The Cultural Voyager

Valuable discoveries and a much greater understanding of Hieronymus Bosch’s work are the key achievements of years of systematic research and technological innovation by the Bosch Research and Conservation Project. In this way, the BRCP has made an important contribution to our understanding of the creativity and genius of this son of ’s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch). The BRCP’s findings have, moreover, expanded Bosch’s relatively small known oeuvre. Meanwhile, a substantial number of his paintings and drawings have been restored in the run-up to the celebration of 500 years of Hieronymus Bosch, giving them back their original lustre and reflecting the project’s twin focus on conservation as well as research. The BRCP is an initiative of Radboud University Nijmegen, the Hieronymus Bosch 500 Foundation and Het Noordbrabants Museum. It came about with the financial support of the Gieskes-Strijbis Fund and the Getty Foundation (Panel Paintings Initiative).

Bosch Research and Conservation Project (BRCP)

The Bosch Research and Conservation Project (BRCP) is the largest international art-historical initiative ever undertaken into the paintings and drawings of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–Den Bosch 1516). A team of nine experts specialising in different fields has intensively and systematically examined Bosch’s entire oeuvre worldwide since 2010.

Methodology

Virtually the whole of Bosch’s oeuvre has been documented using a standardised, scientific research procedure. Bosch research has traditionally tended to focus on the meaning of the painter’s artworks, with questions such as painting technique, workshop practice and the condition of the works receiving far less attention. Detailed analysis is, however, crucial to understanding the meaning of these frequently enigmatic images. The BRCP’s first concern, therefore, was to establish a painstaking, standardised body of documentation for the paintings.

This was achieved using infrared reflectography and ultra-high resolution digital macrophotography, in both infrared and visible light.

Principal discoveries

Using the advanced digital infrastructure developed by the BRCP, it was possible to identify hitherto unnoticed connections. The distinctive way in which Bosch often ‘drew’ details in paint and modelled in impasto can now be visualised effortlessly and compared directly and precisely across all the paintings. A connection has also been made for the first time between the paintings and drawings – worlds that had largely remained separate. It was found that the way Bosch painted shows significant similarities with the way he drew. In addition to providing a much better insight into the genesis of the artworks, the BRCP documentation has played an important role in the attribution of works that had not previously been ascribed to Bosch himself. The most surprising outcome of the research, however, is the attribution to Bosch of the relatively unknown painting the Temptation of St. Anthony from the Nelson-Atkins Museum (Kansas City, Missouri), where it had been held in storage (see separate press release). All these works can be seen at the exhibition in Den Bosch.

The number of drawings attributed to the master has almost doubled. The BRCP team was able, for instance, to identify the hitherto anonymous drawing Infernal Landscape as an authentic work

by Hieronymus Bosch. Up to now, the drawing had been hidden away in private ownership and will be shown in public for the first time during the large-scale Hieronymus Bosch exhibition opening on 13 February 2016 at Het Noordbrabants Museum. The painting of the Last Judgement from Bruges has also been attributed once and for all to Bosch by the BRCP;; the cleaning and restoration of the grisailles on the exterior of the wings have brought out the immense painterly quality of this work once more and have revealed the same artist’s hand that we find in the Haywain and St. John on Patmos.

Composition of the BRCP team

The international BRCP team consists of nine researchers, each specialising in a particular field.

They include art historians (both technical and theoretical), a photographer, a restorer and a computer expert (see list for more details). The photographer, for instance, used a standard approach and equipment to document the paintings and drawings at unprecedentedly high resolution. This was done not only in visible light, but also using infrared photography, infrared reflectography and digital X-radiography. Not only were the smallest details made visible this way, so too were the preparatory underdrawings, normally concealed beneath the various layers of paint and invisible to the naked eye. Dozens, and in some cases hundreds, of 60-megapixel photographs were taken of each painting. A restorer then analysed each of Bosch’s paintings according to a fixed protocol in order to learn more about the techniques used to create them and about the current condition of these five hundred year old paintings.

