the German border. His name was derived from the name of his native town, Hertogenbosch, known in French as Bois-le-Duc. He died in 1615, leaving behind a legacy in painting which already struck Giorio Vasari in the sixteenth century as “fantastiche e capriciose”. Choosing not to compete on the same ground as his great contemporary Jan van Eyck, Bosch astonished people with the unbridled fantasy of the world he had created. The Italian Lomazzo, author of the Treatise on the Art of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, wrote in Bosch’s lifetime: “The Fleming Girolamo Bosch, who in depicting strange appearances, and frightening and horrible dreams, was unique and truly divine.”[62] In the sixteenth century he had already acquired a reputation as “the creator of devils”. At that time, medieval monsters and fantastic images whose purpose was to strike fear into the heart of man and to curb his pride were still customary, and their symbolism could be well understood. However, the pictures of this Dutchman made a deeper impression than the monsters on the capitals of Romanesque churches or in the miniatures of Gothic manuscripts.