Iconology of the Wayfarer Triptych – Detail

#102

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

This image scholars have long associated with the Ars moriendi tradition, the Art of Dying Well, known from both didactic texts as well as engravings (Master E.S.) and woodcuts [Marijnissen, 1987; Ars moriendi, ca. 1415-1450; Schreiber & Zimmermann, 1937, 1121-1127; Binski, 1996, 39-43]. Bosch follows this tradition in showing the dying man on his deathbed receiving the last rites, the sacrament of unction. Paired on his headboard but unseen by him or by any of the visitors and officiants at his bedside, both an angel and a demon will wrestle for his soul, along with the skeletal figure of Death at the door, arrow in hand and pointed at the dying man. This is the same scenario that Bosch (in a painting equally marked by pentimenti but painted with the utmost skill, in contrast to the Prado deathbed) produced in a wing panel, Death of the Usurer. [O’Connor, 1942; Hand & Wolff, 1986, 16-22]. (p.629)

Silver, 2001

God in the Details: Bosch and Judgment(s)

#122

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

He is dressed in the same manner as the Jew in the Schedelchronik of 1493, wearing old-fashioned headgear [Schedel, 1493, 296]. (p. 38)

Hartau, 2005 (Bosch and the Jews)

Bosch and the Jews

#123

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The usurer lies on his bed in a vacillating attitude, caught between Christian thoughts of redemption and a tenacious attraction to worldly pleasures. With one hand he reaches for a moneybag held by a toad-like monster, with the other he is pointing in the direction of death (originally this hand held a goblet; perhaps he wants to bargain with death). This indecisive vacillation was the general lot of Christians, as addressed, for instance, by St. Augustine [Labonnardiere, 1957, 137ff.; Quinot, 1962, 129ff.; Gérard, 1486-1487; Bax, 1979, pp. 320-324, note 10]. (pp. 39-40)

Hartau, 2005 (Bosch and the Jews)

Bosch and the Jews

#230

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

It is the old and familiar scene of the Ars moriendi [Ars moriendi, ca. 1415-1450]. Death peers in at the door and aims with an arrow at the heart of the patient. Demons menace him and his guardian angel stands by him. In the foreground we see the absorbing passion of his life: the hoarding of riches to the delight of the evil spirits… The hour of death might be an illustration of these words. The preliminary drawing is apparent throughout the whole picture. A ray of sun pierces the glass pane with the crucifix, to which the angel directs the attention of the dying man. Evil demons creep out from below the ancestral furniture and the heraldic timber like rats to present at the deathbed the reckoning in the form of a thick bag of gold. (p. 33)

Benesch, 1957

Hieronymus Bosch and the thinking of the late Middle Ages.

#259

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

… show people wasting their lives on pleasure and wealth. (p. 24)

Schwartz, 1997

Hieronymus Bosch: First impressions

#307

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The New Testament parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus the beggar [English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Luke, 15:19-31] offers only an indirect biblical source for Bosch’s painting, whose iconography is more closely related to late Medieval prints of the Ars moriendi, the arr of dying [Ars moriendi, ca. 1415-1450]. Such works advised those who wished to get to Heaven of the right way to prepare for death [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510]. Bosch shows an old miser, in his bedchamber and on the point of death, being exposed to temptation one decisive last time by a monster devil who offers him a bag of money. (p. 192)

Fischer, 2016

Jheronimus Bosch

#319

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The iconography of this representation of a miser who has reached his final hour has been compared with pictures from the Ars moriendi tradition and illustrations of pointless wealth[Morganstern, 1982, 33-41; Morganstern, 1984, 295-302; Marijnissen, 1972; Marijnissen, 1977; Marijnissen, 1987; Vinken & Schlüter, 2000, 69-78; Colenbrander, 2003, 22-32]. Areas of overlap can be found in the dying man’s confrontation, for on last time, with the temptations that have ruled his life, here represented by devils, exempla and symbolic objects, and the promise of salvation extended by the Church, in the shape of clerics, angels, saints and Christ. (pp. 256-257)

