Museum-Cinema: Cinematic Fridays at the Museum / Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil, 2015 / In collaboration with the EPOS Festival

The Museum is pleased to offer its visitors extra-cultural Fridays! Every Friday, the finest films on art and culture will be screened, after a short lecture by the Museum’s curators.

This is a collaborative initiative between the Museum and EPOS International Art Film Festival, which offers film lovers captivating and thought-provoking films from around the world, alongside visits to exhibitions by leading artists from Israel and abroad.

Admission to the Museum’s exhibitions is included in the film ticket, during the Museum’s opening hours.

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Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil, 2015 | Dir. Pieter van Huijstee, Netherlands, 87 minutes, Dutch & English, Hebrew subtitles
Introductory lecture: Tamar Sofer, Adult Education Manager

A riveting documentary film about a group of restorers, curators and art scholars as they go about their quest for works by Hieronymus Bosch for an upcoming exhibition that is scheduled to open in the artist’s birthplace in the Netherlands. In the course of their journey, they encounter some of the artist’s most significant works (and some lesser known ones), and the camera zooms into the canvas, revealing the most delicate brushstrokes.

The film also reveals the power struggles inherent to the art world, especially between museums that insist that they possess original Bosch masterpieces and experts who argue that they are not. Laboratory tests, stylistic analyses, and historiographical research uncover forgeries, or paintings created by the artist’s disciples. Conversely, a piece in a small museum is discovered to be an authentic work of the master.

Bosch’s extraordinary creations date back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but are timeless. Issues of morality, punishment versus pleasure, and the afterlife, all feature in symbol-laden works—and Bosch’s spirit hovers above them all.

Trailer Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil >

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