This year’s groundbreaking Hieronymus Bosch exhibition in the Netherlands is an ideal candidate for the Exhibition on Screen treatment. In the most comprehensive collection of his work ever mounted, the tiny Noordbrabants museum managed to secure 17 of Bosch’s 24 extant paintings and 19 of his 20 drawings. With nothing to offer other museums in exchange for the loans, they instead paid them back by doing analysis of the works.
The camera lingers on Bosch’s intricate depictions of animals, monsters and religious scenes, while talking heads such as Peter Greenaway put them in context and explain how the exhibition came to be – though the film glosses over the controversy of the Prado withdrawing several works after a row about deattribution. The close-up details of the larger paintings are breathtaking, although with so much crammed into some of Bosch’s pieces, the film can only scratch the surface. Nonetheless, Bosch devotees and newcomers will find much to please them here.
