The son and grandson of painters, Hieronymus Bosch was trained in the family workshop and spent his wh
ole life in his native city, somewhat isolated with respect to the major artistic centers of the Low Countries. Notwithstanding the scarcity of information about his life, we do know that the painter maintained close links with the cultural and artistic
circles of his time. It is thought that works like the \i Seven Deadly Sins\i0 (Madrid, Prado), the \i Marriage at Cana\i0 (Rotterdam), and the \i Crucifixion\i0 (Brussels), characterized by their lively brushwork and almost sculptural treatment of th
e drapery within compositions of a traditional type, were painted in the early part of his career. In these pictures Bosch drew on a variety of iconographic sources, both courtly and popular, but his fondness for mysterious and disturbing elements was al
ready apparent. These features are even more evident in the works of his maturity, such as the \i Ship of Fools\i0 (Paris, Louvre) or the \i Garden of Earthly Delights\i0 . In these paintings Bosch reaches the peak of his expressive abilities, utilizing
diverse figurative and literary sources. He introduces ambiguous symbolic elements into his pictures, using them to denounce the madness of the world as it rushed toward ruin and perdition in the artistÆs eyes. The painterÆs dream world is populated wit
h visions, diabolical images, and monstrous metamorphoses. In his late works, Bosch appears to reflect on more customary religious themes, such as the \i Epiphany\i0 at the center of the Madrid triptych, although they are handled with powerful and perso
nal imagination. The paintings of the Flemish artist are highly appreciated by modern collectors and have given rise, in the twentieth century, to interpretations of a psychoanalytical character.
