Movie Review
★★★
HIERONYMUS BOSCH, TOUCHED BY THE DEVIL
Written and directed by Pieter van Huystee. At Museum of Fine Arts. 88 minutes. Unrated (as PG-13, because of Bosch’s disturbing and bizarre imagery). In Dutch, English, Spanish, Italian, German, and Latin (very briefly), with subtitles.
Hieronymus Bosch is that rare artist in any medium with his own adjective. Even people who’ve never been in an art museum know that “Boschian’’ means strange, grotesque, even apocalyptic. It derives from the riotously bizarre imagery seen in such paintings as “The Garden of Earthly Delights’’ and “The Last Judgment.’’
Was Bosch a final flaring of the Middle Ages or the first flowering of the northern Renaissance? It hardly matters. Either way Bosch was one of a kind.
What has fascinated viewers for centuries has if anything fascinated art historians even more. The work is variously — and uniquely — “arcane, hermetic, or inexplicable,’’ the National Gallery of Art’s John Hand says in “Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil.’’
Pieter van Huystee’s briskly assured documentary screens at the Museum of Fine Arts from Saturday Sept. 24 through Oct. 2. This year marks the 500th anniversary of Bosch’s death.
Huystee follows a team of art historians and conservators as they travel across Europe and America putting together a retrospective of Bosch’s work for a Dutch museum in observance of the anniversary. There are slightly more than two dozen works confidently attributed to Bosch. That’s it; the team is out to get as many as it can.
It’s hard to say which aspect of their labors is more interesting: the technological or the diplomatic.
The technology is art-world whiz-bang: computerized renderings and infrared views and examination of slivers from the painted panels for tree-ring dating to determine the wood’s age. And let’s not forget such tried-and-true devices as white gloves, for handling the art. Noticing two men with bare hands carrying a Bosch panel in Venice, you almost flinch.
The negotiating over loans is even more finely calibrated than the CAT scans and X-rays. The Prado, in Madrid, has the richest Bosch holdings. No, it will not loan “The Garden of Earthly Delights,’’ but other items are open to discussion. The museum director is charmingly agreeable. Conversely, the chief curator doesn’t want to let a single piece out of the building. Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia — with the gloveless handlers — is happy to help, so long as the Dutch do conservation work on the loan.
Of course what’s most interesting of all is the art. Huystee’s many closeups and slow pans over Bosch’s teeming backgrounds are transfixing, unsettling, and a rare privilege. Try getting this view at the Prado. “Everyone else must remain behind the rope,’’ a member of the team says. “Except you.’’ And now us.
★★★ HIERONYMUS BOSCH, TOUCHED BY THE DEVIL
Written and directed by: Pieter van Huystee. At Museum of Fine Arts. 88 minutes. Unrated (as PG-13, because of Bosch’s disturbing and bizarre imagery). In Dutch, English, Spanish, Italian, German, and Latin (very briefly), with subtitles.
Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.