Fischer, 2016

Jheronimus Bosch

#330

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

…work is opposed to idleness, wealth to poverty, thrift to avarice or prodigality. Here Bosch’s position was more moderate: he seems to have condemned the love of gain for its own sake but was even more opposed to extravagance. The poverty of those on the lowest rung of the social ladder was regarded as largely self-inflicted and ascribed to vices from the first two categories – drunkenness, whoring, excessive merrymaking. In contrast, Bosch commended a positive attitude to work and moderation in the spending and acquisition of money and property. All this is reflected in The Haywain [Bosch, ca. 1512-1515]. The Death of the Miser and Scenes of Idleness (known only through sixteenth-century prints). (p. 99)

Vandenbroeck, 2017

The Axiology and Ideology of Jheronimus Bosch

#334

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Bosch endorsed the ideology of an urban middle class of craftsmen and small producers, for whom ‘economy’ was also a moral issue. This was certainly not a capitalist vision, although the emphasis on reason and work (expressed inversely by Bosch – the rejection of laziness and wastefulness) and the denial of prodigality and other forms of impulsive behaviour were helping to prepare the way for capitalist discourse. Bosch’s moderate view is manifest in his depictions of the pedlar on the outer wings of The Haywain [Bosch, ca. 1512-1515, “The Haywain Triptych”] and in another, dismembered triptych [Hartau, 2005, 305-338] on the front side of which were The Ship of Fools and The Allegory of Intemperance on the left and The Death of the Miser on the right, and the exterior of which was the Rotterdam Pedlar. (p. 99)

Vandenbroeck, 2017

The Axiology and Ideology of Jheronimus Bosch

#336

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Bosch also did not ignore the worldly side of the temptation to commit deadly sins. For avarice, he depicted The Death of a Miser on a panel that was surely the shutter of a triptych configuration, viewed obliquely leftwards in terms of its perspective [Marijnissen, 2007, 320-324]. The dying man lies in his bed amidst a cluttered room of stored legal papers with seals, knightly armour and bags of money in locked chests, Demons hover around all of these worldly trophies, and a second standing old figure, despite a rosary at his waist, holds a coin in his hand above a moneybag. One other demon at this last moment still offers the dying old man a moneybag, to which he reaches even now. At the same time, he stares obsessively at the shrouded, skeletal figure of Death in the open doorway, who bears a mortal arrow aimed at him. Consequently both of these conflicting preoccupations preclude the old man from seeing what viewers can – namely, a guardian angel behind him, who attempts to redirect his vision upwards to the window above that doorway, where divine light enters the room across a hanging crucifix. Even at the very last moment, demons and worldly temptations can distract errant humanity into deadly sin, here avarice. Scholars have rightly invoked the fifteenth-century text Ars moriendi (How to die) [Ars moriendi, ca. 1415-1450], where a Christian on his deathbed is tempted to sin by demons but is ultimately consoled and saved by Christ and his angelic forces [Tentler, 2005; Olds, 1966; Ariès, 1981, 107-110]. (p. 129)

Silver, 2017

Crimes and Punishments. Bosch’s Hell

#337

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Here, as in The Death of a Miser, Bosch uses daily life events with ordinary figures to convey his moral instruction, but he frames these actions within the all-seeing eye of God (just as he uses demons, Death and an angel in the Miser). (p. 130)

Silver, 2017

Crimes and Punishments. Bosch’s Hell

#357

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The painting in Washington, which was originally the inside of the right wing, shows an old man sitting up in bed who is faced with a crucial decision – whether to take the bag of money being offered to him by a devil, ur whether to behold the crucifix in the window, which an angel is urging him to do. (p. 298)

Lammertse, 2017

Hieronymus Bosch: The pilgrimage of life triptych

#360

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The composition recalls illustrations in the Ars moriendi manuals – popular in Bosch’s day- which taught readers the art of dying. A typical illustration in such a book presented a man on his deathbed, with a devil tempting him into choosing material things and an angel pointing out that there is still time to repent and that the dying man’s eternal salvation is much more important than his worldly goods. The Washington panel can be compared to the depiction of a dying man with both a devil and an angel sitting on the headboard of his bed on The Table of the Seven Deadly Sins [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510; Hand & Wolff, 1986; Lammertse & van der Coelen, 2015, 62; Ilsink et al., 2016, 212-215]. (p. 298)

