Hieronymus Bosch: Complete Works by Stefan Fischer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
For serious, patient art history buffs. A detailed, comprehensive examination of the surprisingly small body of work produced by this 16th century Flemish painter – all the allusions tracked down and documented, symbols explained, dinner parties attended, books known, and lots and lots of delicious detail illustrations.
My trouble with this edition is the layout. It’s very small in format (5 1/2 x 8 in.) and so correspondingly thick – nearly two inches. You cannot expect to reproduce a triptych with a central panel alone that measures 52 x 21 in. even across a double-page spread without sacrificing quality, so thank goodness for the detail pages! However, the arrangement of the illustrations is disorganized, and I found myself with fingers and bookmarks inserted in three or four places, flipping back and forth between text and pictures. It was a challenge, and one I confess I didn’t sustain all the time. I wish I had the large-format edition; perhaps it’s better in this regard.
An important resource with all the historical background on this unique, complex and delightful painter… or you can just savor the weird, bizarre, inventive and hilarious pictures.
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