Hieronymus Bosch /

The latest in Abrams' Masters of Art series recycles a Library of Great Painters tome [BKL Mr 1 73] that considers the pictorial content of the work of the late medieval artist. Bosch's altarpieces, The Last Judgment, The Temptations of St. Anthony, and The Garden of Delights, have captivated generations of gazers with their teeming visions of strange creatures, landscapes, and events whose full significance still eludes art historians but whose grotesqueness seems the quintessence of surrealism some 300 years before its time. The colorplates, formerly tipped in, are now, thankfully for libraries, printed on the pages. Selected bibliography. --Ray Olson