Will the Real Hieronymus Bosch Please Stand Up?
Copyright © 2000 by Damon Knight

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Chapter 8    Tree Rings, Christ and the Loincloth

IN THE thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Christ's breechclout was opaque, dark-colored, and hung to the knees. Toward the end of the fourteenth century it became more or less transparent and rose to the middle of the thigh. In the middle of the fifteenth century, in the works of Campin's pupil Rogier van der Weyden, the loincloth became a drape barely covering the pubis, and the ends of the cloth rose in an invisible zephyr. In his Crucifixion, Bosch emulated this floating loincloth.

Left, Rogier van der Weyden, Crucifixion (detail), c. 1445.
Vienna, Kunsthistorische Museum.
Right, Bosch, Crucifixion. Brussels, Musées des Beaux-Arts.

    This tells us only that Bosch had seen Rogier's painting—it doesn't tell us when. But in the Bosch Crucifixion, St. John is the image of himself as he appears in St. John on Patmos and in The Marriage at Cana. Since we know that Patmos includes a reference to Giorgione's Three Philosophers (1509), it is probable that all three St. John pictures were made toward the end of the artist's life.
    In two of Bosch's late works, The Crowning with Thorns and the Prado Adoration of the Magi, he gives us a Netherlandish Christ like those of David, Rogier, and Bouts. Because there is no hint of an Italian influence in either painting, I don't believe he was on the way to Venice when he picked up the Netherlandish influence (although Ghent and Bruges are on the way); I think there were at least two trips, more likely three.

Left to right: (1) Gérard David, Triptych of Jean Des Trompes (detail), 1505. Bruges, Groeningsmuseum. (2) Rogier van der Weyden, Miraflores Altarpiece (detail), c. 1440. Berlin, Gemaldegalerie. (3) Dieric Bouts the Elder, Resurrection (detail), c. 1455. Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum. (4) Bosch, Adoration of the Magi (detail). Madrid, Prado. (5) Bosch, Crowning with Thorns (detail). London, National Gallery.

    Here are four versions of Ecce Homo. The last one is Bosch's; the first three are by the Housebook Master, Schongauer, and Dürer, in that order. All the artists are roughly contemporary. The Housebook Master version is a painting, part of the Speyer Altar, thought to have been painted around 1480. The Dürer is thought to have been made in 1498-99. The dates of the other two are unknown, but there is only one way to arrange them that seems to make sense.

Ecce Homo,left to right: 1, Housebook Master, c. 1480-85. Freiburg im Breisgau, Augustinermuseum. 2, Schongauer. 3, Dürer, c. 1498-99. 4, Bosch.

    First we put the Housebook Master and second the Schongauer, in both of which the platform is steeply angled, almost end-on. The Schongauer improves on the Housebook Master by making Christ lean forward more. The Dürer preserves this attitude and copies the position of Christ's legs in the Schongauer, and it angles the platform less steeply in order to give us a better look at the mob below. The Bosch restores the original position of the legs, but preserves the other two changes, as well as the stonework of  Dürer's building. Bosch alone brings the man behind Christ into prominence and gives him an important role.
   This arrangement is agreeable because it allows us to see each artist improving on the one before. Putting Bosch last is logical, because we can easily account for his having seen one of the prints, but it's hard to imagine a way in which the other artists could have seen Bosch's panel.
   The only thing that makes us hesitate is that according to a tree-ring analysis performed by Peter Klein, the Bosch panel could have been used for painting as early as 1484, about sixteen years before we would like to place it. Such a long delay in using a seasoned panel is not impossible, but can we justify it here?
   The Bosch Ecce Homo has two other peculiarities. One is the contrast between the faces of the men on the platform and those of the mob below, which are much cruder in execution. In this combination of crude and sophisticated faces, Ecce Homo reminds us of Marriage at Cana. These are the only panels we have that seem to have been made partly by Bosch and partly by assistants.
   The two panels are alike in another way—both have had donors and saints in the lower left-hand corners painted out. (Their ghosts are visible in Ecce Homo, showing through the top layer of paint.)
   By comparing the Rotterdam copy of Cana with the Louvre drawing, we can reach some conclusions about the lost original painting. Let's go back to the picture of the guest who sits between Mary and Jesus.

Left, portrait of Bellini (from Vasari's Lives). Right, Bosch, Cana (detail).

    Here is a suggestion that Bosch inserted that carefully drawn portrait, not to satisfy a patron, but to honor the Venetian master Giovanni Bellini. The engraving you see above was made by Giorgio Vasari for the 1568 edition of his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. It must have been taken from another painting or engraving that was in circulation much earlier, perhaps in the first decade of the sixteenth century, when Bellini would have been in his seventies or eighties. (We have his birth date only from Vasari, who was notoriously unreliable.) It's possible that Bosch had the engraving before his first trip to Italy, or he may have brought it back with him.
   The other faces in the Louvre cartoon, except for the bridegroom, the bride, Mary and Jesus, are drawn in a broad style that is closely followed in the Rotterdam copy; but the Bellini portrait has been discarded in favor of a completely different face. To explain this we must try to decide which parts of the original were painted by Bosch and which by his apprentices, and in what order.
   We assume that when he made the drawing Bosch intended to paint the whole panel himself, and did not bother to be specific in his sketch of the bridegroom, the bride, or Jesus because he knew them by heart. He drew the Bellini portrait very specifically, and the other minor characters a little less so, as a reminder to himself.
   In the event, it appears that he started at the top of the panel and painted all the high background at least as far as the right-hand pillar, as well as the waiters and the bridegroom and bride. There he stopped, and all the rest was painted by an assistant, who found it easier to paint a face of his own invention than to follow Bosch's rather blurry drawing of Bellini.
   Alternatively, we might assume that the whole panel was painted by an assistant whose work was not satisfactory, and that Bosch reworked the parts we have just mentioned; but in that case we would have to explain why he did not also rework the faces of Bellini and Jesus.
   Something similar must have happened in Ecce Homo. The high background seems to be Bosch's work, and so do all the figures on the platform, but the figures below the platform are drawn in a rougher style. Perhaps Bosch fell ill after his return from Venice, and had so many commissions to fill that he left these two to his apprentices rather than fall behind on the others. Or perhaps he left these paintings unfinished when he died. In either of these scenarios, the patrons were disappointed by the inferior execution of Cana and Ecce Homo, and the panels were sold to someone else.

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