A Drawing by Hieronymus Bosch

Author(s): A. E. Popham
Source: The British Museum Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Nov., 1952), p. 45
Published by: British Museum
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4422381
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Museum Quarterly

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A DRAWING BY HIERONYMUS BOSCH

HE most important among the drawings from Pepper A

presented to the Department by the National Art-Co
Tundoubtedly the composition of The Entombment by

(P1. xvIII), a subject which he is not known to have represented

summary fashion, in monochrome, in the background o

St. John on Patmos at Berlin. In the new drawing the them
simple piety, and the oddity conspicuous in most of Bosch
tions is absent, except perhaps in the costume of St. Josep

the extreme right.

The authorship of Bosch seems sufficiently established

character of the figures, but the attribution is reinforced b

an actual signature on the front of the sarcophagus, writt
chalk which is visible occasionally in other parts of the draw

composition was first of all sketched out. The signature, in the

BOSSCHE(?), occurs on some authentic paintings and on engr

sitions by Bosch: the fact that it was not recognized by the

owner, who attributed the drawing to 'Israel van Meck'

authenticity.

Most of the accepted drawings by Bosch are rather rapid and summary
sketches in pen and ink, but there are two elaborately finished drawings in the
Louvre corresponding with pictures by him which show a very close resemblance
in their technique to the present drawing. One is The Death of a Miser for the
painting of the subject formerly in the collection of Baron von der Elst, and the
other is The Concert, which corresponds with the painting in the Louvre. It is true

that recent writers on Bosch have regarded these two drawings as copies, but
their character seems to me to point to their being original drawings of the type
which the Italians would have termed a modello. Though both of these differ from

The Entombment in being drawn on grey grounds and heightened with white,
their actual brushwork is exactly similar to that of the present drawing. We can
also note a very close resemblance between the style of grisaille paintings by
Bosch, of which there are a number, and that of The Entombment.
In any case the drawing is one of great interest and importance, and a valuable
addition to the Department, where Bosch is only represented by one drawing
of doubtful authenticity.

A. E. POPHAM

Drawn with the point of the brush and indian ink over a sketch in black chalk. 25 X 35 cm.

45

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XVIII. DRAWING BY HIERONYMUS BOSCH

The Entombment

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