Lammertse, 2017

Hieronymus Bosch: The pilgrimage of life triptych

#364

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

… the right wing features avarice (avaritia). (p. 298)

Lammertse, 2017

Hieronymus Bosch: The pilgrimage of life triptych

#366

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Remarkably, the underdrawing of the painting in Washington reveals that the dying man had originally accepted the money pouch from the devil and was holding in his other hand a costly goblet. At first, therefore, Bosch had spelled out the old man’s ill-advised decision. Evidently the artist found this too obvious, though, and changed the composition in such a way as to leave his fate up in the air [Hand & Wolff, 1986, 19]. (p. 298)

Lammertse, 2017

Hieronymus Bosch: The pilgrimage of life triptych

#372

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

… the choices made by the dying man… (p.299)

Lammertse, 2017

Hieronymus Bosch: The pilgrimage of life triptych

#373

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The scene in the Death tondo [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510] closely resembles that depicted in Death and the Miser in Washington, but here the protagonist is receiving the last rites, and the angel has clearly won the contest. (p. 302)

Maroto, 2017

Bosch and his work

#383

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Death and the Usurer and the Ship of Fools focus on two extremes – miserliness and usury versus prodigality. Bosch rejects both, as he does in countless details of his hell and temptation scenes. (p. 133)

Koldeweij, Vandenbroeck & Vermet, 2001

Hieronymus Bosch. The Complete Paintings and Drawings

#385

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Bosch champions a quietist attitude: do nor pursue the things of this world – money, possessions and pleasure because the reward will be eternal damnation. A similar idea is expressed in Death and the Usurer… The dying man originally clutched a precious chalice, which was only executed in the underdrawing. The chalice and the money-bags recall a passage from the Middle Dutch ‘Book of God’s Providence’ [Faris, 1914], in which a section with ‘instructive examples’ refers to a rich man who speaks the following words on his deathbed: Fetch my money and see if it can help me, as I hope. The money was duly brought to him and the rich man spoke again: Oh, my money, can ‘t you help me not to die, for you know how much I love you in order to get you, and I took great care of you, wherever I was.’ When his money proves unable to help him, he has ‘all of his jewels and silver dishes’ brought to him. And these cannot save him either, he bites a dish and dies. (p. 136)

Koldeweij, Vandenbroeck & Vermet, 2001

Hieronymus Bosch. The Complete Paintings and Drawings

#386

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Various 15th-century Ars moriendi books ( on the subject of dying and death) describe how the devil encourages dying people to worry about their money. Similar deathbed images occur very frequently in 15th-century Books of Hours, such as the Hours of Catherine of Cleves (which also has a man placing something in or removing something from a treasure-chest in the foreground) [”Deathbed, from The Hours of Catherine of Cleves”, ca. 1440], of Rohan (with Death entering a barrel-vaulted room holding an arrow and coffin) [”Death, from Grandes heures de Rohan”, ca. 1401-1500] and the Hours of Margaret of York (with similarities of composition co Bosch’s scene – the four-poster bed and the striking foreshortening of the barrel-vaulted room) [Follower of Dreux Jean, ca. 1468-1477]. Bosch evidently drew inspiration from a miniature of this type. (p. 136)

Koldeweij, Vandenbroeck & Vermet, 2001

Hieronymus Bosch. The Complete Paintings and Drawings

#387

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The general character of the panel has always been understood – the dying man between the angel (pointing towards the crucifix in the window and the ray of light ic emits), Death (entering the room) and demons. One demon offers him a money-bag, another holds up a document, a third disappears beneath the treasure chest, another sits inside it, a fifth leans its head melancholically on the low wall at the front, while a final demon sits on the canopy of the bed with a brazier. The overall theme is plainly avarice. (p. 136)

Koldeweij, Vandenbroeck & Vermet, 2001

Hieronymus Bosch. The Complete Paintings and Drawings

#389

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Charging interest effectively meant selling time, which belonged to God alone, and produced the harvest of ‘sterile’ money. The prohibition on interest was frequently circumvented by means of the cambio seco – the ‘dry exchange’ – in which the usurer kept the bill of exchange. The documents in the chest belonging to Bosch’s dying man, one of which is held up ostentatiously by one of the demons, may represent bills of that kind. In other words, the man is guilty of a form of usury that the Church continued to condemn in the late Middle Ages, by which time it was beginning to adopt a more flexible attitude towards other rapidly developing economic practices. Moreover, Bosch may have been portraying a clandestine pawnbroker, as the goods are located in an ordinary bedroom rather than a pawnbroker’s shop. (pp.138-139)

