"With such skill, your right hand reveals everything that is contained in the mysterious depths of hell, that I believe that the depths and farthest regions of hell were shown to you." Dominic Lampsonius, Dutch humanist, poet and artist - about the work of Hieronymus Bosch, 1572.
Aliens in the cathedral
Both grandfather and father, and his two uncles were artists, and therefore it is not surprising that Hieronymus van Aken (real name of Hieronymus Bosch, 1450-1516) also became a painter. To do this, he did not even have to study painting on the side - the family workshop, where orders for wall paintings and the manufacture of church utensils were executed, became Akenu an excellent school.
Hieronymus Bosch, * Garden of Earthly Delights *, fragment.
Shortly before his father's death, the workshop passed to Jerome, and Bosch's successful marriage to a rich heiress (as well as her early and rather mysterious death) provided the artist with a comfortable existence and the opportunity to create as he pleases.
And here the real devilry begins. Since Hieronymus Bosch occupied by that time a prominent position in his hometown of 'Hertogenbosch (North Brabant, Netherlands), his creations (and he was mainly engaged in painting temples and making church triptychs) were not criticized. But how could the Church miss, say, such a cathedral fresco created by Bosch: a crowd of believers stretches out their hands to heaven, from there, surrounded by greenish light, a dazzling white ball descends to it, and in the center of the ball is depicted … a saint? angel? Nothing like this! This is a completely mysterious figure, not much like a person (and even like a saint), completely devoid of clothing. Many modern researchers believe that the master who lived in the 15th century depicted on a fresco … the arrival of aliens on Earth!
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Future predictions
Triptych "Adoration of the Magi". All painters who tackled this plot wrote it “from below” - from the point of view of the person praying. Only Bosch allowed himself to look at the baby Jesus from above - and he got away with it too.
In the "church" works of Bosch, "classical" devils with horns or angels with wings are not often found. But everywhere there are terrible, completely inconceivable faces that can be found only in hell, as his contemporaries thought, or on other planets, as some experts of our time believe.
Hieronymus Bosch, "Adoration of the Magi" triptych.
Linda Harris, an American researcher of Bosch's work, claims that many of the visions of the Last Judgment on his canvases absolutely accurately reflect episodes of modern wars and cataclysms.
The mystery of life, the mystery of death
No one can say with certainty what Bosch looked like - the portraits that have come down to us, where the painter himself is supposedly depicted, cause certain doubts among specialists. And after the death of the artist, the number of mysteries surrounding his name only increased.
Hieronymus Bosch, * The Last Judgment *.
Hieronymus Bosch died in his native 's-Hertogenbosch at the age of 66 and was solemnly buried in the chapel of the Church of St. John. But when in 1977 the grave was opened, then … it turned out to be empty! The historian Hans Gaalfe, who led the excavation, said that a strange tombstone lay on the grave of Bosch, not like granite or marble. When a piece of stone was placed under a microscope, a particle of this mysterious material began to glow, and its surface temperature suddenly increased by 3 degrees.
Hieronymus Bosch, * The Last Judgment *, fragment.
Hearing about such oddities, the Church immediately banned excavations, and the mystery of the death of the artist, like his works, has forever remained a mystery to us.