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Fränger and Beyond
T
rue to his word, Fränger followed his interpretation of the “Millennium” triptych with studies of several other paintings seen from the same perspective. He claimed that they were also the products of Bosch’s association with the Community of the Free Spirit and its Grand Master, who instructed him in the arcana of the cult’s quasi-religious practices that the artist then displayed in carefully secreted symbols. Most of these paintings were done before the “Millennium”, the historian claimed, thus bearing out his thesis that the apprenticeship of student to teacher was long and progressive. In 1948, Fränger wrote his first article, after the initial introduction of the Grand Master in his book, on Bosch’s John the Baptist (p. 125), published in 1948. He noted the similarity of the wilderness setting in which John reposes to that of the Garden of Eden in the “Millennium,” wherein the artist had transformed God into Christ and placed Him in a triangulated relationship with Adam and Eve. One of John’s pronouncements, “Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”, Fränger thought accounted for the paradisiacal setting of the St John painting. The curious, composite plant growing beside John was so like the plants used as “chiliastic symbols” in the Garden of the “Millennium” that the connection between the two paintings was obvious to Fränger who thus saw St John as the mediating emblem of the esoteric society that he introduced in the millennial painting. It was not long before the Grand Master ceased to be elusive, because Fränger claimed, in his article on Bosch’s St John on Patmos, published in 1949-1950, to have discovered the man’s identity2. He had learned that a Jewish resident of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, named Jacob van Almaengien, was baptised ceremoniously in the presence of Philip the Fair of Brabant. Nothing but circumstantial evidence in the official records connected this man with the artist, but he was listed as having been registered as a member of the Brotherhood of Our Lady for the year 1496-1497, under the Christian name Philip van Sint Jan; Bosch had been a member of that order since 1486. This was not proof enough to convince many Boschian historians, especially the Dutch ones, such as Dirk Bax, yet the evidence was so compellingly argued by Fränger that to Patrik Reuterswärd and others it seemed highly suggestive. Something that happened in Brussels at the beginning of the 15th century can hardly explain conditions in ‘s-Hertogenbosch a hundred years later. While this objection seems justified, I should like to recall the difference between proof and circumstantial evidence. While anyone who can be convinced only by proof will be obliged to reject Fränger’s case, his reconstruction of the reality that underlies the great Prado triptych rests equally on a mass of circumstantial evidence whose diversity alone should compensate for the lack of conclusive proof. Fränger, encouraged by the consistency of his evidence, drew very far-reaching conclusions, claiming that considerable information about the personality and life of Bosch’s patron could be derived from this triptych and from other works. According to him, Bosch was working for none other than the leader of the hypothetical sect, the Grand Master himself.
The Hay Wagon (left panel), 1525. Oil on panel, 147 x 212 cm (triptych). Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
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