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In this imaginatively conceived historical graphic novel,
Guy Colwell explores the story behind Hieronymus
Bosch and his most famous work.
In Guy Colwell’s first full graphic novel in over 30 years, we see one
painter, Colwell himself, consider another, Hieronymus Bosch, and the
story behind the latter’s most notable work told in sequential panels.
The known details of Bosch’s life, and the commissioning of his enormous
triptych, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” are scant. Colwell
takes the facts of Bosch’s time and setting and constructs a tale of a
man and artist torn equally among piety, creativity, and commerce.
In Colwell’s version of Jheronimus van Aken (Bosch’s real name),
he is an artist paid well by local dukes to paint a vision of the world
before the fall, but will the religious leaders of his village see it as
celebrating God’s creation, or fatally corrupted by sensuality? And
what of the increasing numbers of young models needed to depict
pre-apple innocence?
This imaginatively conceived graphic biography is Colwell’s crowning
achievement in a cartooning career, begun in the underground comix movement
of the 1970s, and marked by risk-taking and political engagement.
His drawing, rendering, and storytelling has never been as self-assured
as in Delights.