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
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Bosch's Dreams: A Response
in the Sixteenth Century
WalterS. Gibson
For ConradRawskz
In such works as the Vienna LastJudgment Triptych and the
Hell panel of the Gardenof EarthlyDelights(Fig. 1), Hierony-
mus 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 contemporar-
ies 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 be-
cause 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
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., Vzszonsof
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
despezntrescdlibresdes Pay-Bas, ed. J. Puraye, Liege, 1956, 61, no. 19.
3For a good survey of Bosch's influence, see G. Unverfehrt, Hzeronymus
Bosch.Die RezeptionseznerKunstzmfruihen16.Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1980.
4 Der AnonzmoMorellano (MarcantonMzchzel'sNotzzzad'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 AnonymousWrzterin 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-
to the Art of Bosch
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 signifi-
cant 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 theolo-
gians 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 nonethe-
less persistent, and it finds expression, moreover, in litera-
ture and especially in art.
ings as a "Fortune with the whale swallowingJonah" may seem
enigmatic,but in the MiddleAges and Renaissance,"fortune"wasoften
used as a synonymfor "storm";see E. Wind, Giorgzone's Tempesta wzth
Comments on Giorgione'sPoetzc Oxford, 1969, 3, 20, n. 7.
Allegories,
5 For this identification,see C. de Tolnay, Hzeronymus Bosch,Baden-
Baden, 1966, 353; and G. Martinand M. Cinotti,TheComplete Pazntings
ofBosch,London, 1969, 98, no. 26. Forthe subjectmatterof the Heaven
and Hell panels, see A. Chatelet, "Surun Jugement dernier de Dieric
Bouts,"Nederlands xvI, 1965, 17-42, esp. 27-28.
kunsthzstorzschjaarboek,
6 See Unverfehrt in n.
(as 3), 22.
7 In a manualfor exorcismwrittenin the 15th century,a soul from Hell
is asked,"isnot the loss of seeing Christin personthe most painfulof all
tortures?"See A. Gurevich,MedzevalPopularCulture:Problems of Belief
and Perception,trans.J. M. Bak and P. A. Hollingsworth,Cambridge,
Paris,etc., 1988, 248, n. 19. For the Poenadamnz,or Painof Loss,as the
majortormentof the damned, see C. A. Patrides,Premises andMotifszn
Renaissance ThoughtandLzterature, Princeton,N.J., 1982, 185-186, with
furtherreferences.
206 THE ART BULLETIN JUNE 1992 VOLUME LXXIV NUMBER 2

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 mas-
ter'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 4"
that he says was published after Bosch by Hieronymus Cock;
most likely this is the print of the Feast of Saint Martin -4W
inscribed "Jheronimus bos inventor," although Bosch's re-
sponsibility for the original design may be doubted.'0 Else-
where 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 i0,00
"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 descrip-
tion 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
"k'k
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. 1 Hieronymus Bosch, Hell, from the Gardenof EarthlyDelights.
10 G. Vasari, Le
opere,ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols., Florence, 1878-85, v, 439. Madrid, Museo del Prado (? Museo del Prado)
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 12 For Frans Mostaert, see H.G.
Franz, NiederldndischeLandschaftsmalerei
Flemish painters from Lampsonius; see S. Sulzberger "Dominique im Zeitalterdes Manierismus,2 vols., Graz, 1969, I, 237-238.
Lampsonius et Italie," in MiscellaneaJ. Gessler,2 vols., Deurne, 1942, II, 13
According to Van Mander (as in n. 8), fol. 261a, Frans was a pupil of
1187-89. the landscape painter Herri Bles, and his twin brother Gillis studied with
l Vasari, vii, 584. My quotations, with some emendations, are from G. Jan Mandyn, who produced many scenes in the style of Bosch. Is it
Vasari, Lives of the Painters, trans. A.B. Hinds, London, Toronto, and possible that Van Mander was confused on this point? Perhaps Frans
New York, 1927, Iv, 253. studied with Mandyn.
 A 16TH-CENTURY RESPONSE TO BOSCH 207

i.
*,V,
....

Y"
• ,

. ....

"'00 , ,,,!'
...

,,

''J"

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 Renais-
sance, see J.M. Massing, "Diirer's Dreams," Journal of the Warburgand
CourtauldInstitutes,XLIx, 1986, 238-244.
Hags, Centaurs, Feendes, Hippodames," and similar crea-
tures (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-
208 THE ART BULLETIN JUNE 1992 VOLUME LXXIV NUMBER 2

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)


6 Attributed to Herri Bles, Sodomand Gomorrah.Montreal, Mus6e des Beaux-Arts, Pur-
chase, 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 uncon-
vincing.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.
A 16TH-CENTURY RESPONSE TO BOSCH 209
distance. The subject shows many parallels with Raimondi's
print, although in this case Guy de Tervarent has convinc-
ingly 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 Allegoryof Sleeprecalls many
of the Bosch imitations of this period depicting the destruc-
tion 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
support of papier-mAfch6and cardboard, it shows a single
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 Develop-
ment 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 Sixteenth-
CenturyFlemish 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.
210 THE ART BULLETIN JUNE 1992 VOLUME LXXIV NUMBER 2
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 counter-
parts 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,
21
A.E. Popham, Catalogue of Drawings ky Dutch and FlemishArtists Pre-
servedin 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.
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 influ-
enced 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
 A 16TH-CENTURY RESPONSE TO BOSCH 211