Spectacular restorations

In addition to research, the BRCP’s mission has been to focus on the conservation and restoration of Bosch’s paintings. Meticulous study of the condition of the panels revealed that many of the works were in need of care. This prompted the restoration of a substantial proportion of the oeuvre, thanks to subsidies from the BRCP and the Getty Foundation (Panel Paintings Initiative). The result is a series of spectacular restorations, including that of the Wilgefortis Triptych, the Hermit Saints Triptych and the Visions of the Afterlife from Venice, St. Jerome from Ghent, St. Christopher from Rotterdam and the Last Judgement from Bruges. Restoration uncovered a number of concealed features. ‘We’re now seeing the real Bosch, which means we can interpret and evaluate his paintings better than in the past’, says Luuk Hoogstede, who worked on the project as a restorer.

Innovative website

The information assembled by the BRCP has been made accessible to all via the website boschproject.org. The master’s work can be viewed and compared there down to the smallest details using the groundbreaking ‘curtain viewers’ developed by the computer scientist Robert G. Erdmann. These offer visitors to the site an accessible way to process and compare the large amount of data assembled using the new imaging and photographic techniques. Each type of photograph is overlaid in a series of ‘curtains’ that can be drawn back to allow the user to concentrate on a single detail without losing sight of the context. The website makes it possible to journey through each layer of a particular painting. ‘This is the first time the entire oeuvre of a single artist has been visually documented using the same standards’, says Erdmann, who is attached to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and has also worked for institutions like MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. ‘Each museum normally uses its own cameras, with different lighting and formats, which makes it hard for researchers to compare artworks properly. In scientific terms, standardising the research process represents a significant advance, as we can now be sure that it is the paintings and drawings we are comparing with one another, and not just the way they have been photographed.’

Erdmann developed another compelling new application for the BRCP, based on the ‘Morelli method’, which takes its name from the nineteenth-century Italian art historian Giovanni Morelli (1816–1891), who devised a method for determining the authenticity of an artwork based on comparison of painted details such as ears and hands. It is in small details like this, after all, that the artist’s ‘signature’ can be found. Erdmann modernised Morelli’s ideas for the Bosch project. When a series of ears from different works by Bosch are viewed side by side on a computer screen, the similarities and differences are immediately apparent. All the BRCP’s photographic documentation is available online at boschproject.org BoschDoc

All archive sources on Hieronymus Bosch, his immediate context and his work have been made available, together with translations and notes, on the BoschDoc website – a collaborative project with Huygens ING, Den Bosch Municipal Archive and Radboud University Nijmegen.

BoschDoc can be accessed via boschproject.org and boschdoc.huygens.knaw.nl.

Scholarly publications by the BRCP

The results of the BRCP’s international research have been published in a monograph comprising a two-volume scholarly reference work totalling over 1,000 pages and with an unprecedented range of illustrations. Volume 1, the Catalogue raisonné, deals with all drawings and paintings by Bosch and his workshop, accompanied by discussions of several paintings until recently considered to be autograph. The Catalogue raisonné is introduced by four essays exploring Bosch’s life and career, the question ‘what is a Bosch?’, the materials and techniques he used and the conservation and restoration history of his works. Volume 2, Technical Studies, contains all the research reports on the examined paintings, introduced by two essays on the photography and image-processing performed by the BRCP (see the appendix for more information).

To mark the 500th year since his death, The Noordbrabants Museum is presenting the exhibition, ‘Jheronimus Bosch – Visions of genius’, from 13th February to 8th May 2016.

For one time only, the majority of his work will return to his city, Den Bosch, officially known as ’s-Hertogenbosch.

For more information go to http://boschexpo.hetnoordbrabantsmuseum.nl/en/de-expositie

http://www.theculturalvoyager.com/largest-ever-research-project-into-hieronymus-bosch.html