Bosch's Dreams: A Response to the Art of Bosch in the Sixteenth Century Author(s): Walter S.

Gibson Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 74, No. 2 (Jun., 1992), pp. 205-218 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045869 . Accessed: 16/02/2011 04:53
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Bosch's
in

Dreams:

the

Sixteenth

Response Century

to

the

Art

of

Bosch

WalterS. Gibson
For Conrad Rawskz In such works as the Vienna LastJudgment Triptych and the Hell panel of the Gardenof Earthly Delights(Fig. 1), Hieronymus Bosch gave a new and frightening pictorial expression to the vision of Hell that had evolved in Western Europe for almost a millennium and a half.' His artistic genius is especially evident in his depiction of devils, whole legions of ugly misshapen creatures who swarm through his infernal landscapes and subject their victims to an eternity of torment and pain. Bosch's vision of the demonic world had great appeal in the sixteenth century. His paintings were avidly collected and copied; his repertory of monsters was endlessly repeated and varied by several generations of artists.A whole school of painters existed at Antwerp reproducing more or less successful imitations of Bosch, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, known to us chiefly as the great landscapist and depictor of peasant life, was better known to his contemporaries as the second Hieronymus Bosch.2 In the process of dissemination, however, Bosch's art gradually lost much of its original serious meaning, its power to terrify the viewer and convince him of the reality of what he saw. The story of Bosch's posthumous reputation and the transformation of his imagery by later artists has been told many times, especially in the case of Bruegel.3 But one of the most interesting chapters in this story has not been properly recounted. This chapter deserves a closer examination because it shows one way in which Bosch's imagerywas changed and adapted to the tastes of a later age and of a milieu different from his own. We begin with an entry that Marcantonio Michiel made in his journal in 1521, describing three paintings by Bosch he had seen in the palace of Cardinal Grimani at Venice. They comprised "a canvas representing Hell with a great varietyof monsters," "a canvas representing dreams," and "a canvas representing Fortune with the whale swallowing Jonah.'"4 The picture with Jonah and the whale is unfortunately lost. As for the other two pictures, they are often identified with a set of four panels by Bosch, the so-called Heaven and Hell, now preserved at Venice in the Palace of the Doges.5 Two of these pictures in particular, the Fall of the Damnedand the Hell (Figs. 2-3), correspond in subject with the picture that Michiel described as "Hell with a great variety of monsters." This identification is by no means certain: the Heavenand Hell series is painted on wood, not the canvas mentioned by Michiel, and there is no real evidence that it was ever in the possession of CardinalGrimani.6On the other hand, such an identification cannot be rejected altogether, for it is significant that Michiel characterizedone of the Bosch paintings as simply depicting "dreams." There is no extant work by Bosch that can be convincingly identified with this subject. But one of the four Venice panels, the Hell, shows a nude figure prominently placed in the foreground, supporting his head on one hand and oblivious to the demons harassing him. It is probable that Bosch intended to show a damned soul in remorse because he realizes that he is forever denied the sight of God, a deprivation that most medieval theologians agreed constitutes the most grievous pain suffered by the damned in Hell.7 Nevertheless, it is tempting to suppose that if Michiel actually saw this painting, he misinterpreted the remorseful soul as a sleeping man whose troubled dreams have generated the monstrous forms around him. But even if this was not the work described by Michiel, his journal entry is important because it forms part of a tradition that linked Bosch's imagery with dreams. This tradition is a tenuous one, whose manifestations are sporadicbut nonetheless persistent, and it finds expression, moreover, in literature and especially in art.

This essay was expanded from a paper delivered at the Fourth General Conference of Studies in Medievalism, held at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, in October 1989. ' For medieval descriptions of Hell, see E. Gardiner, ed., Vzszons of Heaven and Hell beforeDante, New York, 1989. How Bosch drew upon these traditional accounts of the underworld will be discussed in my study now in progress on his Hell scenes. 2 Bruegel is called "a new Hieronymus Bosch," in the Effigies of Dominicus Lampsonius, published in 1572. See D. Lampson, Les Effigzes despezntres cdlibresdes Pay-Bas, ed. J. Puraye, Liege, 1956, 61, no. 19. a 3For good survey of Bosch's influence, see G. Unverfehrt, Hzeronymus Bosch.Die RezeptionseznerKunstzm fruihen16.Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1980. 4 Der AnonzmoMorellano (MarcantonMzchzel's Notzzzad'operedel disegno, original text with German trans. T. von Frimmel, Vienna, 1896, 102-103. My quotations are taken from The Anonzmo:Notes on Pictures and Worksof Art zn Italy by an AnonymousWrzter in the SzxteenthCentury, trans. P. Mussi, ed. G. C. Williamson, London, 1903, repr. New York and London, 1969, 118-119. Michiel's description of one of Bosch's paint-

