About

Tracing Bosch and Bruegel: Four Paintings Magnified is an exciting pan-European art detective scenario investigating four Netherlandish paintings from the 16th century.The busy compositions all present ‘Christ chasing the moneylenders from the temple’ and reuse popular iconography influenced by the famous painters Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

The paintings are full of interesting stories, scary characters, and esoteric symbols, for the viewer to explore and discover. They also provide an opportunity to look into the 16th-century artist’s studio, and the techniques and materials used.

Tracing Bosch and Bruegel brings together professionals from four Institutions in three European countries: The Kadriorg Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia; The National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen; The University of Glasgow in collaboration with Glasgowlife (the Glasgow Museums and Art Gallery), Scotland.

Our research detectives – art historians, conservators and scientists - use Technical Art History, a new and exciting approach which combines art historical and conservation research with scientific analysis.

They investigate why the four works use the same scene and yet look so different. How where they made, by whom and when? Who would buy or order these works? Is a copy really worth it? How did they end up in four different locations? And of course they will try to unravel all the stories presented in these fascinating paintings, taking the viewer back to the 16th century, into the artist’s studio and to the stories told.

Join us in our investigation and find out how all these questions are answered, artist’s practice discovered and stories revealed.