Quick Look
The fantastic paintings of the Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch have puzzled and intrigued their viewers for centuries. Lynda Harris deciphers Bosch's symbolism as the hidden expression of his heretical religious beliefs.
Description
The bizarre and fantastic paintings of the Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch have puzzled and intrigued their viewers for centuries. Following years of research which have taken her to every corner of Europe, Lynda Harris offers surprising new insights into Bosch's detailed and cryptic visual fantasies.
Drawing on a wide variety of new sources, she deciphers Bosch's symbolism as the hidden expression of his heretical religious beliefs. She argues that Bosch belonged to the Cathar faith, a Manichean religious heresy which was persecuted and driven underground by the Church in the Middle Ages.
This fabulously illustrated study reveals that while Bosch was carrying out commissions for his wealthy Catholic patrons, he was all the while coding his own inner heretical convictions in the hidden meanings of his paintings, as a record for posterity of the beliefs of his threatened religious sect.
Reviews
'At last a new angle on the strange paintings of Hieronymus Bosch . This is a well written and researched book, and seems to solve many mysteries in the artist's work. This must be the answer to the mystery of Bosch's paintings. A fascinating book which keeps you hooked to the end. Full of new ideas.'
-- Craig Harris, Bosch Bookstore (www.craigsweb.com/bosch.htm)
Author
Lynda Harris was born in New York City and spent her childhood there, as well as in Florence and Geneva. She also lived in Jerusalem before settling in London with her British husband and two children.
She has a B.A. in History of Art from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, and graduate degrees from Boston University and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Her main research was on paintings of the Renaissance period.
She has worked in museums but also spent many years giving classes to extra-mural students in London. In these classes, she began to develop ideas about Bosch which have evolved over some fifteen years to become her major interest. She now spends most of her time on writing and research.
