For the first time in Milan, a tribute to the illustrious Flemish master through a major international exhibition at the Palazzo Reale curated by Bernard Aikema, Fernando Checa Cremades and Claudio Salsi.
The project, conceived as a journey into the visionary imagination of Bosch, famous for his monstrous creatures, fantastic figures and dreamlike scenarios, traced a dialogue between his masterpieces and the works of great Flemish, Italian and Spanish masters. This comparison highlighted Bosch’s influence not only in the artistic context of his time, but also on subsequent generations.
The exhibition at the Royal Palace is not a traditional monographic exhibition, but an encounter between masterpieces attributed to Hieronymus Bosch and important works by other Flemish, Italian, and Spanish masters, in a confrontation that aims to illustrate how an “other” Renaissance-not exclusively Italian and not only Bosch-influenced major artists, including Titian, Raphael, Gerolamo Savoldo, Dosso Dossi, El Greco, and many others.
The exhibition project is the result of five years of intensive research work and the creation of an unprecedented network of international cultural cooperation involving governments, embassies, museums, cultural institutes and collectors. The exhibition stands out for the narrative power of an entire artistic era and for the importance and variety of comparisons it offers. Outstanding among the exceptional loans are the monumental Triptych of the Temptations of St. Anthony, coming to Italy for the first time from the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, and the Triptych of the Last Judgment, from the Groeningemuseum in Bruges. Also featured are extraordinary works such as The Temptations of Saint Anthony from the Prado Museum, the panel painting Saint John the Baptist from the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, and the Triptych of the Hermits from the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, which belonged to Cardinal Domenico Grimani, one of the most distinguished Bosch collectors in Italy.
The exhibition also offers an extraordinary opportunity for a comparison of the four tapestries of the Forest-derived Granvelle series from the Escorial and owned by the Patrimonio Nacional de Espana and the cartoon of the fifth tapestry, now lost, that has been identified in the collections of the Uffizi Galleries. It is important to emphasize the enormous artistic and economic value of tapestry in sixteenth-century European culture, as it represented a genuine status symbol of the elite. In this sense, the possibility of admiring, thanks to the loans from the Escorial and the Uffizi Galleries, the entire cycle of Woodland tapestries constitutes a unique opportunity. The four tapestries from the Escorial, in fact, have never been exhibited together outside their original location, and the comparison with the cartoon of the Elephant, relating to the fifth tapestry in the series, which is currently lost, is an absolute novelty.
Concluding the journey, the audiovisual work Tríptiko by Karmachina immersed visitors in Bosch’s dreamlike universe, inspired by the Garden of Delights with evocative music by Fernweh to celebrate the journey between dream and reality.