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

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    The crossbow bolt, the mailed glove and the purse-shape all appear in a painting by Jacopo de' Barbari called Still Life With Partridge, Gloves and Cross-bow Arrow, the first known still life, signed and dated 1504. Jacopo was a Venetian painter and engraver who spent most of his working life in the North, and died in the Netherlands sometime before 1516. The objects on his wall, like those in Bosch's painting, are images of sex and death.

Jacopo de' Barbari, Still Life with Partridge, Gloves, and Crossbow Arrow, 1504.Munich, Alte Pinakothek.

    The composition of Bosch's painting has a structure that is found in two other paintings, Madonna and Child with Saints in the Enclosed Garden, by a follower of Robert Campin, and Bellini's Drunkenness of Noah. In Madonna and Child (below), one side of the hexagon is defined by Catherine's sword and another by Anthony's staff. Otherwise, in all three paintings, the vertices are defined by noses, thumbs, and penises.

Follower of Robert Campin, Madonna and Child with Saints in the Enclosed Garden,
c. 1440-60. Washington, National Gallery.

Bellini, Drunkenness of Noah, c. 1515. Besançon, Musée des Beaux-Arts.

Bosch, Crowning with Thorns.

    This striking and unusual hexagon composition almost certainly passed from one painter to the other. Because we have independent evidence that Bosch was familiar with the Madonna and Child with Saints, probably it was he who introduced the composition to Bellini rather than the other way around. (The relationship of penises to noses and thumbs would not have had to be explained to either.)
   The affinity of the two subjects would have been clear to both painters; Noah's drunkenness was a well-known type of the Crowning with Thorns.

Biblia pauperum, Crowning with Thorns. Noah is on the left;
on the right, the prophet Elisha mocked by children.

    In the medieval version of the bible story, Noah's sons found him drunk and exposed his genitals, as the Jew is evidently trying to do to Jesus. In Bellini's picture, Noah's son Ham is either covering or uncovering the nakedness of his father, while the other two sons, with expressions of malicious glee, are leaning forward to get a good look. If we give Ham the benefit of the doubt (as I think we should), he deserves credit and the others censure; but in the Genesis story it is Ham who accidentally sees his father naked, and Shem and Japheth (walking backward) who cover him up. In Gen. 4:24 we read, "And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him."
   As often happens in Genesis, there is a sense that something important in this story is being left out. The Interpreter's Bible commentator writes, "In the primary, popular form of the story there probably occurred here—as shown by the reference in vs. 24 to what his youngest son had done to him—an account of an indecent attack by Canaan on his father. This J1 omitted from motives of delicacy."
   There are wheels within wheels here. Bellini was the most famous Venetian painter of his time, and he was Giorgione's teacher. Did they show Bosch their paintings, and challenge him to produce something in the Venetian manner? Did Bosch put the phalluses in as a shared private joke? And did they laugh together?

 

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