Walter Samuel Gibson fu uno storico dell'arte specializzato nel Rinascimento settentrionale, con un focus particolare sull'opera di Hieronymus Bosch. La sua erudizione approfondisce i dettagli intricati e il contesto storico di queste significative creazioni artistiche. L'approccio di Gibson mirava a illuminare il complesso mondo e la visione unica dei suoi soggetti scelti. I suoi contributi offrono preziose intuizioni su un'era fondamentale della storia dell'arte.
In this delightfully engaging book, Walter S. Gibson takes a new look at Bruegel, arguing that the artist was no erudite philosopher, but a man very much in the world, and that a significant part of his art is best appreciated in the context of humour
"An exceptional book, sensible, illuminating and readable...probably the best straightforward account of Bosch and his works which we shall have for some time."—Times Literary Supplement
Although Pieter Bruegel's pictures have been celebrated throughout the past four hundred years, the artist himself remains a shadowy and misunderstood figure. In a volume which will widen the understanding and enhance the enjoyment of Bruegel's many admirers, Walter Gibson illuminates the sixteenth-century world in which the artist lived. He analyzes the different strands of Bruegel's inspiration, examines his works, and considers his influence on later artists. Dispelling the notion of Bruegel the simpleton peasant, the author shows us Bruegel the cultivated artist, satisfying an urban society's pleasure in moralizing tales and proverbs, rooted in the rich, bourgeois, brilliant Antwerp of the Flemish Renaissance.