ings as a "Fortune with the whale swallowingJonah" may seem "fortune" wasoften enigmatic,but in the MiddleAges and Renaissance, used as a synonymfor "storm"; see E. Wind, Giorgzone's wzth Tempesta Comments on Giorgione's Poetzc Oxford, 1969, 3, 20, n. 7. Allegories, Bosch,Baden5 For this identification,see C. de Tolnay, Hzeronymus Baden, 1966, 353; and G. Martinand M. Cinotti,TheComplete Pazntings London, 1969, 98, no. 26. Forthe subjectmatterof the Heaven ofBosch, and Hell panels, see A. Chatelet, "Surun Jugement dernier de Dieric Bouts,"Nederlands kunsthzstorzschjaarboek, xvI, 1965, 17-42, esp. 27-28. 6 See Unverfehrt in n. (as 3), 22. a soul from Hell 7 In a manualfor exorcismwrittenin the 15th century, is asked,"isnot the loss of seeing Christin personthe most painfulof all tortures?" See A. Gurevich, Problems Medzeval PopularCulture: of Belief and Perception, trans.J. M. Bak and P. A. Hollingsworth, Cambridge, or Painof Loss,as the Paris,etc., 1988, 248, n. 19. For the Poenadamnz, andMotifs zn majortormentof the damned, see C. A. Patrides,Premises Renaissance andLzterature, Princeton,N.J., 1982, 185-186, with Thought furtherreferences.

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The literary texts occur in the last third of the sixteenth century. Two of them are unambiguous, a third, less so. The earliest association between Bosch and dreams in writing can be found in the Efigies, a series of engraved artists' portraits issued by the widow of Hieronymus Cock in 1572, and accompanied by Latin verses by the Libge poet Dominicus Lampsonius. The poet characterizes Pieter Bruegel the Elder as "this new Hieronymus Bosch who brings his master's ingenious dreams [ingeniosa magistri somnia] to life once more."8 Some twelve years later, in his Trattato dell' arte della pittura, published in 1584, Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo refers to "Girolamo Boschi fiamengo, who in the representation of apparitions and extraordinary and horrible dreams was unique and truly divine."9 A less certain reference that associates Bosch with dreams occurs in the second edition of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists, published in 1568. Vasari has actually very little to say about Bosch, but he does describe a print of Saint Martin that he says was published after Bosch by Hieronymus Cock; most likely this is the print of the Feast of Saint Martin inscribed "Jheronimus bos inventor," although Bosch's responsibility for the original design may be doubted.'0 Elsewhere Vasari simply mentions "Jerome Hertogen Bos, Pieter Bruegel of Breda imitated him." However, in the passage that precedes this, he tells us that a certain Frans Mostaert "was of some skill in painting landscapes in oils and fantasies, bizarre things [bizzarrie], dreams, and imaginings."" We know very little about Frans Mostaert, except that he died young and probably painted landscapes,'2 and no works have survived from his hand that would fit Vasari's description of "fantasies, bizarre things, dreams, and imaginings." Perhaps these represent an unknown aspect of Mostaert's career as an imitator of Bosch;'3 perhaps Vasari confused Mostaert and Bosch at this point in his text. In any case, it is noteworthy that subject matter presumably not unlike Bosch's imagery was associated in Vasari's mind with dreams. It could be argued, of course, that these two, possibly three characterizations of Bosch's imagery as "dreams" may have only limited significance. After all, in addition to its primary meaning, the word dream in many languages-somnium, sogno, songe, Traum, droom-has always functioned as a synonym for vain imaginings, fantasies, and the like, that is, basically activities of the waking mind, particularly that part of it traditionally considered the seat of fantasy. Edmund
8 Lampson (as in n. 2), 61. When Carel van Mander translated this phrase in his biography of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, he rendered it as cloeckedroomen(C. van Mander, Het Schilder-Boeck, Haarlem, 1604; repr. Utrecht, 1969, fol. 234a). 9 Paolo Lomazzo, Scritti sulle arte, ed. R.P. Ciardi, 2 vols., Florence, 1973-74, II, 305. 10 G. Vasari, Le opere,ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols., Florence, 1878-85, v, 439. The Saint Martin print is illustrated in F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts,ca. 1450- 1700, Amsterdam (1951), IIn, 135, no. 16. Vasari may have obtained his information on Flemish painters from Lampsonius; see S. Sulzberger "Dominique Lampsonius et Italie," in MiscellaneaJ. Gessler,2 vols., Deurne, 1942, II, 1187-89. l Vasari, vii, 584. My quotations, with some emendations, are from G. Vasari, Lives of the Painters, trans. A.B. Hinds, London, Toronto, and New York, 1927, Iv, 253.

