Object data
oil on panel
support: height 51.2 cm × width 80.8 cm
Jheronimus Bosch (manner of)
The Arrest of Christ
c. 1530 - c. 1550
Technical notes
The support consists of two horizontally grained oak planks (24 and 26.8 cm). The panel has been thinned down to a thickness of 0.3-0.4 cm, and is cradled. The remains of bevels are present on the right and left sides. The bottom of the panel has been slightly trimmed. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1445. The panel could have been ready for use by 1456, but a date in or after 1470 is more likely. The white ground was probably applied in the fixed frame; the edges of the left and right sides and the top are unpainted and have a barbe. No clear underdrawing is visible with the naked eye, nor could one be detected with infrared reflectography. Some lines in the folds of St Peter’s garments could be underdrawing. The figures were reserved, and the paint layers were applied thickly and with little detail.
Scientific examination and reports
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 25 May 2000
- condition report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 19 March 2007
- infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RMA, no. RKDG466, 19 March 2007
Condition
Fair. The paint layers are slightly abraded. There is discoloured retouching along the join and the horizontal cracks.
Conservation
- H.H. Mertens, 1934: overpaint on St Peter's sword removed
- H.H. Mertens, 1967
Provenance
...; from the dealer Reinier Willem Petrus de Vries, Amsterdam, fl. 80,000, to the museum, with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1930; on loan to the Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch, since 2001
Object number: SK-A-3113
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jheronimus Bosch (’s-Hertogenbosch c. 1450 - ’s-Hertogenbosch 1516), manner of
Jheronimus Bosch came from a prodigiously artistic family. His great-grandfather, Thomas van Aken, his grandfather Jan and his father Antonius were all painters. His grandfather left Aachen for Nijmegen and then moved to ’s-Hertogenbosch, where he is first documented in 1427. Four of his sons became painters as well. The youngest, Antonius, married Aleid van der Mynnen, and their three sons, Goessen, Jheronimus and Jan all once again followed their father’s profession.
Bosch is mentioned – usually with just his forename Jheronimus or Jeroen – in a number of documents drawn up in ’s-Hertogenbosch between 1474 and 1516. In the earliest of them, dated 5 April 1474, he acted together with his father and brothers as witnesses for his sister Katherijn. The artist used the toponym Bosch to sign a few of his works ‘Jheronimus Bosch’. He probably trained in his father’s workshop.
Between July 1477 and June 1481, Bosch married Aleid van der Meervenne, who was born into quite a well-to-do family in Oirschot, a village south of ’s-Hertogenbosch. In the city they moved into her house, ‘Inden Salvator’ (In the Saviour), but it is not known precisely when. Bosch became prosperous, thanks to his wife, and began moving in the city’s higher social circles, which included the influential Brotherhood of Our Lady. He became an ordinary member in 1486-87, and was elected a sworn brother the following year, 1487-88. That Jheronimus Bosch was quite well off can be deduced from tax returns. Bosch was probably one of the victims of an outbreak of the plague in ’s-Hertogenbosch in the summer of 1516. He was buried in the churchyard of the city’s St Janskerk. His patrons belonged to the circle of the Burgundian Habsburg Court and the wealthy bourgeoisie in Brabant.
Regrettably, the surviving documents contain little information about Bosch’s activities as an artist. The only documented commission for a painting dates from September 1504, when he was asked to paint a Last Judgement for Philip the Handsome, Duke of Brabant, which indicates that he was a recognised artist. Apart from that, only a few minor commissions are recorded, among others for polychroming an altarpiece and for designing a crucifix.
Opinions on the attribution of the paintings differ considerably. None of the paintings are dated, and their chronology is the subject of much discussion. Until 2010, more than 30 paintings were attributed to Bosch, of which nine are signed ‘Jheronimus Bosch’. Between 2010 and 2015 the Dutch Bosch Research and Conservation Project (BRCP) investigated most of them and concluded that whereas 21 are works made by the master himself, four are from his workshop, seven were executed by followers, and two are either made by his workshop or by a follower.1
Eight of these 21 paintings are triptychs: The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych,2 probably commissioned by Engelbert van Nassau (1451-1504), the two versions of The Haywain,3 The Last Judgement, signed,4 The Last Judgement with Saint James the Apostle and Saint Bavo (or Saint Hippolyte),5 The Temptation of St Antony, signed,6 Hermits Saints Triptych Sts Jerome, Antony and Giles, signed,7 The Adoration of the Magi,8 and The Martyrdom of St Wilgefortis, signed ‘Julia’ (?).9 Three individual panels are also signed: St John on Patmos,10 St Christopher,11 and Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins.12
Although most specialists now agree that other members of the workshop participated in the execution of many of Bosch’s works, Koreny attributed a number of major works, such as The Haywain triptych, the Lissabon triptych and The Last Judgement in Bruges, to his pupils.13 To complicate matters, several works are known only through copies. Jheronimus Bosch was hugely popular in the second half of the 16th century, and this gave rise to the large number of copies and pastiches executed long after his death that have survived. The latter group (see SK-A-3113, SK-A-1601, SK-A-3240, SK-A-1673, SK-A-4131) consists of new inventions in Bosch’s style using elements or quotations from his paintings.