Koldeweij, Vandenbroeck & Vermet, 2001

Hieronymus Bosch. The Complete Paintings and Drawings

#392

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Bosch was a fierce critic of avarice (the Hay Wain) [Bosch, ca. 1512-1515] and usury (Death and the Usurer), but also of prodigality and impoverishment through one’s own fault (overindulgence, extravagance and laziness). The values and standards that underpin Bosch’s world view are, first and foremost, moderation with respect to money and possessions (neither avarice nor rejection of worldly goods, allied with the condemnation of usury). This is followed by the moderate and rational use of those things (neither miserliness nor squandering) and by the praise of work. (p. 142)

Koldeweij, Vandenbroeck & Vermet, 2001

Hieronymus Bosch. The Complete Paintings and Drawings

#443

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

La mort de l’avare (p. 70)

Huebner, 1943

Jérôme Bosch

#461

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

That man persists in his folly even at the moment of death, when the eternities of Heaven and Hell hang in the balance, is the subject of the Death of the Miser. The dying man lies in a high, narrow bedchamber, into which Death has already entered at the left. His guardian angel supports him and attempts to draw his attention to the crucifix in the window above, but he is still distracted by the earthly possessions he must leave behind; one hand reaches out almost automatically to clutch the bag of gold offered by a demon through the curtain. Another demon, delicately winged, leans on the ledge in the foreground, where the rich robes and knightly equipment probably allude to the worldly rank and power which the miser must also abandon. The battle of angels and devils for the soul of the dying man occurs also in the Prado Tabletop (where the traditional figure of Death armed with an arrow likewise appears), and both scenes reflect a popular fifteenth-century devotional work [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510], the Ars moriendi or Craft of Dying [Ars moriendi, ca. 1415-1450], which was printed many times in Germany and the Netherlands. (p. 46)

Gibson, 1973

Hieronymus Bosch

#464

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

… The Death of the Miser… provides a mirror wherein we may see reflected the folly of man. (p. 86)

Gibson, 1973

Hieronymus Bosch

#473

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The painting shows a dying man seated in a testered bed set in a bare, narrow room. The figure of Death as a skeleton carrying an arrow enters at the left. Accompanying the dying man are a demon holding a sack and an angel who urges him to recognize the crucifix in the upper window. At the foot of the bed another figure stands next to an open chest and puts money into a sack held by a demon. In the foreground a demon leans on a low wall, his head supported by his hand in a gesture of melancholy. On the spectator’s side of the wall are pieces of armor and weapons; a cloak and a sleeved garment are draped over the wall. (p. 17)

Hand & Wolff, 1986

Early Netherlandish Painting

#474

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The consensus among critics is that the painting represents the death of a miser. Further, most authors have agreed with de Tolnay’s initial assessment that the subject is based on the text and images of the Ars moriendi [Ars moriendi, ca. 1415-1450]. There is, however, no agreement on the overall iconographie program of the painting, its exact relationship to the Ars moriendi, or the interpretation of various details… Bosch’s awareness of the visual tradition of the Ars moriendi [Ars moriendi, ca. 1415-1450] can be seen, first, in the roundel showing Death as one of the Four Last Things in the Tabletop in the Prado, Madrid [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510; de Tolnay, 1966, 15-16]. (p. 17)

Hand & Wolff, 1986

Early Netherlandish Painting

#475

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Chailley [Chailley, 1978, 106-108] sees the painting as representing the unjust steward of Luke 16:9 [English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Luke, 16:9]. However, his arguments are not convincing. (p. 21, note 6)

