Following the success of the exhibition dedicated to three of Giorgione’s most famous works, Palazzo Grimani in Venice is now featuring three works by Hieronymous Bosch.
Bosch was born c. 1450 in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in Northern Brabant and, as far as we know, spent most part of his life in this isolated provincial town. His bizarre and fantastic paintings have puzzled and intrigued their viewers for centuries but in earlier centuries it was widely assumed that his diabolic scenes were intended merely to amuse or titillate, rather like the “grotteschi” of Italian Renaissance ornament.
His work has always been hugely popular as well as controversial. His landscapes depicting humans, animals, and fabulous creatures in various states of ecstasy and misery were greatly imitated by his contemporaries and laid the foundations for the Surrealist movement of the 20th century.
These three works were part of the collection of cardinal Domenico Grimani and at the Cardinal death they were donated to the Serenissima and entered the Doge’s Palace collections.
In Bosch’s “Hermit Saints Triptych” (1510), Saints Anthony, Jerome and Giles appear there not as objects of devotion but as subjects in devotion. Neither cultic presences nor actors within significant events, they offer, through their inward attitude a model of subjective piety.
In “Visions of the Afterlife” (1500-1503), Bosch replaces the medieval Paradise and Hell, which were objective images of celestial and infernal hierarchies, with subjective visions that resemble the conceptions of the great mystics and exist only in the inner world of the soul. In their ascent into the heavenly paradise the souls are leaving the dark space of the universe and passing along a circular shaft which is already flooded with everlasting light. Intoxicated with joy, they are freeing themselves more and more from the laws of gravity and obeying the attraction of the realm of light.
The “Triptych of Saint Liberata” (1505) offers serious doubts about the iconographic interpretation. It may represent the Liberata, Virgo Fortis, condemned to the cross by her own father, the king of Portugal.
INFORMATION
Palazzo Grimani, Santa Maria Formosa, Venice
From 19th December 2010 to 20th March 2011
Opening times: daily 9am-7pm
Admission: Euro 9,00
Reduced: Euro 7,00