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1 Hieronymus Bosch, Hell, from the Gardenof EarthlyDelights. Madrid, Museo del Prado (? Museo del Prado)
12 For Frans Mostaert, see H.G. Franz, Niederldndische Landschaftsmalerei im Zeitalterdes Manierismus,2 vols., Graz, 1969, I, 237-238. 13 According to Van Mander (as in n. 8), fol. 261a, Frans was a pupil of the landscape painter Herri Bles, and his twin brother Gillis studied with Jan Mandyn, who produced many scenes in the style of Bosch. Is it possible that Van Mander was confused on this point? Perhaps Frans studied with Mandyn.

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2 Hieronymus Bosch, The Fall of the Damned.Venice, Palace of the Doges (photo: Osvaldo B6hm)

3 Hieronymus Bosch, Hell. Venice, Palace of the Doges (photo: Osvaldo B6hm)

Spenser, for example, attributes to "Phantastes" (fantasy or imagination personified) the power of creating "idle thoughts and fantasies/Devises and dreams," as well as "Infernal
14For some valuable remarks on the concept of fantasy in the Renaissance, see J.M. Massing, "Diirer's Dreams," Journal of the Warburgand CourtauldInstitutes,XLIx, 1986, 238-244.

Hags, Centaurs, Feendes, Hippodames," and similar creatures (Faerie Queene, ii, ix, 50).14 Thus it is possible that Michiel, Lampsonius, and Lomazzo were simply, and in a straightforward way, acknowledging Bosch's original and bizarre genius. But it is possible that Bosch's demonic art was also interpreted as the product of actual dreams. This is sug-

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4 Marcantonio Raimondi, The Dream of Raphael, engraving. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Exchange, 1931

5 Battista Dossi, Allegoryof Sleep. Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen (photo: Pfauder)

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6 Attributed to Herri Bles, Sodomand Gomorrah.Montreal, Mus6e des Beaux-Arts, Purchase, Horsley and Annie Townsend Bequest gested in striking fashion by a number of works of art in which his influence can be discerned. Perhaps the earliest instance, even earlier that Michiel's journal entry, can be found in an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi, done around 1507-08 (Fig. 4). It shows two nude women sleeping on the bank of a river; at their feet are four demonic creatures that, as many scholars have noted, have been inspired ultimately by Bosch.15 In the right middle ground a city burns beneath a heavy, cloud-filled sky. The print has been titled "The Dream of Raphael" for no apparent reason, and modern interpretations of its imagery are equally unconvincing.16 All that we can say for certain is that the monsters are clearly, if distantly, of Boschian origin and that the print was probably made when Raimondi was in Venice for a few years, where he may have seen some of Bosch's paintings. Perhaps he saw the panels owned by Cardinal Grimani, if they were indeed in his collection that early. Some years later, around 1540-45, Battista Dossi painted a work that is now in the picture gallery at Dresden (Fig. 5). Here we see only one sleeping woman, with a man kneeling or crouching behind her, but again they are accompanied by Boschian devils in the foreground and a city burning in the
15For previous literature, see I.H. Shoemaker and E. Broun, The Engravings of MarcantonioRaimondi, exh. cat., Lawrence, Kan., Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, and Chapel Hill, N.C., The Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, 1981, 74-75, cat. no. 12. It has been suggested that both Marcantonio's print and Battista Dossi's Allegoryof Sleep, discussed below, reflect a lost work by Giorgione, possibly a painting by him described in a Venetian inventory of 1705. '6 Ibid., 74. 17G. de Tervarent, "Instances of Flemish Influence in Italian Art," BurlingtonMagazine, Lxxv, 1944, 290-294. For the attribution of the two Dresden paintings to Battista Dossi, see F. Gibbons, Dosso and Battista Dossi, Princeton, N.J., 1968, 221-223, cat. nos. 91, 92.

