Hieronymus Bosch: Visions and Nightmares

Information sensorium as a framework to read images: an interdisciplinary investigation on "reading images" using the Wayfarer Triptych by Jheronimus Bosch as a case study

“…Jheronimus Bosch is often noted among the notable northern European artists (Büttner, 2016;de Tolnay, 1966;Dixon, 2013;Koerner, 2004Koerner, , 2016Panofsky, 1953). Some of the earliest critical assessments and writings on Bosch labelled the artist as a fantasist who invented "monsters and chimaeras" and "things fantastical and Information sensorium as a framework to read images bizarre".…”

“…Bosch left nothing in his own words, and minimal documents from his native Brabant survived to help us understand the thought process behind his works. Büttner (2016) noted that documents that survived were mainly legal documents that referred to property and financial matters, such as selling his family house to his brother.…”

“…The subsequent sections will use the information-related spheres s lenses to delve deeper into the life and perspective of the artist, Jheronimus Bosch 21 . Bosch, whose name appeared in the official records of the Duke of Burgundy as "Jheronimus van aeken dit bosch paintre" ("Jheronimus van Aken, known as Bosch, painter") 22 , was born into a recognisable well-to-do family of painters in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands (Büttner, 2016;Janssen, 2007;Koldeweij et al, 2001;van Dijck, 2007). The city, situated at the heart of the Low Countries in northern Brabant (Figure 1-11), thrived during Bosch's time (Hanus, 2013) 23 .…”

“…Bosch was a religious didactic artist (Büttner, 2016;Koerner, 2016), and he intended for his paintings to be read and reflected upon in their own lives. He attempted to reflect on every human life and teach lessons on ethike-"meaning in our tongue pictures that have as their subject the habits and passions of the soul of man" (Stechow, 1989).…”

“…Bosch was free to pursue his pictorial imagination without being dependent on commission and having his works have definite purposes (or being "purposive" in Kantian). His religious background steered his exploration towards the reflection of the human life of his day and the church (Büttner, 2016), where his paintings are of a religious nature, but nothing got to do with religion; instead, many of them were reflections or criticisms of the corruption of faith and the contemporary life during his time (Falk, 2008).…”