Delights: A Story of Hieronymus Bosch

Painter and underground cartoonist Colwell (Inner City Romance) turns the commissioning of The Garden of Earthly Delights in late 15th-century Netherlands into an epochal struggle between faith and doubt, superstition and reason. Colwell’s surprisingly philosophical graphic narrative, which he describes as “mildly plausible and fact based,” follows the tumult that starts when “humble and pious” religious painter Jeroen van Aken, aka Hieronymus Bosch, is hired by royals to create a large-scale erotic painting. Jeroen resists, nervous about scandal and heresy. But the money is good—so like many artists before and since, he rationalizes. Jeroen’s concept for what becomes his masterpiece is that the fall of man never happened. “I can give them naked beautiful people enjoying life,” he reasons, if there was no original sin. Colwell details Jeroen’s attempts to “amuse my dukes without arousing the Inquisitors” by having the characters speak aloud their every thought. It’s an occasionally awkward conceit but one that fits well with the formally posed character drawings, which echo the stiff-limbed painting style of the time. Colwell’s artwork is to-the-point, except for one lavishly drawn sequence where Jeroen’s walk in the woods turns into a nightmarish cavalcade of Boschian creatures vocalizing his internal debate over artistic and religious integrity. The result is a thought-provoking venture into a time when art had life-or-death consequences. (Aug.)