distance. The subject shows many parallels with Raimondi's print, although in this case Guy de Tervarent has convincingly identified the male figure in Battista's painting as Somnus, the Roman god of slumber, and he interprets the picture as an allegory of Sleep, whose companion piece, a painting also at Dresden, shows Awakening in the guise of one of the Horae releasing the four steeds of Apollo from the stable." The burning city in the Allegory of Sleeprecalls many of the Bosch imitations of this period depicting the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Fig. 6).18 Battista may have seen some of the twenty fire scenes that were offered for sale to Federigo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, in 1535.19 The appearance of Boschian devils in the company of sleeping figures can be found in Northern Europe in at least three instances. One is a very curious painting, now in Strasbourg, produced in the region of Alsace probably sometime during the second quarter of the sixteenth century (Fig. 7).20 Executed in black highlighted with gold on a and cardboard, it shows a single support of papier-mAfch6 sleeping figure, this time a man, surrounded by a great variety of hellish creatures. These monsters are somewhat more indebted to the Flemish tradition of Boschian imagery
is See N.A. Corwin, "The Fire Landscape: Its Sources and Its Development from Bosch through Jan Brueghel I, with Special Emphasis on the Mid-Sixteenth Century Bosch 'Revival,' " Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1976, 78-89; Unverfehrt (as in n. 3), 201-222. 19W.S. Gibson, "Mirrorof the Earth": The WorldLandscapein SixteenthCenturyFlemish Painting, Princeton, 1989, 38, with further references. For the connections of Dosso and Battista Dossi with Mantua, see Gibbons (as in n. 17), 26, 29, 35. 20 I would like to thank Anny-Claire Haus, conservator of the Cabinet des Estampes, Strasbourg, for information on this painting. See also M. Zehnpfennig, "Traum" und "Vision"in Darstellungen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Ph.D. diss., Eberhard-Karls-Universitit, Tiibingen, 1979, 60-61, where the work is erroneously described as an engraving.

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7 School of Alsace, Sleeping Man with Monsters,ca. 1530. Strasbourg, Muste des Beaux-Arts (photo: Mustes de la Ville de Strasbourg) than we have seen in the two Italian works, and it may be that the anonymous artist had seen works by followers of Bosch working at Antwerp. Similarly, in contrast to their counterparts in the Italian works, the devils attack the sleeper. One demon holds a vessel vaguely resembling a urine flask above his victim; another jabs an implement of some sort into his side. It is no wonder, thus, that the sleeping man writhes in acute discomfort. The scene recalls traditional depictions of the temptation of Saint Anthony, but to my knowledge, the saint was never shown asleep. The second example is a drawing probably of Flemish origin, executed around the middle of the sixteenth century or shortly thereafter (Fig. 8).21 Once more we see a sleeping man, this time near the entrance of an imposing building, which apparently serves to house a hellish ritual of some sort. Flames leap from one of its windows; the door is approached by two mysterious figures, one ceremoniously bearing a candle. A horde of other monsters fills the courtyard and beyond; several more perch on the ruined tower at upper left. Many of these figures show disparate human, animal, and inanimate parts assembled with an inventiveness almost worthy of Bosch himself. Unlike their counterparts in the Alsatian painting, however, these creatures do not molest the sleeper physically. Squared for enlargement, the London drawing may have been a preliminary design for a cartoon intended for a painting, although no painted subject quite like this has come down to us in Flemish art. The third Northern example comes from France (Fig. 9). An anonymous woodcut, it also shows a sleeping male figure, here identified by the signboard suspended from a tree branch above his head as "Guillot le Songeur." The fantastic creatures who caper around him seem to have been influenced by several sheets of the Seven Deadly Vices, a series of prints issued by Hieronymus Cock around 1560 after Pieter Bruegel the Elder. This circumstance suggests that the French woodcut was executed sometime after this date.22 But who is "Guillot le Songeur"? Guillot appears in the French farces of the period as a name for peasants and servants.23 In

21 A.E. Popham, Catalogue of Drawings ky Dutch and FlemishArtists Preservedin theDepartmentofPrints and Drawings in the BritishMuseum,Vol. v. Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the XV and XVI Centuries, London, 1932, 200-201, no. 4, where it is attributed to a Bosch imitator around 1550-60. 22The connection with Bruegel's prints has been noted by, among others, J. Porcher, Les Songes drolatiquesde Pantagruel et l'imagerie en Franceau XVIesikcle, Paris, 1959, ix. 23 A. Tissier, Recueil defarces (1450-1550), 5 vols., Geneva, 1986-89, I, 190, n. 13. I would like to thank Professor Barbara Bowen for this reference.

