Page:A Picture by Hieronymus Bosch.djvu/3

Rh exaggerations of character—the qualities which Bosch developed to their utmost in European painting and for which he is chiefly famous. It bears a closer analogy to the Adoration of the Kings in the Prado, which is also relatively contained in its appearance, than to any other known work by him. In his early time Bosch was content to treat the classic themes in a sentiment which was more or less traditional, always vivifying them, however, by his lively observation of nature. His artistic personality is made up of naturalism, the love of genre and of the fantastic, and an unsuppressible mockery, qualities inherent in his race, which had already interwoven familiar touches of everyday life with the saints and angels on the cathedrals, and had covered the margins of grave manuscripts with humorous or malicious inventions. At a later time these same qualities were embodied in the productions of Brouwer, Jan Steen, and the little masters of the seventeenth century.

Works like the Prado Adoration, with which our painting may be classed, show Bosch's realistic tendencies—his love of the landscape of his own country with its humble or picturesque incidents and the appreciation of character in the life he was accustomed to. The pursuit of these things leads him away from the unified sacramental arrangements of his academic ancestors towards a system of composition where each group or figure calls for its special examination, and each part of the panel has an interest for its own sake alone. It is upon this principle that his characteristic pictures are designed—pictures like dreams, or nightmares rather, with the strangest, the most whimsical, the most monstrous ideas that western painting has ever attempted. Devils, amorphous creatures, hybrids, prodigies, and monsters crowd the Last Judgments, the Temptations of Saint Anthony, the moralities and theological pieces of his later time.

The germ of this development hardly shows in the Prado picture and even less in ours. The realism, however, leans toward caricature here and there. There is something in them that promises conceptions like the Ghent Carrying of the Cross or the Princeton Christ before Pilate, for instance, but nothing of the terrible is in either. Our Adoration, on the contrary, is altogether delightful and in an exquisite way rather frivolous. It has in it more of the fairy tale than of the solemnity of the Epiphany. One could almost fancy that it was painted for the pleasure of children, so full is it of diverting things that children love—a little white dog sitting in a prominent place, an owl hidden in an opening in the wall, a bird's nest with an egg in it on a window sill, a bird in another window, and innumerable similar details.

The setting for the scene is the courtyard of a ruined castle, a part of which has been transformed into a stable. The ox and the ass are resting within the doorway of a tumble-down tower and from its top and that of a free-standing wall opposite, child angels are stretching a canopy of green drapery in honor of the ceremony. Mary, a demure Flemish girl with wavy blond hair falling over her shoulders, is beneath in the center of the courtyard, her full blue skirt disposed over the cloth of gold and the cushions she sits upon. The Christ-child, nude, is in her lap and at the right are the three wise kings. Melchior with his crown on the ground before him kneels in front and offers a golden ewer of elaborate workmanship on a golden platter. Next stands Balthasar, a very proud negro, gorgeous with barbaric golden ornaments over his white tunic, with Oriental weapons, and an aigrette in his crown. He holds a vase in the form of a globe surmounted by a bird. Beyond is Gaspar, wearing a turban and a brown brocade gown, and looking at the spectator. His gift is a gold vessel of elongated form which he holds in both hands.

At the left kneels Saint Joseph, a decrepit white-haired old man who supports himself with a cane. A stableman looks out of a window behind him and two shepherds are at another window in the ruined wall behind the Virgin and Child. All these are lowly people of familiar aspect in distinction to the fantastic kings whose inspiration seems to have come largely