The Garden of Earthly Delights

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The Garden of Earthly Delights: Hieronymus Bosch

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Hieronymus Bosch Oil Painting - The Garden of Earthly Delights

Keywords: Garden, Earthly, Delights

Work Overview: The Garden of Earthly Delights
Hieronymus Bosch
Alternative name: The Garden of Earthly Delights
Date: 1510 - 1515
Style: Northern Renaissance
Series: The Garden of Earthly Delights
Genre: religious painting
Media: oil, panel
Dimensions: 389 x 220 cm
Location: Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain

The Garden of Earthly Delights is the modern title[1] given to a triptych painted by the Early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch, housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1939. It dates from between 1490 and 1510, when Bosch was between 40 and 60 years old.[2]

As so little is known of Bosch's life or intentions, interpretations of his intent have ranged from an admonition of worldly fleshy indulgence, to a dire warning on the perils of life's temptations, to an evocation of ultimate sexual joy. The intricacy of its symbolism, particularly that of the central panel, has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries. Twentieth-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych's central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost. Peter S. Beagle describes it as an "erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs, a place filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty".[3]

Bosch painted three large triptychs (the others are The Last Judgment of c. 1482 and The Haywain Triptych of c. 1516) that can be read from left to right and in which each panel was essential to the meaning of the whole. Each of these three works presents distinct yet linked themes addressing history and faith. Triptychs from this period were generally intended to be read sequentially, the left and right panels often portraying Eden and the Last Judgment respectively, while the main subject was contained in the center piece.[4] It is not known whether "The Garden" was intended as an altarpiece, but the general view is that the extreme subject matter of the inner center and right panels make it unlikely that it was intended to function in a church or monastery, but was instead commissioned by a lay patron.

Left panel
Detail from the left hand panel, showing the pre-incarnate Christ blessing Eve before she is presented to Adam[18]
The left panel (sometimes known as the Joining of Adam and Eve)[19] depicts a scene from the paradise of the Garden of Eden commonly interpreted as the moment when God presents Eve to Adam. The painting shows Adam waking from a deep sleep to find God holding Eve by her wrist and giving the sign of his blessing to their union. God is younger-looking than on the outer panels, blue-eyed and with golden curls. His youthful appearance may be a device by the artist to illustrate the concept of Christ as the incarnation of the Word of God.[20] God's right hand is raised in blessing, while he holds Eve's wrist with his left. According to the work's most controversial interpreter, the 20th-century folklorist and art historian Wilhelm Fraenger:

As though enjoying the pulsation of the living blood and as though too he were setting a seal on the eternal and immutable communion between this human blood and his own. This physical contact between the Creator and Eve is repeated even more noticeably in the way Adam's toes touch the Lord's foot. Here is the stressing of a rapport: Adam seems indeed to be stretching to his full length in order to make contact with the Creator. And the billowing out of the cloak around the Creator's heart, from where the garment falls in marked folds and contours to Adam's feet, also seems to indicate that here a current of divine power flows down, so that this group of three actually forms a closed circuit, a complex of magical energy ...[21]

Eve avoids Adam's gaze, although, according to art historian Walter S. Gibson, she is shown "seductively presenting her body to Adam".[22] Adam's expression is one of amazement, and Fraenger has identified three elements to his seeming astonishment. Firstly, there is surprise at the presence of the God. Secondly, he is reacting to an awareness that Eve is of the same nature as himself, and has been created from his own body. Finally, from the intensity of Adam's gaze, it can be concluded that he is experiencing sexual arousal and the primal urge to reproduce for the first time.[23]

Birds swarming through cavities of a hut-shaped form in the left background of the left panel
The surrounding landscape is populated by hut-shaped forms, some of which are made from stone, while others are at least partially organic. Behind Eve rabbits, symbolising fecundity, play in the grass, and a dragon tree opposite is thought to represent eternal life.[22] The background reveals several animals that would have been exotic to contemporaneous Europeans, including a giraffe, an elephant and a lion that has killed and is about to devour his prey. In the foreground, from a large hole in the ground, emerge birds and winged animals, some of which are realistic, some fantastic. Behind a fish, a person clothed in a short-sleeved hooded jacket and with a duck's beak holds an open book as if reading. To the left of the area a cat holds a small lizard-like creature in its jaws. Belting observes that, despite the fact that the creatures in the foreground are fantastical imaginings, many of the animals in the mid and background are drawn from contemporary travel literature, and here Bosch is appealing to "the knowledge of a humanistic and aristocratic readership".[24] Erhard Reuwich's pictures for Bernhard von Breydenbach's 1486 Pilgrimages to the Holy Land were long thought to be the source for both the elephant and the giraffe, though more recent research indicates the mid-15th-century humanist scholar Cyriac of Ancona's travelogues served as Bosch's exposure to these exotic animals.[24]

