
The Garden of Earthly Delights by Jheronimus Bosch - ivank
https://tuinderlusten-jheronimusbosch.ntr.nl/en
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bloodorange
Hieronymus Bosch's work is remarkable and getting to see it in person was one
of the most delightful experiences I've had. To convey beauty in the
grotesque, the macabre and the unreal: what a genius he was!

(Also, visual art is not something that I used to enjoy for the majority of my
life and I still know next to nothing of art but I just found his work
spellbinding)

~~~
jxub
I still find his work mindblowing. He's like a mix between Goya, Picasso and
Dali but almost half a millenium ago!

~~~
theoh
Painting has deteriorated since the old masters, of whom Goya is sometimes
considered the last. Why this happened is not something people have a good
answer for, but the end of the 18th C brought increasing rationalisation,
modernisation and division of labour which seems to have gradually killed the
skills and ways of looking that produced previous masterpieces. It is sad.

Picasso is great, but in a very 20th C way, a lot of what carries his work is
a feeling of his energy and charisma, rather than depth of technique of
concept. In contrast someone like Bosch was creating these very intensely
realised fantasy scenes. Picasso couldn't have done that if he tried, nor can
any movie concept artist working today. The same goes for any of the old
masters. It's gone, somehow...

~~~
lioeters
Pretty sure Picasso was trained in the "old master's way", his early works
were more academic and following the painterly tradition, if I recall
correctly.. Dali was deep into the techniques of the old masters, and more
recently there's a movement sparked by Max Doerner, Ernst Fuchs et al, called
Mischteknik that seems to breathe new life into the tradition.

~~~
theoh
Well, that is a matter of opinion. Picasso's early works are certainly
realist/academic in style and technique but nobody gets excited about them.

Like I say, this is opinion, but as in architecture, where there is definitely
no good classical building happening today, there is no credible 'old master"
painting happening now. Even the whole category of figurative art is in
question in the same way that ornament in architecture is effectively dead.
There are still people who can carve classical architectural ornament but as a
creative tradition, it's over.

I'd reiterate that the division of labour and the role of the artist means
there isn't really any access to the "old master" position any more. Being an
artist since about 1900 has been about ego/charisma, a largely self-selected
group rather than talents discovered in obscurity and then elevated to
greatness by patrons. The art business is structurally similar to how it was,
in the sense that it still runs on patronage and prestige, but there is some
kind of crisis in the formation of artists. Probably part of a wider loss of
cultural direction and the general fact that there is now too much to know
about the world and everything (paintings, careers) feels rushed. You still
see flashes of intriguing visual ideas, sensitivity to colour, new
combinations of different forms of art, but I don't think anyone would claim
that even the best of today's art can compete with that from before
modernisation took hold. It's a state of disenchantment that we can't wish
away by going back to the old techniques.

~~~
lioeters
I see, you were making a point about a bigger cultural and historical
situation, while I was trying to find examples of artists who were/are
(attempting to) keeping the old masters' techniques and the spirit alive.

Along with Ernst Fuchs and Dali, I would place H. R. Giger in that line - not
in terms of specific technique, but "the skills and ways of looking" of an
artist, if not a master.. That's a mere trickle though, and certainly not a
tradition anymore, just individual exceptions. I agree with your point that
"Painting has deteriorated since the old masters."

It rings true about the "crisis in the formation of artists", that in modern
times, something essential has been lost in what it means to be an artist. The
wider loss of cultural direction, the disenchantment - I wonder whether it's
related to the loss of mythology and religion.

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gjkood
Being a total art ignoramous but clearly interested in the technical aspects
behind the site, I quickly googled the painting and learned that it was a
triptych (had to google that) whose dimensions were 87 in x 153 in.

A few questions to anyone who can shed more light:

1\. What would be the likely dimensions of the source image in pixels to reach
such a zoomed level of detail?

2\. What kind of camera equipment would I need to photograph such an image of
similar size? Can I get away with a run of the mill DSLR such as Nikon
D3400/D7500 or Canon EOS 80D?

3\. What kind of lens is suitable? Macro?

4\. What would be the process of photographing such an image? Taking a single
high-res image or taking a series of high-res macro images under suitable
lighting and stitching them together?

5\. What would be the tools to host the image that would allow this kind of
interactivity?

I have a project in mind that could make use of the same technology.

~~~
tkp
Had some success with this amateur setup to get a higher resolution image from
multiple Nikon D90 photos :

\- take multiple zoomed-in low DOF overlapping photos, with fixed settings,
covering the artwork from a tripod, only rotating the camera

\- stitch with Hugin[1] and export undistorted UHD photo

\- split the it into tiles according to your viewer's format with ImageMagick

\- view with a tile viewer. OpenSeaDragon[2] is smooth and well suited for UHD
images, but any can be adapted/used, for example leaflet[3].

Would love to hear about other workflows !

The Bosch websites seems to use Micrio[4] for the UHD viewing and
storytelling.

[1] [http://hugin.sourceforge.net/](http://hugin.sourceforge.net/)

[2] [https://openseadragon.github.io/](https://openseadragon.github.io/)

[3] [https://leafletjs.com](https://leafletjs.com)

[4] [https://micr.io/](https://micr.io/)

~~~
moron4hire
You should prefer to translate the image rather than rotate the camera.
Rotation creates images that need to be spherically reprojected to get the
rectangular image back out again. You end up losing resolution at the edges of
the image, because they are further away from the camera than the center.

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ttctciyf
More on the mysterious Bosch and The Garden of Earthly Delights in particular
(in the closing quarter of the article) can be found in [1].

See also [2] for an intriguing piece on possible gnostic symbolism in this
painting.

1: [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/mystery-of-
hieron...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/mystery-of-hieronymus-
bosch/)

2:
[http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/246864](http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/246864)

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MisterTea
A fantastic work of art. It was also used in a Buckethead music video where it
was animated:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bSZslEDUl0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bSZslEDUl0)

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amorphic
Any fans of Bosch's work should also check out Dave Patchett
([http://davepatchett.net/](http://davepatchett.net/)).

I'm not sure if Dave's been active recently but he's best known for the use of
his paintings as album covers for seminal UK doom metal band Cathedral.

I was fortunate enough to meet Dave in 2005 and purchase one his paintings.
Chatting with him he confirmed my suspicion that he was heavily influenced by
Bosch.

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dang
Discussed in 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11067566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11067566)

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eutelic
Here's another treatment:
[http://s3.imagediver.org/topic/album/4294b0e/garden_of_earth...](http://s3.imagediver.org/topic/album/4294b0e/garden_of_earthly_delights/1/index.html)

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jacquesm
[http://www.rocklandstrand.com/sites/default/files/heirony.jp...](http://www.rocklandstrand.com/sites/default/files/heirony.jpg)

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_Microft
Beside the image itself being awesome, I like the presentation on this website
a lot.

Did you notice that the background music changes depending on where you zoom
in on the image?

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beyondCritics
I am somewhat shocked to realize, that this is a true altarpiece.

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Iwan-Zotow
Getting sometimes NaNs when press on bookmark