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8 Flemish School, 16th century, Sleeping Man with Monsters,drawing. London, British Museum (courtesy: Museum)

9 French School, 16th century, Guillot le Songeur, woodcut, ca. 1560

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Marianne Zehnpfennig's discussion of this woodcut, she calls attention to a proverbial expression, "to lodge with Guillot the dreamer," said of someone who muses profoundly on how to extricate himself from a troublesome situation.24 Jean Adh mar has connected the print with an image described in a document published by de Thou in his edition of the memoirs of Louis I de Bourbon, Prince de Conde (153069).25 According to the document, which de Thou dated to sometime in May or June of 1561, the sleeping man is identified as Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, surrounded by his enemies, including the relatives of the Conde and Guise families and Marie de Medici. If this description can be accepted at face value, this would be the earliest and perhaps the only time that Bosch's imagery was employed for political propaganda. Finally we have a book, published at Paris in 1565, that contains a whole army of Boschian devils, in fact, one hundred and twenty of them (Figs. 10-12).26 No sleeping figures can be found among them, but on the title page (Fig. 13), these creatures are identified as "the droll dreams of Pantagruel ... the invention of Master Frangois Rabelais and the last work of the same, for the recreation of witty minds." The figures are not by Rabelais, of course, and they have very little to do with the admittedly odd creatures that we encounter in the adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel. However, the title under which the woodcuts appear may well have been inspired by the title of a poem by Frangois Habert, the Songes de Pantagruel, published at Paris in 1542.27 An account of how Pantagruel was visited in a series of dreams by Gargantua and Panurge, the poem is indebted to Rabelais only in the names of its characters, and it contains no references to monsters. Thus it is likely that the publisher of Les Songes drolatiques, Richard Breton, was simply exploiting names well known to the reading public. In the short text that prefaces the suite of woodcuts, the anonymous author (possibly Breton himself) tells us that "these figures are of a fashion as strange as one will be able to

find throughout the world, and I do not believe that Panurge has ever seen or known a more admirable country when he recently made his last sea journeys," a reference, perhaps, to the fifth book of Gargantua and Pantagruel, published in part in 1562. None of this does much to elucidate the meaning of the images. Indeed, the author explicitly states that others are more qualified than he to explicate the names of these creatures and their mystical or allegorical meanings. And never are we told why these monsters are labeled dreams. How can we account for this persistent association of Bosch's imagery with dreams? One possible answer is suggested by a subject popularized by Bosch's followers, the "Vision of Tundal." This was inspired by a medieval account of a visit to the otherworld by an Irish knight, Tundal, who returned to tell the living of his experiences.28 In most depictions of this subject, Tundal is shown awake, accompanied by a guardian angel, who points out to him the various torments of Hell.29 Occasionally, however, as in a panel in the Museo Laizaro Galdiano, Madrid (Fig. 14), Tundal is represented sleeping in one corner of the foreground. In these cases, it is evident that his vision has been interpreted as a dream whose contents occupy the space around him. Such pictures are relatively rare, however, and it is doubtful that they were sufficient to have initiated the deployment of Bosch's monsters in the context of the dream. We can also find little help in the popular "dream books" of the period, such as the Somnia Danielis, probably among the "books of dreams" condemned by Sebastian Brant in his Narrenschiff (chapter 65), or the Oneirocritzcon, written by Artemidoros of Daldis in the second century A.D. and published in many languages from the sixteenth century on.30 The interpretations offered by these volumes are as commonplace as those in their descendents, the modern dream books: to dream of a white garment, we are told, signifies joy; he who dreams of counting gold and silver may expect a prosperous time to come.31 References to monsters occur

24 Zehnpfennig (as in n. 20), 61, cites this proverb from A. Furetiere, et des arts, 3rd ed., Rotterdam, 1708, unzversel... des sczences Dzctzonnazre under songeur. I have consulted an earlier edition of Furetiere (The Hague and Rotterdam, 1691), II, 712, where the same proverb appears. 25 Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Conde, Memozresde Conde servant de M. de Thou. ..., 6 vols., London et de preuves al'hzstozre d'eclazrczssement and Paris, 1743, II, 655; cited by J. Adhemar, La Estampesatzriqueet burlesqueen France 1500-1800, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes, 1950, 4, no. 14. This interpretation is accepted by J. Baltrusaitis, Revezlset prodzges.Le Gothzque fantastzque,Paris, 1960, 303; and Zehnpfennig (as in n. 20), 61. The document in question, entitled "Brieve exposition de la painture ensuyvante que a este semee en France concernant le present estat de la Court," was discovered by de Thou in a manuscript (MSR. fol. 17.1) between a letter dated May 14, 1561 and one written in June of the same year. De Thou had already suggested that the "painture" was a print, possibly one preserved in the "Cabinet de quelques curieux." In the description of 1561, letters of the alphabet designate the various symbolic figures, but no such letters occur on the print illustrated here. 26 See Porcher (as in n. 22) with references to earlier literature; R. Mortimer, Harvard College Lzbrary,Departmentof Przntzngand Graphzc Part I. French 16th CenturyBooks, Arts, Catalogueof Booksand Manuscrzpts, 2 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1964, II, 612-613, no. 499. Mortimer notes an earlier suggestion that the figures were inspired by the Seven Deadly Vzces print series after Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

