Hieronymus Bosch. Life and Creativity

What lies behind the grotesque, at times comic aesthetic of Hieronymus Bosch? What relationship to the society of his time did the artist express through his eccentric subjects? What is it about Bosch's infernal Middle Ages that captivates us? Where... did the pregnant emperor come from on the canvas and why, finally, are the owls — not what they seem? Answers to these intriguing questions are found on the pages of this book, a profound and rich study of the work of the Dutch master. A legend of world painting, Bosch became famous not only as a talented draftsman but also as a skilled mystifier, an inventor of his own pictorial language in which the base intertwines with the sublime, the flawed is ruthlessly exposed, and the everyday and "normal" are distorted in a macabre dance. To understand Bosch is to look into the consciousness of a medieval person, to comprehend what he laughs at, what he fears, what he despises, and what he reveres. The key to the artist's intricate symbolism was discovered by Valeria Kasyakova — the author of the widely discussed book "Apocalypse of the Middle Ages," a candidate of cultural studies, a teacher at the Russian State University for the Humanities, and a researcher at the Center for Visual Studies of the Middle Ages and Modern Times.