Will the Real Hieronymus Bosch Please Stand Up?
Copyright © 2000 by Damon Knight
A blond Netherlandish Christ also turns up in the Last Supper of Bosch's predecessor Dieric Bouts, as we might expect—but wait a minute, there are two of them, one on either side of the little disciple whom Jesus loved.
Hartt says it is known that two professors of theology at the University of Louvain suggested some of the details in this centerpiece of the Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament, which was painted for a lay organization called the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament.n But they certainly did not dictate, and perhaps did not notice, the second Jesus, who sits disapprovingly with folded hands and eyes cast down.
Bouts, Last Supper (detail).
We find the same double image in Andrea del Sarto's Last Supper, in Francisco Henrique's, and in Jaume Huguet's. (Notice the pointing fingers.) In my opinion the answer to "Was Bosch a heretic?" is that he certainly was, and a good many other Renaissance painters were too. In these paintings I believe they were saying that there are two Christs, one true, one false, and that the inventor of the Eucharist is the false one.broken bits of the Holy Eucharist Fraenger 1983 says it is frankincense. But frankincense is a resin, yellow or amber in color.^Andrea del Sarto, Last Supper, 1527 (detail). Florence, San Salvi Abbey. 
Francisco Henriques, Last Supper, 1508 (detail). Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga.
Jaume Huguet, Last Supper, c. 1470 (detail).
Barcelona, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.
Notes
sometimes described as a leper Lotte Brand Philip was the first Bosch scholar to point this out.^
the Antivirgin. See Richard Kenneth Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, p. 178.^
two professors of theology Hartt, Art, vol. 2, p. 588.^
