The Pious Alchemist

OUR TENDENCY is to view the visions of Hieronymus Bosch through the lens of surrealism, drawing straight lines from Bosch to Salvador Dali, from Bosch to Max Ernst, from Bosch to Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam, for that matter. It is as if Bosch’s imagery, amazing and disturbing at the same time, obscures and effaces the need to take him on his own terms, as a product of his own times, in context. That we know almost nothing about Bosch’s life, down to the year of his birth (circa 1450), only intensifies the mystery of a man whose nightmarish, enigmatic art attracts as it repels and never fails to haunt.