ONLINE ART HISTORY COURSE
"Hieronymus Bosch: Heretic, Lunatic, or Philosopher?"

Course Description:

The Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1450-1516) had a bizarre and inexhaustible imagination.  Known as the creator of disturbing demons and spectacular hellscapes, he also painted the Garden of Earthly Delights, where gleeful naked youths seduce one another with giant strawberries and place flowers in bodily orifices best left unexposed in polite society.  Viewers from Bosch’s time to our own have struggled to find meaning in his startling paintings, citing dream imagery, lunatic fantasies, and even heresy in his works. Adding to the difficulty of interpretation is the fact that Bosch’s name appears on only seven of the thirty or so paintings accepted as his, and none of these shows a date.  Furthermore, we know very little about the painter’s life – his education, friends, or patrons. Despite these problems, it is possible to understand Bosch as belonging to a world of mutable boundaries and multiple points of view.  People lived always with an eye towards Christian salvation, and there were no distinct boundaries between secular and sacred.  We need not accept Bosch as either ignorant or learned, bourgeois or aristocratic, devout of heretical, pragmatic or visionary.  In the end, his fascinating paintings reveal a world that was different from, but no less complex than our own.

Virtual Classroom: Full access to an online educational platform with discussion forum, videos of recordings, syllabus, and reading list.

Location: LIVE INTERACTIVE ON-LINE ART HISTORY LECTURES

Optional Readings:
Readings to be provided to students in PDF format prior to the beginning of course.

Complete syllabus will be provided upon registration.

• ALL LECTURES WILL BE RECORDED AND AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING AT YOUR CONVENIENCE IN OUR VIDEO LIBRARY FOR THE DURATION OF THE COURSE

LECTURE 1 - The Spectacle of Human Folly

- Monday, October 30

One of Bosch’s favorite themes was how human nature, impeded by original sin, struggles weakly against worldly temptations.  We will look at Bosch the moralist,     revealed in his scathing satires of human folly.

LECTURE 2 - Martyrdom and Melancholy

- Monday, November 6

For the most part, Bosch preferred to paint holy figures living in isolation and       deprivation rather than miraculously triumphing over evil.  Their miserable martyrdoms parallel the sufferings of Christ, set in a monstrous world pervaded by sin and folly.

LECTURE 3 - Science and Salvation

- Monday, November 13

Several of Bosch’s works, including his famous triptychs, display knowledge of alchemy, or early chemistry.  The goal of this science, documented in a rich illustrative tradition, was to create an elixir of life, which would return the human race to the universal health and immortality of the Biblical Garden of Eden.

Laurinda Dixon is a specialist in northern European Renaissance art. Currently retired, she served as the William F. Tolley Distinguished Professor of Teaching in the Humanities at Syracuse University for many years. Her scholarship considers the intersection of art and science - particularly alchemy, medicine, astrology, and music - from the fifteenth though the nineteenth centuries. She has lectured widely in both the USA and Europe, and is the author of many articles, reviews, and eleven books, including Perilous Chastity: Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and Medicine (1995), Bosch (2003), and The Dark Side of Genius: The Melancholic Persona in Art, ca. 1500-1700 (2013). Laurinda holds a Ph.D. in art history from Boston University, as well as a degree in piano performance from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. She currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.