27 For a brief summary of this poem and its relationship to Les Songes de Rabelazs,Paris, see L. Sainean, L'Influenceet la rdputatzon drolatzques, 1930, 21-22. 28 For a good introduction to the Vision of Tundal, with further references, see T. Kren and R. Wieck, The Vzszons of of Tundalfrom the Lzbrary J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, Calif., 1990, 3-8. Margaretof York, 29 Zehnpfennig (as in n. 20), 13-14. See also Unverfehrt (as in n. 5), 220-223, and figs. 220-226, for the Madrid panel and other depictions of the Vision of Tundal by Bosch's followers. 30Sebastian Brant, The Shzpof Fools, trans. and commentary E.H. Zeidel, New York, 1944, repr. New York, 1962, 218. For the SomnzaDanzelzs,see A Multzlzngual Alphabetzcal MedzevalDreambook. S.R. Fisher, The Complete SomnzaDanzelis Collation, Bern and Frankfurt am Main, 1982. For this and other dream books of the period, see also W. Schmitt, "Das Traumbuch des Hans Loberzweig," Archzvfur Kulturgeschzchte, XLVIII, 1966, 181-217; G. Hoffmeister, "Rasis' Traumlehre. Traumbticher des LI, 1969, 137-159. I have fur Kulturgeschichte, Spitmittelalters," Archzv not been able to consult A.L. Browne, "16th Century Beliefs on Dream, with Special Reference to Girolamo Cardano's SomnzorumSyneszorum, Libri 4," Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1971. It may be noted in passing that Tolnay cited several of the old dream books to elucidate certain details of the central panel of the Gardenof EarthlyDelzghts;see C. de Tolnay, HzeronymusBosch, Basel, 1937, 67-68, nn. 97, 99, 100; Tolnay (as in n. 5), 362. 31 Fisher, 48 and 79 respectively.

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10 A Monster,woodcut illustration from Les Songes drolatiques de Pantagruel, Paris, 1565 (by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University)

11 A Monster,woodcut illustration from Les Songesdrolatiques de Pantagruel (by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University)

LE S

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DROLADE PANTAGRVEL,

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ou fontcontenues pluficurs figures dcmaiftreFrat. de l'inuention pois Rabelais:& derni, re aeuure d'celay, pourIarectcation des bons efprits.

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Par RichardBrcton,RueS. Iaques, i l'Efcreuiffei'argcnrt. M. D. LX V.
13 Title page from Les Songes drolatiques de Pantagruel (by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University)

12 A Monster,woodcut illustration from Les Songes drolatiquesde Pantagruel (by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University)

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14 Flemish School, Visionof Tundal, ca. 1530. Madrid, Museo LaizaroGaldiano

but rarely in the dream books. In one case, we are told that "you must understand, and hold in general, all that Monsters and impossibilities, according to the course of nature, are vain hopes of things that shall not fall out."32 Some enlightenment, however, can be found when we turn from the interpretation of specific dream images to more theoretical discussions of dreams in general, and here the great authority is the late Roman writer Macrobius (active ca. 400 A.D.), whose Commentaryon the Dream of Scipio was widely read throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Macrobius discerned five main types of dreams, the enigmatic dream (somnium), the prophetic dream (visio), the oracular dream (oraculum), the nightmare (insomnium), and the apparition (phantasma). Of these, the one most relevant for our purposes is the apparition, which "comes to one in the moment between wakefulness and slumber, in the so-

called 'first cloud of sleep': in this drowsy condition, he thinks he is still fully awake and imagines he sees specters rushing at him or wandering vaguely about, differing from natural creatures in size and shape, and a host of diverse things, either delightful or disturbing. To this class belongs the incubus, which, according to popular belief, rushes upon people in sleep and presses them with a weight they can feel."3 Except for the reference to "delightful" things, this may sound to the modern reader rather like the definition of a nightmare, but for Macrobius, the nightmare was only a dream in which the sleeper experiences "vexations similar to those that disturb him during the day."34 A nightmare of this type, incidentally, can be seen in a woodcut in the Von der Artzney bayder Gluck, des guten und widerwartigen, a German translation of Petrarch's De remediis, or Remedy of Fortune,

