BOSCH & BRUEGEL

This elegantly written and lavishly illustrated book looks at two towering figures in the European tradition, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel. Casting their paintings in a completely new light, Joseph Leo Koerner reveals how the painting of everyday life was born from what seems its opposite: the depiction of an enemy hell-bent on our destruction. A dazzling exploration of the paradoxes of human creativity, the book offers a timely account of how art can convert hatred into tolerance. The book was originally delivered as the 2008 A. W. Mellon Lecture in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Joseph Leo Koerner is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Art and Architecture and Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.