BOSCH, Hieronymus
(b. ca. 1450, 's-Hertogenbosch, d. 1516, 's-Hertogenbosch)

Studies of Monsters

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Pen and bistre, 318 x 210 mm
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

In a group of drawings attributed to Bosch with reasonable certainty, monsters proliferate in a multitude of shapes, no two exactly alike. Legs sprout from grotesquely grinning heads, obscene bladder-like forms develop snouts and legs; some creatures are all head or rump. This taste for monsters Bosch shared with his age, which was fascinated by the grotesque and the unnatural.