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A bittersweet poem I wrote a while ago


She dances
Round, and round and round
Joining the snowflakes
In a spirited waltz
The world becoming nothing but a white blur
Oblivious of the little girl
Dancing in the cold
Head lifted up to the sky
Laughing

Round and round she twirls
Until she falls
Gently into a downy pile of snow
And the world turns round
Her eyes close
And her ...

His true name was Jeroen Anthoniszoon van Aken. He was born c. 1450 in s'Hertogenbosch, a blossoming Netherlandish commercial town in northern Brabant. His grandfather, father, brother, and three uncles were also painters. Sometime between 1471 and 1481 he married Aleyt van den Meervenne, daughter of a wealthy burgher. In 1486 he was registered as a member of the Lieve-Vrouwe Broederschap (Brotherhood of Our Lady) in which he became a "notable" two years later. From the Brotherhood's records ...

Three surviving panels by Bosch represent an intriguing view of impact of the passage of time upon art. One panel is the Death and the Miser in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.



In this painting a miser... perhaps once a mercenary, as suggested by the armor and weapons placed so prominently in the foreground... is seen simultaneously in in two poses. He checks upon his wealth... ...

With The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1505) we come to Bosch's "masterpiece" and the painting for which he is deservedly most well-known. With this painting, Bosch pulled together various elements and threads that he had explored throughout the whole of his career and organized them into a single, virtually flawless, complex whole.

The painting, housed in the Prado, Madrid, is a triptych. We may as well start by looking at the exterior doors:

...

Like many artists, I have played at the game of what painting I would want to take with me on the proverbial desert island. Inevitably, I have been drawn to the Garden of Earthly Delights. The layers of meaning... the complexity... the contrast and variation from the most noble ideals... to lush sensuality... physical beauty... and eroticism... to the almost exquisite brutality... horror... ugliness... Such leads me to feel that I might easily spend endless hours with this work without ever feeling ...