presentiment of this science. Jacques Combe followed De Tolnay’s lead in his treatise translated into English from the French in 1946, and continuously acknowledged his indebtedness to the prior monographer, but his study was no mere imitation. He suggested many sources of symbolism overlooked by de Tolnay, such as alchemy and the tarot game. He made a strong case for association between Bosch’s ideology and that of the 14th-century Netherlandish mystic, Jan van Ruysbroek.
With such respectable scholastic attention, Bosch had finally come into his own in the mid-20th century as a significant artist. His works were seen not merely as an influence on Bruegel, but as extremely interesting in themselves. They were a deviating but appropriate link within the “Flemish tradition” in painting, with its curiously combined naturalism and symbolism. The work of De Tolnay, together with the increasing interest in Surrealism, had inspired popular interest in Bosch as a painter of the imaginary. It followed that several articles on Bosch were published in the most popular American periodicals, as well as in magazines of art. The popular articles presented Bosch as an interesting, almost freakish fantasist of the past and a precursor to Surrealism in his “queerness”.
In most of the books written in English, as well as translated into English, the more scholarly authors continued to search for the exact sources of Bosch’s symbolism in outside material. Their implication was that Bosch’s symbols, however enigmatic, illustrated images already formed in literature or tradition, and that with enough study these sources would eventually be brought to light and his imagery made comprehensible.
The Epiphany or The Adoration of the Magi (exterior: The Mass of Saint Gregory), c. 1510.
Oil on panel.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
The Epiphany or The Adoration of the Magi (detail of exterior: The Mass of Saint Gregory), c. 1510.
Oil on panel.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
Fränger’s Thesis (Epiphanies and Absurdities)
Triptych of the Martyrdom of St Liberata, 1500–1504.
Oil on panel, 104 × 119 cm.
Palazzo Ducale, Venice.
Wilhelm Fränger began his study of Hieronymus Bosch and his work by deploring the “vulgar misunderstanding” to which the master had been subjected by having his work passed off as mere mummery. Fränger insisted that, with Bosch, symbols “entail a perfect simultaneity of vision and thought” and must be treated as such. The writer considered all other approaches as “fragmentary”, thus presented his study as a total view.
In order to understand why the painter would create a mute symbolism, the art historian sorted through the whole body of paintings, separating those of enigmatic content from those that contain little or none. Only if the “freakish riddles” on which Bosch’s reputation was founded occurred in all of the paintings could they be called “the irresponsible phantasmagoria of an ecstatic”. Fränger found that the deviant content existed only in a clearly defined group of altarpieces – the three large triptychs of the Garden of Earthly Delights, the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony, and the Hay Wagon. In contrast, there was only a small amount of this symbolism in such paintings as the Epiphany triptych in the Prado and the Venice Martyrdom of Saint Julia. The remaining paintings, including those of the Passion and Adoration of the Magi themes, had little or none. He concluded, therefore, that an arbitrary distinction could be made between two main groups – the generally traditional, obviously created for the church, and the non-traditional, disparate ones.
Fränger concentrated on the second group, proposing that they could not have been made for a church congregation since they contained anti-clerical polemic implied by monks and nuns depicted behaving in a scandalous manner. Nor could these altarpieces have been made for pagan worship, since they also attacked pagan “priests” and their ritualistic excesses. Altarpieces, however, pointed to some kind of devotional patronage. The principal targets of their attacks point to a group of paintings outside the domain of the church, at once inveighing against ecclesiastical offences and at the same time fighting the abundant mysterious cults of the period. The only kind of society that could possibly answer the problem, according to Fränger, would be a militant heretical sect. Setting up an ideal contrary to the teachings of the Church, such a sect would be forced to fight the all-powerful tradition, but on the other hand, would find pagan abominations equally abhorrent. If Bosch should paint a devotional altarpiece for a society of this kind, he would mirror their “dual warfare, with all its polar tension” and his “eccentricities” would be explained.
According to the scholar, all previous interpretations of Bosch erred that did not approach his symbolism with this frame of reference. Because Bosch was not intelligible to them, most commentators assumed that he had not intended to communicate – and that the creatures he let loose in these paintings were mere “phantoms of hell”. This thinking placed an emphasis on the hell scenes that Bosch might not have intended. True, there are scenes which are set in the most horrific of all hells, but they are always balanced on the other side of the altarpiece by “an impeccable anchorite, or by Mount Ararat, or by the Garden of Eden”. In other words, if Bosch gave equal weight to the opposed “ideal scenes”, could we not assume that he intended to emphasise these scenes by their very contrast with hell? This added further weight to Fränger’s theory of the heretical sect, because Bosch’s more positive scenes would reflect the idealism of such a society.
The author believed that one of the most widely misinterpreted of Bosch’s paintings was The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. In fact, he concentrated the remainder of his study of Bosch’s ideation upon a new interpretation of this painting. The reason for the confusion, he thought, was that it had for centuries been thoughtlessly associated with another of more obvious message, the Hay Wagon. Both triptychs have flanking panels of a Garden of Eden scene on the left and a hell scene on the right – thus, the message was assumed to be much the same.[1] Fränger saw many differences, however, that would belie the dual association. The Eden panel of the Hay Wagon contains sequences of the Fall of the Rebel Angels, the Creation of Eve, the Temptation, and the Expulsion from the Garden which are placed on a vertical axis in the same garden landscape. The grouping is traditional, but there is some Boschian originality in their presentation, as the “rebel angels” are presented as insects falling in swarms from heaven and there is a peculiar rock formation at the site of the Creation of Eve, presaging the even stranger ones to be seen in The Garden of Earthly Delights. Nevertheless, little to be found in this panel is incomprehensible. The central painting, now supposed to be an illustration of the Flemish proverb: “the world is a haystack; everyone takes what he can grab thereof”, is dominated by a gigantic hay wagon which, according to Jacques Combe:
Evok[es] at the same time the late Gothic motive of the procession of pageant, and the Renaissance Triumph… drawn by semi-human, semi-animal monsters and headed straight for hell, followed by a cavalcade of ecclesiastical and lay dignitaries. From all sides of the wagon men scramble over one another to pull hay from the giant stack. The only heed they take of their fellows is to thrust them out of their way or to raise hands against them. One sticks a knife into the throat of the unfortunate competitor whom he has pinned to the ground.
Many among the greedy mob wear ecclesiastical garb, indicating Bosch’s attitude that the holy as well as profane are involved in this scavenging. A fat monk sits in a large chair and lazily sips a drink while several nuns do service for him, packing bundles of hay into the bag at his feet. One of his nuns turns to the lure of sexual enticement symbolised by the fool playing a bagpipe, to whom she offers a handful of hay in hopes of winning his favours.
Christ Mocked (The Crowning with Thorns), c. 1490–1500.
Oil on oak, 73.5 × 59.1 cm.
The