salita al Tao

Jeroen Anthoniszoon van Aken, detto Hieronymus Bosch, Salita al Calvario, olio su tela 76,7x83,5 cm, 1510-1516, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Gand. 

This dramatic panel is "one of the most hallucinatory creations of the history of Western art", in the words of Bosch expert Paul van den Broeck. It is presumed to be a late work of Hieronymus Bosch. The composition consists of a tangle of heads; there is no room for much else. Shortly after 1500, when this panel was painted, this was quite unique in European painting. The technique is highly sophisticated, and the colour palette in which Bosch has done the faces – some of them mask-like – and the headwear is extraordinarily rich. We are shown a scene from the Passion of Christ, a subject that plays a significant role in Bosch's oeuvre. Surrounding the serene heads of Christ and Veronica, who is the only female figure here as St Mary is absent, a crowd of misshapen and contorted faces, caricatures of humanity, throng like creatures from hell.