... or however you spell his first name. I've seen at least three spellings.

Anyway, anybody like his artwork? I think it's some of the most bizarre stuff I've seen. You can see some of his works here: http://www.boschuniverse.org/.

He's... unique. All kinds of symbolism and satire I can't even begin to decipher. As I recall, he died right before the Protestant Reformation, so a lot of his work has that satirical, disillusioned edge to it.

Also, he didn't do underpaintings, which was pretty rare back then. He just started the piece and finished it in more or less one layer, which is amazing for how complex they are.

Yeah, I just took Renaissance this last semster.

That is interesting.
It is just so amazing how detailed his stuff was. Especially if he didn't use underpaintings.

For some reason, this website is hard to use. Is there another website?

There are a ton if you google his name. I'll just link to some panels from some of the paintings right now, it won't be hard to find more if you want.

The Temptation of St. Anthony (Center panel)

The Last Judgement (Center panel)

The Garden of Earthly Delights (center panel)

...those are pretty weird.

He seems to enjoy painting dead nekkid people. :p

I thought Bosch made power tools.

Indeed bizarre but unique. Flying fish? Birds used as horses? Fruit bigger than people? Rats as people in high positions? Anyone getting a sense of paradox in the pictures?

There is also some meaning, I believe, in the paintings The "Temptation of St. Anthony" about church corruption. Probably other biblical references in his works too.

They have many layers of meaning. I wish I remembered what those instruments in the right wing of Garden of Earthly Delights meant. Also, I looked at my notes and it turns out Bosch not only didn't use underpaintings... he didn't even sketch before hand! He just had the entire scene laid out in his head before starting the work.

If you like Bosch's style, you might also like Pieter Bruegel the Elder. He was influenced heavily by Bosch, but also by the Limbourg brothers (you can search for their Book of Hours, which was never finished because both they and the patron died before completion... plague).

Here's a work I found by Bruegel, though the size here doesn't nearly do it justice. Note the relative lack of overlapping present in Italian works of this period. The northern artists were less concerned with strictly delineated linear perspective than with cramming in as much detail as possible. These works in general are fairly small (Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights is (I believe) only like 6'x6' which is very small for the amount of detail.

Also, Artcyclopedia is a pretty good site for finding a range of online galleries and museums with more information than the Google image search is likely to provide (though that one is great too).

Here's Bruegel's The Fight Between Carnival and Lent:

I don't have time to post much right now, but Masq, do you know what's with the black people in Garden of Earthly Delights?

I think it would have been too early for a racial equality message, so I don't think it's that. Are they africans or "black men" (not the african kind but the shadowy kind)?
Why are there so few of them?

I never even noticed them until you mentioned it.

I'm just guessing here, but to me they seem to represent the presence of a sinful influence during mortal life. The left wing of the open triptych shows Adam, Eve and God in the garden of Eden. A lot of scholars believe the piece is about Eve's corruption of man, its influence being seen in the central, carnal, plane and finally the consequences for this met in hell. So part of my reasoning for the dark figures being a sinful influence is that it fits with the rest of the picture. Also, they never seem to stand on their own or in front of the light figures, always appearing behind them as if they were giving counsel (with one exception in the lower left).

And depictions of Africans in this period are pretty rare in the north where Bosch worked. We see them more frequently in the south and in Spanish art... and they almost always have more variation in skin tone than these have. These dark figures are practically silhouettes.

Just my guess though.