The North Netherlandish Painter Hieronymus Bosch As The Most Enigmatic Artist Of His Epoch

The painting “Dante and the Three Kingdoms” by Domenico di Michelino corresponds to the three world of the Christian afterlife in Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. Dante stands in red-robed colossus in front of the city of Florence. Behind him, the art shows the three worlds of Christian afterlife, which are the heavenly paradise, hell, and Mount Purgatory, thereby revealing the celestial spheres. The painting dates back to around 1465. On the left side, it shows the sinners getting down to hell and souls appear being burnt by the hellfire.

The Hell depicted by Dante Alighieri in the Inferno, the first part in his epic The Divine Comedy, is one full of endless suffering and torture brought on by a completely wrathful God. This is not the place of God’s divine and perfect justice that Dante attempted to construct, but rather one that almost glorifies torture as not only the most effective form of punishment, but the most fitting and just one. The way in which the different circles of Hell are so brutally described make it very hard to see this place as anything other than a place filled with endless amounts of cruel torture.

The Inferno is a tale of cautionary advice. In each circle, Dante the pilgrim speaks to one of the shades that reside there and the readers learn how and why the damned have become the damned. As Dante learns from the mistakes of the damned, so do the readers. And as Dante feels the impacts of human suffering, so do the readers. Virgil constantly encourages Dante the pilgrim to learn why the shades are in Hell and what were their transgressions while on Earth. This work’s purpose is to educate the reader. The work’s assertions on the nature of human suffering are mostly admonition, with each shade teaching Dante the pilgrim and by extension the reader not to make the same mistakes. Dante views his journey through hell as a learning experience and that is why he made it out alive.

Dante’s work Inferno is a vivid walkthrough the depths of hell and invokes much imagery, contemplation and feeling. Dante’s work beautifully constructs a full sensory depiction of hell and the souls he encounters along the journey. In many instances within the work the reader arrives at a crossroads for interpretation and discussion. Canto XI offers one such crux in which Dante asks the question of why there is a separation between the upper levels of hell and the lower levels of hell. By discussing the text, examining its implications and interpretations, conclusions can be drawn about why there is delineation between the upper and lower levels and the rationale behind the separation.

Hieronymus Bosch was a unique painter who portrayed the renaissance's beliefs and changing art styles in his unique paintings. His painting, The Last Judgment is an excellent example of this. By the high renaissance (the 1500s) the Gothic and Roman art styles were vanquished and replaced by imitations of Greek sculptures and oil paintings. In many of Bosch’s paintings, The Last Judgment included, he used specific techniques and styles that made his painting unique in the renaissance and no other painter came close to his art. “Bosch employed the type of fanciful forms that were often utilized to decorate borders and letters in illuminated manuscripts combining plant and animal forms with architectonic ones.” These forms give Bosch’s paintings an unparalleled surreal quality. Art styles in the renaissance had become more intricate than the Gothic and Roman styles, though The Last Judgment was not as realistic as other paintings it still embodied the renaissance’s view on

Although Canto IV concludes with Dante reaching “a part [of Hell] that has no light inside it” (35), his journey through the underworld is not totally devoid of light. Rather, it is one “that gathers light from a descent into darkness, a pilgrimage of knowledge that penetrating deeper seemingly turns away from light, which yet reappears – and yet again vanishes, as in the canto’s final line” (311). In the first level of Hell, Dante encounters familiar poets, ancient philosophers, and other great minds that are present in “a place so separate from the other

Dante generates an inventive association concerning a soul’s sin on the physical world and the castigation one takes in Hell. The Sullen suffocate on detritus, the Wrathful molest their co-occupants, the Gluttonous are involuntary condemned to devour ordure, and so on and so forth. This undemanding awareness serves not only numerous of Inferno’s instants of impressive imagery and figurative power, but also serves to irradiate one of Dante’s foremost themes: the excellence of God’s righteousness. The dedication over the gates of Hell in Canto III unequivocally articulates that God was stimulated to construct Hell by Justice (III.7). Hell subsists to penalize depravity, and the aptnesses of Hell’s precise penalties testify to the celestial excellence that all sin violates.

In the story Inferno written by Dante Alighieri, a man, Dante, follows Virgil as he guides Dante through the circles of Hell where Dante “shall hear despairing cries and see those ancient souls in pain as they bewail their second death,” (Canto. I.115-117) ultimately reaching Heaven. This poem was written around the early 1300s. The journey that the character Dante goes through shows a variety of examples of corrupted people that Dante, the author, had encountered over his years in Italy. The author had created his own version of Hell by including details of his own experience during his life.

