Jacques Le Boucq, Portrait of Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1550, Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale On the 500th anniversary of his death, medieval Netherlandish painter Hieronymous Bosch is a smash hit. To meet the demand for “Jheronimus Bosch – Visions of genius,” the Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch has added 30,000 tickets to the 380,000 tickets that flew out the door. Between March 24 and May 8, the museum will stay open until 11 pm, seven days a week. Crowds are flocking to the artist’s hometown for the largest Bosch retrospective to date -- a remarkable reunion of most of his known works. Some 17 paintings (panels and triptychs) and 19 drawings are organized into six thematic sections. In dramatic fashion, visitors come face-to-face with Bosch’s highly original monsters, demons, angels and saints. Over the centuries, natural aging of the material components of the paintings and human intervention have adversely affected some of Bosch’s works. Nine were able to travel to the Read More
A Donatello Restored
Sculpture’s key role in the Florentine Renaissance is the theme of “The Springtime of the Renaissance: Sculpture and the Arts in Florence 1400-1460” at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence through August 18 and the Louvre in Paris (September 26, 2013 to January 6, 2014). One of the show’s highlights is an early bronze by Florence’s Donatello, Saint Louis of Toulouse, which recently underwent extensive restoration. The larger-than-life statue was commissioned by the Guelph party as a tribute to the figure who renounced his claim to rule Naples to become a Franciscan. Louis died at 23 and Donatello depicts him with delicate boyish features in bishop’s regalia holding a putti-adorned crosier in his left hand and giving a blessing with his right. Enamel, rock crystal and fleurs-de-lis decorate his mitre. Donatello created the figure for the eastern wall of the church of Orsanmichele where both the sun and a classically inspired marble and gold niche added to its brilliance. But with the Guelph Read More