Hand & Wolff, 1986

Early Netherlandish Painting

#479

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The relationship of Death and the Miser to the Ars moriendi is less direct than that of the Prado Tabletop [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510, “The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things”]. In place of discrete, opposing images Bosch seems to have conflated scenes of the temptation by and triumph over avarice and introduced an element of suspense. The miser seems to ignore both the guardian angel who offers salvation and the toadlike demon who pops through the bed-curtain with a sack that almost certainly contains either money or gold. Instead, the dying man is transfixed by the figure of Death who, as in the Prado Tabletop, is represented as a shrouded skeleton holding an arrow. As with the Ars moriendi images [Ars moriendi, ca. 1415-1450], demons scurry under the furniture or peer down at the dying man from the bed canopy. While the outcome of the struggle may not be immediately apparent, other elements in the scene show the dying man to be guilty of the sin of avarice, the last temptation mentioned in the Ars moriendi. (p. 18)

Hand & Wolff, 1986

Early Netherlandish Painting

#509

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

That man persists in his folly even at the moment of death, when the eternities of Heaven and Hell hang in the balance, is the subject of the Death of the Miser. The dying man lies in a high, narrow bedchamber, into which Death has already entered at the left. His guardian angel supports him and attempts to draw his attention to the crucifix in the window above, but he is still distracted by the earthly possessions he must leave behind; one hand reaches out almost automatically to clutch the bag of gold offered by a demon through the curtain. Another demon, delicately winged, leans on the ledge in the foreground, where the rich robes and knightly equipment probably allude to the worldly rank and power which the miser must also abandon. The battle of angels and devils for the soul of the dying man occurs also in the Prado Tabletop (where the traditional figure of Death armed with an arrow likewise appears), and both scenes reflect a popular fifteenth-century devotional work [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510], the Ars moriendi or Craft of Dying [Ars moriendi, ca. 1415-1450], which was printed many times in Germany and the Netherlands. (p. 32)

Bosing, 1987

Hieronymus Bosch c.1450-1516

#511

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Death, no less then folly, was a major preoccupation of the waning Middgle Ages. The fashionable court poets dwelt upon the dissolution of the flesh and of all fair things in this world. It was also the theme of countless treatises of moral instruction, and the same morbid interest appears in the decaying corpses who seized their victims in scenes of the Dance of Death or recline on sculptured tombs. “I was as you are now, you will be I am”, they seem to say the living, repeating a favourite phrase of the period. But this obsession with death was compounded by a still greater horror: the firm conviction that after the physical dissolution of the body, the soul, continued to exist, possibly doomed to eternal suffering in Hell. And it is in the depiction of the afterlife of the soul and its torments that Bosch made perhaps his most significant contribution to the history of painting. (p. 32)

Bosing, 1987

Hieronymus Bosch c.1450-1516

#521

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

This is the first of the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell, Heaven. But simple comparison with the deathbed scene in the roundel on The Seven Deadly Sins [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510] shows a great difference. In the earlier work the dying man is surrounded by familiars and priests in prayer; here he is abandoned to his own choices. The angel pointing the way to Heaven has just as little hold over him as the gray devil who pops up from under the bed curtain to offer him a sack of gold: he has eyes only for the arrow that Death points at him from the half-opened door. A miser is dying, but the weak and indecisive movements of his arms and hands make it all too evident that he is the very last to understand that even now it is not too late to choose between damnation and a friendlier afterlife. Everything here seems slippery and unsure. (p. 63)

Linfert, 1989

Hieronymus Bosch

#53

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The Washington panel, whose theme is the deadly sin of avarice, has been related to the popular Ars moriendi, or the Art of Dying Well [Ars moriendi, ca. 1415-1450], which was illustrated in woodcuts and engravings. Tervarent [de Tervarent, 1945, 61ff.], however, preferred to see its source in a death scene in a German miniature of the second quarter of the fifteenth century, in which he found a greater number of motifs related to the painting than can be discovered in Ars moriendi scenes. Bax [Bax, 1948, 244], however, cited a death scene from the Miracles de Nostre Dame in which a figure looks into a chest placed at the foot of the dying man’s bed; this he thought even more closely related to Bosch’s painting than the miniature cited by Tervarent. However, in these two scenes the chest is not that of a miser, which it certainly is in Bosch’s panel. (p.275)

Cuttler, 1969

Bosch and the Narrenschiff: a problem in relationships

#531

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

At the supreme moment. the miser – a noble knight. judging by the armour at lower right – Is unable to make the choice between the Crucifix, pointed out to him by the angel and the money purse brought by a devil. (no. 15)