References
Van Mander 1604, fols. 216v-17r; Cohen in Thieme/Becker IV, 1910, pp. 386-90; Friedländer V, 1927, pp. 70-106; De Tolnay 1937, pp. 75-82; Baldass 1943, pp. 5-82; De Tolnay 1965, pp. 407-08; Gerlach 1967; ENP V, 1969, pp. 45-58; Marijnissen 1987, pp. 11-14; Miedema III, 1996, pp. 48-58; Gibson in Saur XIII, 1996, pp. 160-62; Vandenbroeck in Turner 1996, IV, pp. 445-54; Van Dijck 2001, pp. 139-205; Vink 2001; Silver 2006, pp. 127-59; Huys Janssen 2007; Koreny 2012, pp. 86-113; ’s-Hertogenbosch 2016, pp. 11-12; Schwartz 2016, pp. 36-52; Ilsink et al. 2016, pp. 13-32; Madrid 2016, pp. 17-41; BoschDoc
J. Bogers, 2010
Updated by J.P. Filedt Kok, 2016
Entry
By the light of a torch, Christ is being arrested by a soldier drawing his dagger on the left. On the right, St Peter clad in a red robe is waving his dagger over the head of Malchus, who is biting Peter’s arm and warding him off by thrusting a lantern into his face. To the right of Christ’s resigned countenance is the repulsive head of Judas and two other men. Behind this group of figures, all of them half-lengths, is a rock on the left and a bush on the right.
The figure group is very similar to the one on the left wing with The Arrest of Christ of the Triptych with Christ Crowned with Thorns in Valencia (fig. a).14 Another version of the centre panel of that triptych is a copy after Christ Crowned with Thorns in the Escorial,15 which Verougstraete and Van Schoute rightly regarded as a pastiche combining elements from the Christ Crowned with Thorns in London,16 and Christ Carrying the Cross in the Escorial.17 The latter two works are attributed to Jheronimus Bosch with a fair degree of certainty.18 The immediate models for the left wing with The Arrest of Christ of the Valencia triptych are not as clear, but the caricature faces of the soldiers are closely related to those in the other panels of the triptych, and are undoubtedly by the same Bosch follower. Little change was made to the figure group in the Amsterdam panel, but the composition itself was broadened to make it as half the height of the Valencia panel.19
Unverfehrt had already spotted these relationships between the different versions of The Arrest of Christ (in Valencia and elsewhere) and that in Amsterdam in 1980, and attributed them all to the Master of the Passion Triptych in Valencia, whom he placed in Antwerp around 1520-30.20 The dendrochronological dating of the centre panel of the Valencia triptych (with the youngest heartwood ring formed in 1506) and the version of the Christ Crowned with Thorns in the Escorial, the dendrochronological dating of the latter (with the youngest heartwood ring formed in 1516) gives a terminus post quem of c. 1530 for our pastiche.21
The dendrochronological dating of the Amsterdam panel allows for a very early date. It could have been painted as early as c. 1456. That, though, is completely at odds with the style of the scene, which as noted above is an imitation or pastiche in the manner of Bosch. In addition to the Amsterdam version there are two others of The Arrest of Christ which can also be dated later on stylistic grounds.22
The Amsterdam Arrest of Christ was bought in 1930 as a genuine Jheronimus Bosch for the sizable sum of 80,000 guilders. Max J. Friedländer backed the attribution at the time. The acquisition of a painting by Jheronimus Bosch was at the top of the wish list of Frederik Schmidt-Degener, the Rijksmuseum’s director-general, after a three-year loan of The Ship of Fools from the Louvre ended in 1930. Shortly after the Rijksmuseum’s purchase, Bosch’s Prodigal Son from the Figdor collection was auctioned in Vienna and bought by the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam for 262,000 guilders - considerably more than the Rijksmuseum had paid for its painting. This was due to ‘the difference [...] between a masterpiece and a piece of rubbish’, as E. Heldring, the then chairman of the Vereniging Rembrandt, wrote in his diary. Doubts were being raised about the attribution to Bosch in the press very soon after the purchase of The Arrest of Christ,23 and not long afterwards Friedländer expressed his regret at the expert opinion he had given and had to conclude that it was a copy. As a result, The Arrest of Christ disappeared from the permanent display after the war.
J. Bogers, 2010
Literature updated by J.P. Filedt Kok, 2016
Literature
Henkel 1931, p. 273 (as Bosch); Friedländer XIV, 1937, p. 101; De Tolnay 1937, p. 102, no. 43 (as copy after a lost original by Bosch); Baldass 1943, p. 43 (as copy after a lost original by Bosch); Ringbom 1965, pp. 163-65 (as copy after a lost original by Bosch); De Tolnay 1965, p. 380, no. 43 (as copy after a lost original by Bosch); ’s-Hertogenbosch 1967, p. 102, no. 20 (as copy); Arndt 1968, p. 5; Gerlach 1968, p. 380; ENP V, 1969, p. 91, no. supp. 132; Unverfehrt 1975, p. 119; Unverfehrt 1980, pp. 127-29, 255, no. 33a; Rotterdam 2001, p. 227, no. 14.3; Verougstraete/Van Schoute 2006, pp. 147-52; De Vrij 2012, p. 526, no. D.9
Collection catalogues
1934, p. 58, no. 589a (as Bosch); 1960, pp. 51-52, no. 588 A2 (as school of Bosch); 1976, p. 135, no. A 3113 (as copy after Bosch)
Citation
J. Bogers, 2010, 'manner of Jheronimus Bosch, The Arrest of Christ, c. 1530 - c. 1550', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6184
(accessed 10 November 2024 04:06:33).