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Jerome van Aken (1450-1516), also known as Hieronymus Bosch, was born in what today is The Netherlands. In 1486, he joined the religious order of Our Illustrious Lady's Brotherhood of Heertogenbosch. At first he painted traditional religious subjects, setting his figures far back in the painting. Later he composed religious allegories and satirical treatments of everyday themes. He found the human flaw intriguing and readily depicted saints confronted by evil. A historian by the name of Guicciardini once said Bosch "was a noble and amazing inventor of fantastic and bizarre things." An example of this is The Garden of Earthly Delights, whose surreal design influenced Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Hundreds of years later, Bosch's unsettling and perhaps nightmarish style of painting would influence both Expressionism and Surrealism. Forty paintings by Bosch are known, but only 10 are signed and none are dated.
The difference between the pictures of Hieronymous Bosch and those of other masters consists, in my opinion, in the fact that others mostly paint Man as he appears from without, whereas Bosch shows Man's inner nature.
-Fray Jose Siguenza, in the 16th century, quoted in Gaunt, The Surrealists (1972)
The master of the monstrous...the discoverer of the Unconscious.
-Carl Gustav Jung, quoted in Smith, Early Netherlandish and German Paintings (1985)
The Forest That Hears and the Field That Sees
Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin
The Man-Tree
Albertina, Vienna
The Ship of Fools
1500
Musée du Louvre, Paris
The Wayfarer
Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam
  
The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych
Left: Paradise (Garden of Eden)
Center: The Garden of Earthly Delights
Right: Hell
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
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