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
212 THE ART BULLETIN JUNE 1992 VOLUME LXXIV NUMBER 2
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 (1530-
69).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, sur-
rounded 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 Panta-
gruel. 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
24 Zehnpfennig (as in n. 20), 61, cites this proverb from A. Furetiere,
Dzctzonnazre unzversel... des sczenceset des arts, 3rd ed., Rotterdam, 1708,
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
d'eclazrczssement de M. de Thou. ..., 6 vols., London
et de preuves al'hzstozre
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 Gothzquefantastzque,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
Arts, Catalogueof Booksand Manuscrzpts,Part I. French 16th CenturyBooks,
2 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1964, II, 612-613, no. 499. Mortimer notes
an earlier suggestion that the figures were inspired by the Seven Deadly
Vzcesprint series after Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
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 sug-
gested 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, accompa-
nied 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 pub-
lished in many languages from the sixteenth century on.30
The interpretations offered by these volumes are as common-
place 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
27 For a brief summary of this poem and its relationship to Les Songes
drolatzques,see L. Sainean, L'Influenceet la rdputatzonde Rabelazs,Paris,
1930, 21-22.
28 For a good introduction to the Vision of Tundal, with further refer-
ences, see T. Kren and R. Wieck, The Vzszonsof Tundalfrom the Lzbraryof
Margaretof York,J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, Calif., 1990, 3-8.
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
S.R. Fisher, The CompleteMedzevalDreambook.A MultzlzngualAlphabetzcal
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
Spitmittelalters," Archzvfur Kulturgeschichte,LI, 1969, 137-159. I have
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.
 A 16TH-CENTURY RESPONSE TO BOSCH 213

11 A Monster,woodcut illustration from Les Songesdrolatiquesde

10 A Monster,woodcut illustration from Les Songes drolatiquesde Pantagruel (by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard
Pantagruel, Paris, 1565 (by permission of the Houghton Li- University)
brary, Harvard University)
LE S
SONG ES
DROLA-
DE PANTAGRVEL,
TIQVES .
ou fontcontenuespluficursfigures
de l'inuentiondcmaiftreFrat.
pois Rabelais:&
derni••,
re aeuured'celay,
pourIarectcation
des bons
efprits.

A P ARI S,
Par RichardBrcton,RueS. Iaques,
i l'Efcreuiffei'argcnrt.
M. D. LX V.
12 A Monster,woodcut illustration from Les Songes drolatiquesde
Pantagruel (by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard 13 Title page from Les Songes drolatiquesde Pantagruel (by per-
University) mission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University)
214 THE ART BULLETIN JUNE 1992 VOLUME LXXIV NUMBER 2
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 enig-
matic 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-
32 I quote from an English edition, The Interpretationof Dreams Digested
into Five Books by that Ancient and Excellent PhilosopherArtimedorus ...,
London, 1696, 79.
33 Macrobius, Commentaryon the Dream of Scipio, trans. and intro. with
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,
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.
 A 16TH-CENTURY RESPONSE 10 BOSCH 215

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

16 Lucas van Leyden, OrnamentwzthTwo Sphinxesand a WzngedMan, 1528, engraving (courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C., Rosenwald Collection)
216 THE ART BULLETIN JUNE 1992 VOLUME LXXIV NUMBER 2

Ateone lacerato da fuoi Cani. 4 3

11 rifer
Cacciatorcangiardificcia
comeffjnte, affiettatofloil corfo,
the vedebenfeqindinon
jilpfaccia,
ch' bauerpotrebbe laceratoii dorfo.
Mapoco,al, chei can gli danla caccia,
Et d'ogniparte 'bantrafittoer morfo,
eigridi, e i canper nonecbiatne,
Et benchbe
Si traggondelpadronltingata fame.
d 4
17 Page with
woodcut bor-
der decora-
tion from La
vita et meta-
morfoseo
d'Ovidio,Ly-
ons, 1559
(photo: Ster-
ling and Fran-
cine Clark Art
Institute,
Williamstown,
Mass.)

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
35The chapter is entitled De znquietudine somnzorum;see Petrarch's
Remediesfor Fortune Fazr and Foul. A Modern Englzsh Translatzonof De
remedzzsutrzusqueFortune wzth a Commentary,by C.H. Rawski, 5 vols.,
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 Holzschnzttedes Petrarca-Mezsters,Berlin, 1955,
290, with further references.
37 "Wytche, clephyd nighte mare" can be found in a text of 1440; see The
OxfordEnglzshDzctionary,2nd ed., 20 vols., Oxford, 1989, xx, 438, under
wztch,sec. Id. See also E. Littre, Dzctzonnazrede la languefranfazse, 2 vols.
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, Hzerony-
mus Bosch. Weltbzlderund 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 Beneficzarzesfrom the
Carolngzan Age to the End of the Renaissance, New York, etc., 1964, 125
passzm.
A 16TH-CENTURY RESPONSE TO BOSCH 217
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 sixteenth-
century viewers as well is suggested by a Metamorphosefiguree,
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 fanci-
ful 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 assimi-
lated 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.
39 Pollio Vitruvius, The Ten Bookson Archztecture,trans. M.H. Morgan, ed.
H.L. Warren, Cambridge, Mass., 1914, repr. New York, 1960, 211, par.
3.
40 N. Dacos, La Dicouvertede la DomusAurea et
laformatzondesgrotesquesa
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 Hzeroglyphzcsof 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 metamor-
foseo d'Ovzdzo.., Lyons, Jean de Tourne, 1559. See the entry on this
book by S.S. Gibson in BookIllustratzonsfrom Szx Centurzeszn the Lzbraryof
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.
 BULLETIN 11992
92 VOLUME LXXIV NUMBER 22
218
218 TTHE
HE AART
RT BULLETIN JUNE
JUNE VOLUME LXXIV NUMBER

WalWalter
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ton,
ton, 1989 [Department
1 9 8 9 [Department f ArArt,
oof t, Case Western Reserve University,
Ca s e West e rn Reserve University,
Cleveland, OhOhio
Cleveland, io 44106].
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