Bosch and Scale

The next artist I'd like to feature is a fascinating sixteenth-century Dutch painter named Hieronymus Bosch. There are so many reasons why I love Bosch's work. Let's take a look at the painting that is cosidered his masterpiece: The Garden of Earthly Delights



I apologize for the somewhat poor quality of the picture, its the best I could find online. This is oil paint on wood. There is an INCREDIBLE amount of detail in this painting that you just can't see in small scale. I encourage all of you to go to the library and look up a book with a larger image of this painting- its amazing. Here are some close-ups of the right side panel:









Now- why do I like these jumbled, slightly disturbing paintings so much? Firstly, consider the period in history in which they were painted. The Garden of Earthly Delights was completed in 1510! Martin Luther wouldn't post his Ninety-Five Theses for another seven years! This was a time in which portaits and religious paintings were the norm. To my (very limited) knowledge, although they contained religious content, nothing like these paintings had ever been done before. Look at the surreal creatures and objects in the close-ups. Its plain to see that later surrealist artists like Salvador Dali were heavily influenced by Bosch's work which was so entirely ahead of its time.

So how did Bosch create such a surreal, even nightmarish mood? It wasn't just his use of strange creatures- look at how he messes with the scale of everyday objects. All of the human figures are propotional to one another, but the flute, the bagpipes, and the animal skull, for example, are all gigantic in proportion to the humans. It gives the viewer an feeling of vague uneasiness which the theme of the painting only enhances.

Scale is an interesting tool that artists use to inspire certain feelings in the viewer. Consider the Sistine Chapel, for example. A viewer's breath is simply taken away by the massive scale of the work. Then after the feeling of overwhelming awe subsides, the viewer can look at the individual frescoes. As you're out and about looking at various advertisements, buildings, landscape designs, etc., consider how the creator used scale to convey his point. In advertisements, a product is often portrayed as being much larger than it actually is. Like this ad, for example:




If the bottle were actually this big, it would take an NFL player to lift it. But the proportionally large scale of the bottle draws your attention to it.

On a somewhat unrelated note: Donovan McNabb, I hope you enjoy the death of your career with the Washington Redskins.