Walter S. Gibson

No one can look at the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch without amazement and bewilderment. Professor Gibson shows that what seems inexplicable to us today the canvases full of torture, monsters, and leering devils was perfectly intelligible to the fifteenth-century viewer. The subjects of Bosch's paintings were in fact the overwhelming concerns of late medieval Europe: the Last Judgment, original sin, death, temptations of the flesh. The author describes each picture in detail, placing each work within the context of medieval folklore and religion, and explains that many of the acts portrayed in the pictures were visual translations of verbal puns or metaphors.

An Annotated Bibliography

Hieronymus Bosch

"An exceptional book, sensible, illuminating and readable...probably the best straightforward account of Bosch and his works which we shall have for some time."—Times Literary Supplement

"Gibson's multilayered exploration of the rustic landscape enhances our understanding of the Golden Age in Dutch art, and his evocative language recalls a countryside now largely gone. At the same time, this illustrated book gracefully articulates the role of the Dutch rustic landscape in the history of landscape painting."--BOOK JACKET.

The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael

Pleasant Places

Pieter Bruegel

"In Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter Walter Gibson makes it abundantly clear that laughter is a key feature in many of Bruegel's works. He examines witty and humorous elements in Bruegel's paintings, prints, and drawings and creates a context for understanding them as part of sixteenth-century culture. The material Gibson brings to bear on Bruegel will be new to many. This book will appeal to art historians and anyone interested in sixteenth-century thought and culture."—John Oliver Hand, Curator of Northern Renaissance Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington "This book offers a much needed, and long overdue alternative to the primarily moralizing approach to Northern Renaissance and Baroque art and the works of Pieter Bruegel. Walter Gibson goes way beyond what art history has offered to date, giving a new, more balanced reading of Bruegel's art."—Alison Stewart, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln "In Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter Walter Gibson offers a marvelously engaging antidote to the hermetic readings that have plagued the interpretation of Bruegel's works for far too long. The book provides an abundance of evidence for the importance of laughter in the responses these works were intended to provoke, illuminating not only the paintings and prints of this much misunderstood artist, but also the role of laughter in sixteenth-century culture as a whole."—David Freedberg, Professor of Art History at Columbia University

Walter S. Gibson

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