Cinotti, 1966

The complete paintings of Bosch

#54

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The association of the miser with a chest is an old one, and can be found illustrated in a number of late thirteenth and early fourteenth-century manuscripts of La Somme le Roi [Laurent, ca.1290-1300 (Avarice); Millar, 1953]. Bosch must have been well aware of this tradition, for demons aid the miser in his hoarding in the illuminations and in the Washington panel. (p.275)

Cuttler, 1969

Bosch and the Narrenschiff: a problem in relationships

#55

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The illustration to Chapter XVII of Brant’s work, entitled Of Useless Riches, seems to be related compositionally to the Washington panel, and the final lines of the accompanying text present the moral… [Brant, 1944, 101] This chapter, significantly, follows one which castigates drunkenness and feasting, whose sinful overindulgence Bosch also warned against in the Louvre and Yale panels. Bosch, one may conclude, drew upon his memory of the Narrenschiff when he sketched out the composition of the Washington panel. Bosch’s miser is in keeping with the tradition of La Somme le Roi illustration, but is more subtly expressed than the obvious fool’s capped figure from the Narrenschiff. (p.275)

Cuttler, 1969

Bosch and the Narrenschiff: a problem in relationships

#59

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

…in this world greed and falsity go hand in hand in evil union. This allegorical statement was even stronger as Bosch first conceive it. The underdrawing, revealed by infrared photography [”Detail, infrared reflectogram image of Death and the Miser”, 1982], shows that the dying man in bed holds the viaticum in his hand, but in the final rendition the greedy sinner is still more interested in the moneybag offered by the demon than in the salvation the angel vainly tries to make him see might be his. Bosch had thus originally indicated that the avaricious would sell even the viaticum. (p.275-276)

Cuttler, 1969

Bosch and the Narrenschiff: a problem in relationships

#61

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The association of the paraphernalia of knighthood with the actions of the miser and the standing figure may seem illogical to the modern mind, but surely it was not so for Bosch. What is seen here is the leap characteristic of his symbolically oriented thinking. He used his motifs with full knowledge of their traditional significations, but so combined them in his unprecedented moralizing pictures that the motifs take on allusive rather than explicit import. For him, apparently, their intrinsic meanings were not changed by the alteration or removal of their traditional framework, but for us they have become so transformed by time that they are almost unintelligible. (p.276)

Cuttler, 1969

Bosch and the Narrenschiff: a problem in relationships

#623

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The Hour Death (p. 298)

Fraenger, 1999

Hieronymus Bosch

#624

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

the slender Hour of Death panel formerly in the van der Elst collection, now in the National Gallery, Washington, D. C., creates through its very format a feeling of terrible constriction, intensified by the narrow room receding into depths of darkness. (p. 298)

Fraenger, 1999

Hieronymus Bosch

#626

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

From the “vanity” of the foreground an axis cuts obliquely across the picture, leading from the evil cleric to the little devil peering down from the bed canopy with the curiosity and agility of a monkey, and to the tall emblem he brandishes. This threateningly unstable diagonal disturbs the eye, which, however, finds a firmer hold in the narrow column on the left and in the clean right angles of its base. Thus the optical contrast leads directly into the deeper moral one: instability as opposed to steadfastness. (p. 298)

Fraenger, 1999

Hieronymus Bosch

#629

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

…the dying man staring at the arrow of death and fulfilling the words of Solomon: “And he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labor, which he may carry away in his hand” [English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Ecclesiastes, 5:15]. Even as he draws his last breath, he is assailed by doubt. Should he reach for the moneybag held out to him by the tempter on the left or entrust himself to the mediation of the angel on the good side? (p. 299)

Fraenger, 1999

Hieronymus Bosch

#630

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

At this moment Death, pale in his tight lemuric shroud, sidles in through the barely open door whose narrow opening intensifies the cramped oppressiveness of the room, aiming his arrow – its shadow gliding ahead of it-at the deathbed. Between Death and his victim the bulging, tucked-up bed curtain sags with the menacing heaviness of doom. In this stage setting even the incidental props are used to create mood. (p. 299)

