“And you are some kind of consultant?”
“I used to work for the FBI here in L.A. The sheriff’s detective assigned to the case asked me to look at it and see what I think. It led me here. To Bosch. I am sorry but I can’t get into the details of the case and I know that will probably be frustrating to you. I want to ask questions but I can’t really answer any from you.”
“Darn.” She smiled. “It sounds really interesting.”
“Tell you what, if there is ever a point I can tell you about it, I will.”
“Fair enough.”
McCaleb nodded.
“From what Dr. Vosskuhler said, I take it that there isn’t a lot known about the man behind the paintings.”
Fitzgerald nodded.
“Hieronymus Bosch is certainly considered an enigma and he probably always will be.”
McCaleb unfolded his notepaper on the table in front of him and started taking notes as she spoke.
“He had one of the most unconventional imaginations of his time. Or any time for that matter. His work is quite extraordinary and still subject these five centuries later to restudy and reinterpretation. However, I think you will find that the majority of the critical analysis to date holds that he was a doomsayer. His work is informed with the portents of doom and hellfire, of warnings of the wages of sin. To put it more succinctly, his paintings primarily carried variations on the same theme: that the folly of humankind leads us all to hell as our ultimate destiny.”
McCaleb was writing quickly, trying to keep up. He wished he had brought a tape recorder.
“Nice guy, huh?” Fitzgerald said.
“Sounds like it.” He nodded to the print of the triptych. “Must’ve been fun on a Saturday night.”
She smiled.
“Exactly what I thought when I was in the Prado.”
“Any redeeming qualities? He took in orphans, was nice to dogs, changed flat tires for old ladies, anything?”
“You have to remember his time and place to fully understand what he was doing with his art. While his work is punctuated with violent scenes and depictions of torture and anguish, this was a time when those sorts of things were not unusual. He lived in a violent time; his work clearly reflects that. The paintings also reflect the medieval belief in the existence of demons everywhere. Evil lurks in all of the paintings.”
“The owl?”
She stared blankly at him for a moment.
“Yes, the owl is one symbol he used. I thought you said you were unfamiliar with his work.”
“I am unfamiliar with it. It was an owl that brought me here. But I shouldn’t go into that and I shouldn’t have interrupted you. Please go on.”
“I was just going to add that it is telling when you consider that Bosch was a contemporary of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. Yet if you were to look at their works side by side you would have to believe Bosch – with all the medieval symbols and doom – was a century behind.”
“But he wasn’t.”
She shook her head as though she felt sorry for Bosch.
“He and Leonardo da Vinci were born within a year or two of each other. By the end of the fifteenth century, da Vinci was creating pieces that were full of hope and celebration of human values and spirituality while Bosch was all gloom and doom.”
“That makes you feel sad, doesn’t it?”
She put her hands on the top book in the stack but didn’t open it. It was simply labeled BOSCH on the spine and there was no illustration on the black leather binding.
“I can’t help but think about what could have been if Bosch had worked side by side with da Vinci or Michelangelo, what could have happened if he had used his skill and imagination in celebration rather than damnation of the world.”
She looked down at the book and then back up at him.
“But that is the beauty of art and why we study and celebrate it. Each painting is a window to the artist’s soul and imagination. No matter how dark and disturbing, his vision is what sets him apart and makes his paintings unique. What happens to me with Bosch is that the paintings serve to carry me into the artist’s soul and I sense the torment.”
He nodded and she looked down and opened the book.
The world of Hieronymus Bosch was as striking to McCaleb as it was disturbing. The landscapes of misery that unfolded in the pages Penelope Fitzgerald turned were not unlike some of the most horrible crime scenes he had witnessed, but in these painted scenes the players were still alive and in pain. The gnashing of teeth and the ripping of flesh were active and real. His canvases were crowded with the damned, humans being tormented for their sins by visible demons and creatures given image by the hand of a horrible imagination.
At first he studied the color reproductions of the paintings in silence, taking it all in the way he would first observe a crime scene photograph. But then a page was turned and he looked at a painting that depicted three people gathered around a sitting man. One of those standing used what looked like a primitive scalpel to probe a wound on the crown of the sitting man’s head. The image was depicted in a circle. There were words painted above and below the circle.
“What is this one?” he asked.
“It’s called The Stone Operation,” Fitzgerald said. “It was a common belief at the time that stupidity and deceit could be cured by the removal of a stone from the head of the one suffering the malady.”
McCaleb leaned over her shoulder and looked closely at the painting, specifically at the location of the surgery wound. It was in a location comparable to the wound on Edward Gunn’s head.
“Okay, you can go on.”
Owls were everywhere. Fitzgerald did not have to point them out most of the time, their positions were that obvious. She did explain some of the attendant imagery. Most often in the paintings when the owl was depicted in a tree, the branch upon which the symbol of evil perched was leafless and gray – dead.
She turned the page to a three-panel painting.
“This is called The Last Judgment, with the left panel subtitled The Fall of Mankind and the right panel simply and obviously called Hell.”
“He liked painting hell.”
But Nep Fitzgerald didn’t smile. Her eyes studied the book.
The left panel of the painting was a Garden of Eden scene with Adam and Eve at center taking the fruit from the serpent in the apple tree. On a dead branch of a nearby tree an owl watched the transaction. On the opposite panel Hell was depicted as a dark place where birdlike creatures disemboweled the damned, cut their bodies up and placed them in frying pans to be slid into fiery ovens.
“All of this came from this guy’s head,” McCaleb said. “I don’t…”
He didn’t finish because he was unsure what he was trying to say.
“A tormented soul,” Fitzgerald said and turned the page.
The next painting was another circular image with seven separate scenes depicted along the outer rim and a portrait of God at center. In a circle of gold surrounding the portrait of God and separating him from the other scenes were four Latin words McCaleb immediately recognized.
“Beware, beware, God sees.”
Fitzgerald looked up at him.
“You obviously have seen this before. Or you just happen to know fifteenth-century Latin. This must be one strange case you are working on.”
“It’s getting that way. But I only know the words, not the painting. What is it?”
“It’s actually a tabletop, probably created for a church rectory or a holy person’s house. It’s the eye of God. He is at center and what he sees as he looks down are these images, the seven deadly sins.”
McCaleb nodded. By looking at the distinct scenes he could pick out some of the more obvious of the sins:
