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Hieronymus Bosch > 
Hieronymus Bosch was probably born in 1453 in 's Hertogenbosch, a town in the province of North Brabant in Holland. Few details about his life, and perhaps not the most important, are known. His real name was Jeroen van Aken and he signed his works as Jheronimus Bosch, possibly with the aim of calling attention to his native place, the woods (bosch) of the duke (hertog). Descendant of a family whose chief members were painters by profession for several generations, he was registered as a painter from 1480 on. In 1481 he married a wealthy woman of his town. He probably lived most of his life in 's Hertogenbosch, where he died in 1516.
Bosch' s thematology does not differ much from that of his contemporary artists; the subjects of most of his works are religious: Heaven and Hell, saints, hermits, the Passion of Christ, sin and its punishment. His depictions of evil spirits are nothing more than a product of the Middle Age, visible evidence of the fear of witchcraft and devilry that was so common to people of that era. However, one could say that the style of the individual figures on Bosch' s paintings foretells Realism that was to come a couple of centuries later.
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