32 I quote from an English edition, The Interpretationof Dreams Digested into Five Books by that Ancient and Excellent PhilosopherArtimedorus ..., London, 1696, 79. on the Dream of Scipio, trans. and intro. with 33 Macrobius, Commentary

notes W.H. Stahl, New York, 1952, 87-92; for the phantasma or apparition, see p. 89. For the popularity of Macrobius's text in the Middle Ages, see pp. 41-42. 34 Macrobius, 88-89.

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15 A Nightmare, woodcut from Von derArtzneybayder Gluck,des guten und widerwartigen, Augsburg, 1532 (photo: Mus6es de la Ville de Strasbourg)

16 Lucas van Leyden, OrnamentwzthTwo Sphinxesand a Wznged Man, 1528, engraving (courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Rosenwald Collection)

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ii dorfo. ch' bauerpotrebbe lacerato can Mapoco,al, chei gli danla caccia, Et d'ogniparte 'bantrafittoer morfo, Si traggondelpadron ltingata fame.

the vedebenfe qindinon jilpfaccia,

Et benchbe eigridi, e i canper nonecbiatne,

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17 Page with woodcut border decoration from La vita et metamorfoseo d'Ovidio,Lyons, 1559 (photo: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.)

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published at Augsburg in 1532 (Fig. 15).35 Illustrating Book II, chapter 87, "Von der Unruhsamheit der Traume," the woodcut shows an avaricious woman in bed, her sleep troubled by the dream of a thief stealing her purse. The dream is materialized in the miniature figure of a man fleeing across her bedcovers, as a devil stands at the left, jabbing her pillow with a long grappling hook.36 The action of the devil suggests that he is ultimately the cause of the sleeper's nightmare. But long before the Augsburg publication, the nightmare, like the apparition, had become associated with the incubus and sucubus, and other devils, as well as their intimate associate, the witch. Indeed, the word "nightmare" in several languages also designated "witch."37And it seems to be precisely this type of nightmare that is the subject of the Alsatian painting (Fig. 7), where the sleeper is besieged, not necessarily by sucubi or incubi, but certainly by a swarm of infernal creatures who cause his nocturnal unrest. There is, however, still another route through which Boschian imagery could have come to be linked with dreams. In the Ars poetzca, composed by Horace in the first century B.C. and highly influential in the Renaissance, the writer asks us, "If a painter chose to join a human head to the neck of a horse, and to spread feathers of many a hue over limbs picked up now here now there, so that what at the top is a lovely woman ends up below in a black and ugly fish, could you, my friends, refrain from laughing? Believe me ... quite like such pictures would be a book whose idle fancies shall be shaped like a sick man's dreams [velut aegri somnia], so that neither head nor foot can be assigned to a single shape."38 Hybrid forms much like those described by Horace were in fact employed by Roman artists in their wall paintings and stucco work. We know this from the heated condemnation of this type of ornament expressed by Vitruvius in his Ten Books on Architecture (vii. 5),39 and from numerous examples that have survived from the ancient world.40 The most notable instance can be found in the so-called Domus Aurea of Nero