Fraenger, 1999

Hieronymus Bosch

#636

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The title by which this painting has traditionally been known, “The Death of the Miser,” does not do justice to this vast concept. The figure of the old man represents man pure and simple. He is portrayed as a miser only because that notorious vice of old age is a hopeless worldly delusion. As Cicero observes in De Senectute, what indeed could be more foolish than to provide an ever-larger viaticum as the way ahead gets shorter and shorter? [Ciceron, 1938] And in the words of I Timothy 6:10: “Love of money is the root of all evil.” [English Standard Version Bible, 2001, 1 Timothy, 6:10] (pp. 299-300)

Fraenger, 1999

Hieronymus Bosch

#639

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Almaengien’s theological conception emerges readily from the three fields of concentration… The middle ground, with the central figure of the irresolute old man, illustrates the words of the gospel: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon [English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Matthew, 6:24; English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Luke, 16:13]. (p. 300)

Fraenger, 1999

Hieronymus Bosch

#648

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Together, the three scenes [Bosch, ca. 1500 (The Pedlar); Bosch, ca. 1475-1500; Bosch, ca. 1485-1490] in these panels form an image addressing the course of human life. Human beings act and make choices. They often misbehave and choose wrongly. The question here seems ultimately to be what choice will they make in the course of their lives in the face of death? Will they succeed in turning to God and letting go of their urge for material things? Will the sinner – for that is what the human being is, by definition – repent or not? The answer to that question is crucial, because nothing less is at stake than the salvation of his or her soul. (p. 318)

Ilsink et al., 2016

Hieronymus Bosch. Painter and Draughtsman

#664

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

‘Who dieth well, his grave’s the best/ The sinner’s death is never blest’ is another fine couplet from Brant’s Ship of Fools [Brant, 1962, 283]. It offers a nice introduction to the dilemma facing the protagonist of the right wing of the Wayfarer Triptych. A man sits up in bed, looking into the eyes of Death, who appears from behind the door. Death points an oversized arrow directly at him. It is time. The final hour has come. The question now is whether the dying man will grasp the bag held out to him by a demon from beneath the curtain of the bed. The answer to this question will determine the man’s fate: is it to be heaven or hell? An angel behind him tries to draw his attention to the image of a crucifix that appears in the window in the upper left corner. The rays of light that enter the room via the crucified Christ do not (yet) extend, however, as far as the dying man. The struggle between the angel and the devil, who has positioned himself on the canopy of the bed in the hope that the man will make the wrong choice, has not been settled. The wing encourages us to think about what we would do in the face of death: hold on or let go. (p. 328)

Ilsink et al., 2016

Hieronymus Bosch. Painter and Draughtsman

#667

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

The combination of the well-filled money-chest and the approach of death does not feature in what was probably another important source for Bosch in this case, namely the illustrations in the Ars moriendi, a treatise on the ‘Art of Dying’. The book was printed frequently in the Low Countries and the neighbouring regions at the end of the fifteenth century, and was available in both Latin and vernacular editions [”Ars moriendi (Cologne)”, 1474; van Os, 1488; Snellaert, 1488; Leeu, 1492]. Its purpose was to help people prepare for a ‘virtuous death’, to which end it included eleven full-page woodcut illustrations, each showing a man on his deathbed. (p. 330)

Ilsink et al., 2016

Hieronymus Bosch. Painter and Draughtsman

#668

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

Bosch’s artistic challenge was to express the dying man’s dilemma in a single image rather than a series of illustrations. He places greater responsibility than the Ars moriendi does, moreover, on the man himself. It is up to him to choose. The choice between moneybag and crucifix has not yet been made: Bosch leaves the viewer with a cliff-hanger. It is evident from the painting’s underdrawing that the artist initially had a simpler image in mind. The man’s hand was originally clamped around the moneybag, and he also held a costly jar in his left hand. The painter evidently decided that this solution was too one-dimensional, as he ultimately omitted the jar, while the dying man in the painting has not yet grabbed the bag. This makes the miser slightly less miserly, while introducing an element of suspense to the struggle for the man’s salvation. In the earlier configuration, the demon looking down from the canopy of the bed would have got its way, and the dying man’s soul would have been lost. In the current form of the painting, by contrast, there is still some hope for the man in the bed. The decision has yet to be taken. (p. 330)

Ilsink et al., 2016

Hieronymus Bosch. Painter and Draughtsman