Art celebrating art: the city of Hieronymus Bosch

‘s-Hertogenbosch (or Bois-le-Duc in English) was one of the mayor urban centres in the Duchy of Brabant. It is now the capital of the Dutch province of North Brabant; the old capital of Brabant as a whole -Brussels- is now in Belgium and the capital of that country. The city is one of the best-preserved water cities in the Low Countries and was the place where the late-medieval painter Hieronymus Bosch was born and made his fantastic and imaginative landscapes populated by not-easily explained figures. At the beginning of 2016 a large exhibition of his work took place in his home town. Around this exhibition in the North Brabant Museum several side events were initiated.

Throughout the city public art was commissioned inspired by Hieronymus Bosch. The best loved works take imagery from the paintings by Bosch and place these in a new context, whilst retaining the recognisable mashup style of the master. In the city moat (left) this man is floating helplessly, trapped in his egg. Also other Bosch-inspired works references his most famous work, the Garden of Delights, with this walking bean with an arrow (middle) perched on a pole at the jetty for the tourist boats and the giraffe (right) from the paradise panel now standing tall in the so-called Casino Garden.