Kansas City Museum Painting Deemed an Authentic Bosch

A small painting owned by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., has been deemed an authentic work by the fantastical early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch, a research group in the artist’s hometown of ‘s-Hertogenbosch announced today.

“The Temptation of St. Anthony,” which has largely been held in storage, was previously attributed to the workshop or a follower of Bosch, instead of the artist himself. If accepted by scholars as an authentic Bosch, the 1500-10 work will add significantly to the artist’s small oeuvre: about 25 paintings and 20 drawings worldwide.

The work depicts St. Anthony kneeling to fill a jug with water in a murky landscape. In typical Bosch style, the surrounding area is filled with miniature portraits of bizarre hybrid-creatures. There’s a part-man, part-funnel monster wielding a weapon, a fox-headed demon, and a figure with a bird’s beak.

The painting, likely once part of the wing of a larger triptych, was examined by the Bosch Research and Conservation Project, which for the past six years has traveled to museums around the world to document nearly every piece in the artist’s surviving body of work. The results will be published in a 1,000-page volume, alongside a major Bosch exhibition at the Noordbrabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch. It’s one of several large shows planned for the coming year timed to the 500th anniversary of Bosch’s death in 1516.

To evaluate “St. Anthony,” researchers looked to the painting’s underdrawings. They used a combination of infrared photography and infrared reflectography to study the paint layers beneath the work’s surface. There, they found evidence of Bosch’s hand: the use of a thick brush, the tendency to mix pigments while the paint was still wet, and an experimental, exploratory approach to composition.

“He prepares his first drawings very quickly, and that quickness is what was detected beneath our painting,” said Nelson-Atkins director Julián Zugazagoitia, who added that the painting will come back to the museum as a “prodigal son.” The work would be one of just five Bosch’s in the U.S., the others being held at Washington D.C.’s National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Conn.

“It’s hard to identify what it is about Bosch that so many people find fascinating. I imagine that it’s the combination of both reality and fantasy,” said Rima Girnius, associate curator of European painting and sculpture at the Nelson-Atkins. “It’s just wonderful to have a small example by Bosch.”

Ms. Girnius said the museum acquired the work in 1935 from a New York gallery, but has rarely shown it in public, preferring instead to keep it in storage. From Feb. 13 through May 8, it will be on display at the Noordbrabants exhibition, “Jheronimus Bosch—Visions of Genius,” and may travel to the Prado in Madrid for another Bosch show opening in May.

Resource: http://blogs.wsj.com