Culture / Art Republik

Bosch’s Paintings Draw Record Crowds

The Noordbrabants Museum brought the visionary art of Bosch back home to the small Dutch city in which it was created.

May 11, 2016 | By Shatricia Nair

It may be half a millennium after ā€œDeath and the Miserā€ was painted but Boschā€™s work continues to draw record crowds. The DutchĀ artist attracted more than 421,000 people over the three months his works were displayed at Noordbrabants Museum, making the exhibition one of the most successful in the museumā€™s 180-year history.

Titled ā€œHeironymus Bosch ā€“ Vision of Geniusā€, the event saw 17 of the artistā€™s surviving 24 paintings and 19 of his 20 drawings recalled home to Den Bosch, a small southern Dutch town where the artist resided and created his often bizarre and nightmarish works. While important works such as ā€œThe Haywainā€ and ā€œThe Last Judgementā€ made it on loan, his most famous work, a triptych called ā€œThe Garden of Earthly Delightsā€ didnā€™t. The painting currently hangs in the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid.

The exhibition was set to be the highlight of Bosch Year 2016, a commemorative event paying unparalleled homage to the most important Medieval artist from the Netherlands.

ā€œNever before had so many works of Hieronymus Bosch come back to ‘his’ city, Den Bosch, the place where the paintings were created more than 500 years ago. It was easily the best visited exhibition in the almost 180-year history of the Noordbrabants Museum,” the museum said in a statement.

The exhibition comes after one of his works, ā€œThe Temptation of Saint Anthonyā€, was confirmed to be authentic.

 

This story was written in-house, based on a wire story and image from AFP.


 
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