Jheronimus Bosch Art Center

All the Ingenuity of the Devil - Eric de Bruyn

Jheronimus Bosch's St Anthony Triptych

Together with the Garden of Delights triptych, the Lisbon St Anthony triptych is not only one of Jheronimus Bosch's absolute masterpieces, but also one of the hardest and least well understood paintings in the oeuvre of the 's-Hertogenbosch master.

In this monograph, Eric de Bruyn has incorporated all the interesting results of earlier research on the Lisbon St Anthony triptych, and at the same time he offers a new and in many respects revealing iconographic interpretation of the painting. He does this by looking at the triptych through the eyes of a late medieval person and by relying on this person's supposed knowledge about St Anthony. It then soon becomes clear that Bosch was largely inspired by passages and motifs from the legends about Anthony, but he adapted them to what apparantly could be called his original 'concept': Bosch's devils parody, desecrate, and belittle things that are precious to Anthony, obviously with the intention to tempt the saint.

This book will not only appeal to readers who are fascinated by Bosch, but also to those who are interested in the figure of St Anthony Abbot. Never before have so many textual sources regarding the saint been presented to the reader in a conveniently arranged synthesis. Further attention is also paid to the numerous sixteenth-century (partial) copies of the Lisbon triptych and to a number of interesting St Anthony works of art produced by sixteenth-century followers of Bosch.

Number of pages: 302

 39,95

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