Watch Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil, a Documentary Streaming Free Online

As pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned here on OC, the film dis­trib­u­tor Kino Lor­ber has been qui­et­ly mak­ing com­plete art films avail­able to stream on YouTube and its own web­site. In recent weeks, they’ve uploaded to YouTube the doc­u­men­taries, Beyond the Vis­i­ble: Hilma Af Klint and M.C. Esch­er: Jour­ney to Infin­i­ty. Now comes Hierony­mus Bosch: Touched by the Dev­il, which they describe as fol­lows:

In 2016, the Noord­bra­bants Muse­um in the Dutch city of Den Bosch held a spe­cial exhi­bi­tion devot­ed to the work of Hierony­mus Bosch, who died 500 years ago. This late-medieval artist lived his entire life in the city, caus­ing uproar with his fan­tas­ti­cal and utter­ly unique paint­ings in which hell and the dev­il always played a promi­nent role. In prepa­ra­tion for the exhi­bi­tion, a team of Dutch art his­to­ri­ans criss­cross­es the globe to unrav­el the secrets of his art. They use spe­cial infrared cam­eras to exam­ine the sketch­es beneath the paint, in the hope of dis­cov­er­ing more about the artist’s inten­tions. They also attempt to estab­lish which of the paint­ings can be attrib­uted with cer­tain­ty to Bosch him­self, and which to his pupils or fol­low­ers. The experts shut­tle between Den Bosch, Madrid and Venice, cut­ting their way through the art world’s tan­gle of red tape, in a bat­tle against the obsta­cle of count­less egos and con­flict­ing inter­ests. Not every muse­um is pre­pared to allow access to their pre­cious art works.

You can find Hierony­mus Bosch: Touched by the Dev­il list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

To watch more free-to-stream Kino Lor­ber films, click here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent

A Dig­i­tal Archive of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Com­plete Works: Zoom In & Explore His Sur­re­al Art

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Mean­ing of Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Explained