We recent­ly fea­tured hun­dreds of Van Gogh’s paint­ings, sketch­es, and let­ters down­load­able from Ams­ter­dam’s Van Gogh Muse­um. But despite its name, that respect­ed insti­tu­tion has­n’t devot­ed itself entire­ly to the work of the 19th-cen­tu­ry post-impres­sion­ist painter; they’ve also got a seri­ous stock of art from rough­ly the same peri­od but the oth­er side of the world in the form of Japan­ese wood­block prints. And like their Van Gogh mate­ri­als, they’ve made them avail­able to all of us in high res­o­lu­tion files, free for the down­load­ing in their online col­lec­tions.

All of us will rec­og­nize this style of Japan­ese art, but not all of us will know its Japan­ese name: ukiyo‑e, or “pic­tures of the float­ing world” — that is, the world of scenic trav­els through strik­ing land­scapes as well as urban beau­ties, sports­men, actors, and ladies of the night that bloomed from the 17th to the 19th cen­turies.

Not only did that heady peri­od of Japan­ese his­to­ry pro­vide these wood­block prints their sub­jects, it also pro­vid­ed the tech­nol­o­gy used to pro­duce them with increas­ing col­or and com­plex­i­ty as well as a mer­chant-class audi­ence to pur­chase them as home decor.

The Van Gogh Muse­um’s selec­tions come from a time of dom­i­nance by a few still-acknowl­edged ukiyo‑e mas­ters whose names you’ll know, like Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai and Uta­gawa (also known as Ando) Hiroshige, the lat­ter of whose work the online col­lec­tion has 83 pieces cur­rent­ly down­load­able. One of them, Goyu from one series of illus­tra­tions of notable places and Yokkaichi: The Mie­gawa Riv­er and Nago Bay from anoth­er, appear at the top and sec­ond from the top. But the Van Gogh Muse­um has amassed even more work by Uta­gawa Kunisa­da, the most pro­lif­ic and best­selling ukiyo‑e artist of the day, whose On the River­bank, one sheet of a trip­tych, we have just above.

You can down­load any of the more than 500 pieces in the online col­lec­tion by these and dozens of oth­er ukiyo‑e artists (such as Toy­ohara Kunichi­ka, whose Illus­tra­tion of Cross­ing the Sum­i­da Riv­er in the Evening appears just above) by click­ing on the down arrow that appears in the low­er right when you view an indi­vid­ual image. Hav­ing just returned from a trip to Japan a cou­ple weeks ago, I can report that the coun­try has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly and in many ways from the one Hoku­sai, Hiroshige, Kunisa­da and their col­leagues cap­tured, but still, some durable part of their aes­thet­ic essence remains. Besides, these prints must even at the time have had some­thing of the ele­giac about them, itself an endur­ing qual­i­ty of Japan­ese art. “Even in Kyoto,” as the poet Mat­suo Masho wrote two cen­turies before that, “I long for Kyoto.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Reimag­ined in the Style of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints

A Won­der­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed 1925 Japan­ese Edi­tion of Aesop’s Fables by Leg­endary Children’s Book Illus­tra­tor Takeo Takei

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Yes­ter­day, Col­in Mar­shall told you how you could take a Vir­tu­al Inter­ac­tive Tour Through Hierony­mus Bosch’s Mas­ter­piece “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights,” thanks to this web­site.

Today, we dis­cov­ered that there’s also an app (designed for iPhone, iPad and Android) that lets you take a vir­tu­al real­i­ty trip through the very same paint­ing. Cre­at­ed as part of the 500th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of Bosch’s life, the app–previewed in the trail­er above–lets you “ride on a fly­ing fish into a Gar­den of Eden, be tempt­ed by strange fruit and even stranger rit­u­als in the Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights. And vis­it hell and hear the devil’s music.”

The app is free. And you can explore parts of Bosch’s famous trip­tych at no cost. It will cost you a small fee–$3.99–to unlock the remain­ing part.

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via The Cre­ator’s Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

 Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

Art his­to­ri­ans have argued about the mean­ing of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights—Hierony­mus Bosch’s enor­mous­ly sized, lav­ish­ly detailed, and com­pelling­ly grotesque late 14th- or ear­ly 15th-cen­tu­ry triptych—more or less since the painter’s death. What does it real­ly say about the appear­ance and fall of man on Earth that it seems to depict? How seri­ous­ly or iron­i­cal­ly does it say it? Does it offer us a warn­ing against temp­ta­tion, or a cel­e­bra­tion of temp­ta­tion? Does it take a reli­gious or anti-reli­gious stance? And what’s with all those creepy ani­mals and bizarre pseu­do-sex acts? “In spite of all the inge­nious, eru­dite and in part extreme­ly use­ful research devot­ed to the task,” said schol­ar Erwin Panof­sky, “I can­not help feel­ing that the real secret of his mag­nif­i­cent night­mares and day­dreams has still to be dis­closed.”

Panof­sky said that in the 1950s, by which era he summed up the accu­mu­lat­ed efforts to decode Bosch as hav­ing “bored a few holes through the door of the locked room; but some­how we do not seem to have dis­cov­ered the key.” Now you can at least try your own hand at knock­ing on the door with this “inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary” of The Gar­den of Ear­ly Delights, which allows you to explore the paint­ing in depth, read­ing and hear­ing what sto­ries we know of the many images night­mar­ish­ly and often hilar­i­ous­ly pre­sent­ed with­in, while you zoom far clos­er than you could while even stand­ing before the real thing at the Pra­do.

(Assum­ing you could suc­cess­ful­ly elbow your way past all the tour groups.)  “The vis­i­tor of the inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary will get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what it was like to live in the Late Mid­dle Ages,” says the offi­cial descrip­tion, which also assures us we can “come back after a vis­it and pick up the book again from the shelf to fur­ther explore.”

The project comes as part of a larg­er “trans­me­dia tryp­tich,” which also con­sists of the tra­di­tion­al doc­u­men­tary film Hierony­mus Bosch, Touched by the Dev­il (whose trail­er you can see below) and a “vir­tu­al real­i­ty doc­u­men­tary” called Hierony­mus Bosch, the Eyes of the Owl. I find that last title espe­cial­ly appro­pri­ate, since I’ve long enjoyed Bosch’s recur­ring owls and appre­ci­ate the abil­i­ty this high­ly zoomable Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights offers me to count them one by one. Spend some time roam­ing Bosch’s vision’s par­adise, bac­cha­nal, and damna­tion and, whether you take the guid­ed tour through them or not, you’ll find much to stare at in sheer fas­ci­na­tion — and, as often as not, dis­be­lief.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dutch Book From 1692 Doc­u­ments Every Col­or Under the Sun: A Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­ors

300+ Etch­ings by Rem­brandt Now Free Online, Thanks to the Mor­gan Library & Muse­um

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Mas­ter of Light: A Close Look at the Paint­ings of Johannes Ver­meer Nar­rat­ed by Meryl Streep

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.