at Rome, in portions of the ruins mistakenly identified by the Renaissance as grottos. The decorations thus known as grotteschi, or grotesques, were widely imitated all over Europe (Fig. 16). And it could have been the memory of Horace's characterization of such monstrosities as the product of "a sick man's dreams" that inspired Daniele Barbaro, in his Italian translation of Vitruvius published in 1556, to describe grotesques as "deformities of nature, mixed of various species. Certainly as fantasy in a dream, they represent confusedly the images of things," and he concluded that grotesques "are called [the] dreams of painting."41 It cannot be denied that Bosch's demonic repertory has much in common with the grotesque. Both systems of imagery fuse fragments of various human, animal, and vegetable forms, as well as inanimate objects, into new entities, often with great ingenuity and sometimes with a total disregard for the original functions of their constituent parts. That these similarities were evident to sixteenthfiguree, century viewers as well is suggested by a Metamorphose an illustrated book based on Ovid's Metamorphoses,published by Jean de Tournes at Lyons in 1556-57 and in an Italian edition in 1559.42 A number of pages display woodcut borders in which Renaissance grotesques mingle with fanciful composite creatures whose Boschian ancestry is clearly apparent (Fig. 17). Several scholars, in fact, have related them in style both to the woodcuts in the Songes drolatiquesof 1565 and to the Guillot le Songeur.43 Further study might reveal other incursions of Boschian devils into the playful world of sixteenth-century decoration. But whether Bosch's repertory of monster types was assimilated to the Renaissance grotesque or was interpreted as the product of nightmares, these two phenomena have at least one thing in common: in both, Bosch's devils are treated not as realities, not even metaphysical ones, but as phantoms, as the apparitions of a mind whose reason is in abeyance, suppressed in sleep. It was in this manner, we may suppose, that Bosch's terrifying evocations of the eternal night of the damned were transformed into the stuff of dreams.

35The chapter is entitled De znquietudine somnzorum;see Petrarch's Remediesfor Fortune Fazr and Foul. A Modern Englzsh Translatzonof De by C.H. Rawski, 5 vols., remedzzs utrzusqueFortune wzth a Commentary, Bloomington, Ind., 1991, III, 203. I am very grateful to Dr. Rawski for letting me consult the typescript of his translation before it went to press. 36See W. Scheidig, Dze Holzschnztte des Petrarca-Mezsters, Berlin, 1955, 290, with further references. 37 "Wytche, clephyd nighte mare" can be found in a text of 1440; see The 2nd ed., 20 vols., Oxford, 1989, xx, 438, under OxfordEnglzshDzctionary, de la languefranfazse, 2 vols. wztch,sec. Id. See also E. Littre, Dzctzonnazre in 4 pts. with Supplement,Paris, 1863-97, 1, pt. 1, 508, under cauchemar. The equation of cauchemarand witch in the 16th century is noted by R. Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France 1400-1750, trans. L. Cochrane, Baton Route, La., and London, 1985, 84. 38 Horace, Satzres,Epzstlesand Ars Poetzca,trans. H.R. Fairclough (Loeb Classical Library), London and New York, 1970, 451. This passage has already been cited in connection with Bosch by H. Hollander, Hzeronymus Bosch. Weltbzlder und Traumwerk,3rd rev. ed., Cologne, 1988, 120, 129. For the popularity of Horace in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, see R.R. Bolgar, The Classzcal Heritage and Its Beneficzarzes from the Carolngzan Age to the End of the Renaissance, New York, etc., 1964, 125 passzm.

trans. M.H. Morgan, ed. 39 Pollio Vitruvius, The Ten Bookson Archztecture, H.L. Warren, Cambridge, Mass., 1914, repr. New York, 1960, 211, par. 3. 40 N. Dacos, La Dicouvertede la DomusAurea et a laformatzondesgrotesques la Renazssance,London and Leiden, 1969. 41 Cited from Dacos, 123-124. Dacos, 129-132, notes that there were other writers of the 16th century who took ancient grotesque decoration much more seriously, considering its forms as pregnant in meaning as the Hzeroglyphzcs of Horapollo. One of these was Pirro Ligorio, who nevertheless describes grotesques as "fantastic forms as of dreams"; see D.R. Coffin, "Pirro Ligorio and Decoration of the Late Sixteenth Century at Ferrara,"Art Bulletzn,xxxvII, 1955, 182. 42 Illustrated here is a page from the Italian edition, La vzta et metamorfoseo d'Ovzdzo.., Lyons, Jean de Tourne, 1559. See the entry on this book by S.S. Gibson in BookIllustratzons from Szx Centurzes of zn the Lzbrary the Sterlzng and Francine Clark Art Instztute, ed. S. Roeper, exh. cat., Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., 1990, 35, cat. no. 5. 43 See Mortimer (as in n. 26), 506-507, no. 405.

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hhis is Bruegel ; Bruegel; Hi s His European European journal s. journals. Worl d Landoof f tthe he ThThe e isis "Mi rror Eart h": World Landmomost st recent ok "Mirror Earth": recent bbook nceoof f tthe he Sixteenth inin Fl emish PrinceSixteenth Century, Flemish Century, Pri Pai nting Painting sscape cape Reserve West e rn Ca s e 1 9 8 9 t, Case Western Reserve University, ton, 1989 [Department University, ton, oof f ArArt, [Department io Cleveland, Cleveland, OhOhio 44106]. 44106].
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