 |
| Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (detail), c. 1503. Source. |
The 500 year anniversary of the death of Flemish master Hieronymus Bosch has brought forth a wealth of new books, two exhibitions, and two new documentaries. Hieronymus Bosch, Touched By The Devil is screening in Toronto’s Bloor Hot Docs Theatre at the end of August. The second, The Curious World of Hiëronymus Bosch, produced by the excellent team behind the Exhibition on Screen series, will be out in late 2016.
 |
| Hieronymus Bosch, The Last Judgement, (detail), 1504-08. Source. |
But there’s an older one called The Mysteries of Hieronymus Bosch on YouTube that is also well worth watching. As a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic, I can relate to filmmaker Nicholas Baum’s desire to reject some of the more outlandish theories about Bosch's nightmarish imagery (such as that the artist belonged to a late Medieval “Back to Eden” free love cult) and dig into the scant details of Bosch's life to discover a plausible explanation these wonderfully bizarre chimeras. You can see this 1980 film here.