One of Bosch’s most notable works is that of “The Garden of Earthly Delights”. This work is a specialised oil painting displayed on a beautiful oak panel in the Prada Museum in Madrid, Spain. Bosch’s work is broken up into 3 separate panels each describing a different image of the world. The panel on the left shows the world shortly after its creation, the middle panel shows the garden of earthly delights whilst the final panel shows a clear depiction of hell. Bosch has uniquely included his own views of the world into his work which plays a prominent impact on its

Domenico di Michelino (1417-1491), an Italian painter and medieval poet was known best for his epic poem, The Divine Comedy, which includes sections representing the three tiers of the Christian afterlife: Purgatory (Purgatorio), Hell (Inferno), and Paradise (Paradiso). This poem was a great work of medieval literature and was considered the greatest work of literature composed in Italian. The Divine Comedy was a Christian vision of mankind’s eternal fate. When The Divine Comedy was written, Dante made a cathedral painting that represents his poem called Dante and His Poem. In the painting, the Dante shows the 3 tiers related to the Christian afterlife. Dante was standing in a red robed colossus, revealing his poem to the city of Florence. The painting was full of great meaning, inspiring so many artists from Rodin to Robert Rauschenberg.

Quercia’s painting portrays a scene in Canto XX of The Inferno in which Dante looks down upon the diviners, who are trapped in the fourth pouch of the eighth circle of Hell. At first, Dante observes no other punishment to the sinners other than having to walk along as if they were in a church procession, “I saw people in the valley’s circle, silent, weeping, walking at a litany pace the way processions push along in our world” (Dante 20.7-9). As he looks closer he notices that the sinners’ heads point the wrong way; they are forced to walk for all eternally with their heads on backwards. Dante, feeling sorry for the sinners, becomes overcome with grief and begins to cry, “Indeed I did weep, as I leaned my body against a jut of rugged rock” (Dante 20.25-26).

This classic of Italian literature has led hundreds of artists in the Renaissance and beyond to a complex but Christian subject to prove their gifts: Hell, in all its intricate horror. Its literary influences range far and wide, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to the works of Balzac Malcolm Lowry. Inferno is the literary example of the Christian view of hell.

In contrast to the time of Homer, Dante lived in a time dominated by the Catholic religion. His work was influenced by the churches teaching of heaven and hell, yet some of his descriptions can be seen in the Greek’s underworld. Dante’s work even included the Greek’s Charon waiting to take the souls across the water. Looking at Limbo, a parallel can be drawn to those who did not make it the Elysian Fields, and those who did make it. Hell, itself, could be seen as those who must endure endless punishment.

“The Haywain” which was a three panel painting. In the first panel, Bosch illustrates Adam and Eve. In the center panel, Bosch paints clergy and peasants preforming sinful behavior. Finally, in the last panel Bosch paints hell. The second example is “The Last Judgement” (as shown in figure 4) which he painted in the year of 1504. The center panel shows the fall of humanity. The remaining two interior panels show sin, chaos and violence. The final example that we can use to find out Bosch’s style of painting and different techniques he uses to paint is the “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” (as shown in figure 5) which he painted from 1505 to 1506. In the painting Saint Anthony is being shown resisting evil and then following a group of believers. Bosch painted a lot of painting and is an incredibly huge influence on the art world. Bosch has influenced artists because he would use a lot of symbols in his art to show deeper meaning in the world in the Dark Ages in the world. Bosch would often paint how he imagined problems in the world would be handled or turn out often to warn people about why they should never sin. Bosch influenced people to be good citizens and attend to church by often painting fantasies about hell. Bosch was the most influential Netherlandish painter the art world has ever seen. Unfortunately, Bosch died in August 1516 (that is an estimate because the exact date is unknown) in his birthplace ’s-Hertogenbosch.

When you think of Hell, what do you see, perhaps a burning pit full of criminals and crazed souls? Or maybe you’re like Dante and have a well organized system of levels in correspondence with each person’s sins. In Dante Alighieri’s epic The Inferno, Dante and his real life hero, Virgil, go on an adventure through a rather elaborate version of Hell. In this version of Hell numerous thoughts and ideals are brought to the attention of the readers. Through Dante’s use of both imaginative and artistic concepts one can receive a great visual impression of how Dante truly views Hell, and by analyzing his religious and philosophical concepts the reader can connect with the work to better understand how rewarding this work was for the time period.