Butler's Cinema Scene

“HIERONYMUS BOSCH, TOUCHED BY THE DEVIL” My rating: B-

86 minutes | No MPAA rating

Under most circumstances the Tivoli Theater would play an art-themed documentary like “Heironymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil” for one night only. Maybe two at most.

But Pieter van Haste’s film has a Kansas City connection that makes it of more than routine interest to folks hereabouts. Which is why today it begins a week-long run at the Westport art house.

The movie follows a team of art historians and museum types as they prepare for a special exhibition of the paintings of the Dutch master Heironymus Bosch — famous for his hallucinogenic depictions of heaven and hell — in his hometown of Den Bosch in the Netherlands.

The show (it ran earlier this year) celebrated the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death, and featured as many of his paintings as the curators could lay hands on (only about two dozen authenticated Bosch works are recognized).

What makes this of local interest is that in researching Bosch’s output the experts determined that a painting held by the Nelson-Atkins Gallery of Art for the last 70 years (most of that time in storage), was indeed done by the hand of Bosch and not one of his imitators or pupils.

The “discovery” of the Nelson-Atkins’ “The Temptation of St. Anthony” occurs in the last 20 minutes of the documentary.

Up to that time the film focuses on preparations for the big show. We see how art historians use infrared technology to peer beneath the surface of works to reveal earlier images that subsequently were painted over.

An expert in wood — Bosch painted on wood panels — can count the tree rings in a particular piece and identify years of drought. Comparing those rings to the records of rainfall and drought 500 years ago, he can approximate the year the tree was cut down.  A wood panel that was harvested after Bosch’s death cannot have been painted by the master himself.

The film also devotes much time to the cautious dance of courtship and rejection as the Dutch scholars attempt to convince the staff at Madrid’s Prado Museum — the single largest repository of Bosch paintings — that they should lend their masterwork, the triptych “The Garden of Delights,” for the show.

In a quiet but emphatic display of curatorial territoriality, the Spaniards turn down the request.

All this is mildly interesting but a bit dry.  The film fares better when it zeroes in on the paintings themselves, lingering on Bosch’s scary/fascinating menagerie of demonic creatures, on the twisted naked forms of tortured souls, and on his eerie depictions of nighttime landscapes illuminated by mysterious fires (no doubt inspired by a devastating conflagration that destroyed Bosch’s hometown when he was a boy).

Finally we get to the Nelson-Atkins’ “St. Anthony,” which the Dutch experts noticed in an old museum catalog and decided would be worth a trip to Kansas City to check out.

A side-by-side comparison of “St. Anthony” with established Bosch works reveals so many subtle similarities that the experts conclude the Nelson’s painting is the real deal.

The film ends with the arrival of “The Temptation of St. Anthony” in the Netherlands, where it is unpacked before an appreciative crowd of art specialists. Julian Zugazagoitia, the Nelson’s CEO and director, is on hand for the unpacking and says it’s like having one of your children win the Nobel Prize.

The painting is now undergoing study by the Prado’s experts. When it returns to KC (no date has been set) it will trigger what Zugazagoitia promises will be a big celebration.