According to art historian Virginia Tuttle, the scene is "highly unconventional [and] cannot be identified as any of the events from the Book of Genesis traditionally depicted in Western art".[25] Some of the images contradict the innocence expected in the Garden of Eden. Tuttle and other critics have interpreted the gaze of Adam upon his wife as lustful, and indicative of the Christian belief that humanity was doomed from the beginning.[25] Gibson believes that Adam's facial expression betrays not just surprise but also expectation. According to a belief common in the Middle Ages, before the Fall Adam and Eve would have copulated without lust, solely to reproduce. Many believed that the first sin committed after Eve tasted the forbidden fruit was carnal lust.[26] On a tree to the right a snake curls around a tree trunk, while to its right a mouse creeps; according to Fraenger, both animals are universal phallic symbols.[27]

Center panel
The central water-bound globe in the middle panel's upper background is a hybrid of stone and organic matter. It is adorned by nude figures cavorting both with each other and with various creatures, some of whom are realistic, others are fantastic or hybrid.
The skyline of the center panel (220 × 195 cm, 87 × 77 in) matches exactly with that of the left wing, while the positioning of its central pool and the lake behind it echoes the lake in the earlier scene. The center image depicts the expansive "garden" landscape which gives the triptych its name. The panel shares a common horizon with the left wing, suggesting a spatial connection between the two scenes.[28] The garden is teeming with male and female nudes, together with a variety of animals, plants and fruit.[29] The setting is not the paradise shown in the left panel, but neither is it based in the terrestrial realm.[30] Fantastic creatures mingle with the real; otherwise ordinary fruits appear engorged to a gigantic size. The figures are engaged in diverse amorous sports and activities, both in couples and in groups. Gibson describes them as behaving "overtly and without shame",[31] while art historian Laurinda Dixon writes that the human figures exhibit "a certain adolescent sexual curiosity".[19]

Many of the numerous human figures revel in an innocent, self-absorbed joy as they engage in a wide range of activities; some appear to enjoy sensory pleasures, others play unselfconsciously in the water, and yet others cavort in meadows with a variety of animals, seemingly at one with nature. In the middle of the background, a large blue globe resembling a fruit pod rises in the middle of a lake. Visible through its circular window is a man holding his right hand close to his partner's genitals, and the bare buttocks of yet another figure hover in the vicinity. According to Fraenger, the eroticism of the center frame could be considered either as an allegory of spiritual transition or a playground of corruption.[32]

A group of nude females from the center panel. The head of one female is adorned with two cherries—a symbol of pride. To her right, a male drinks lustfully from an organic vessel. Behind the group, a male carries a couple encased in a mussel shell.[33]
On the right-hand side of the foreground stand a group of three fair and one black-skinned figures. The fair-skinned figures, two males and one female, are covered from head to foot in light-brown body hair. Scholars generally agree that these hirsute figures represent wild or primeval humanity but disagree on the symbolism of their inclusion. Art historian Patrik Reuterswärd, for example, posits that they may be seen as "the noble savage" who represents "an imagined alternative to our civilized life", imbuing the panel with "a more clear-cut primitivistic note".[34] Writer Peter Glum, in contrast, sees the figures as intrinsically connected with whoredom and lust.[35]

In a cave to their lower right a male figure points towards a reclining female who is also covered in hair. The pointing man is the only clothed figure in the panel, and as Fraenger observes, "he is clothed with emphatic austerity right up to his throat".[36] In addition, he is one of the few human figures with dark hair. According to Fraenger:

The way this man's dark hair grows, with the sharp dip in the middle of his high forehead, as though concentrating there all the energy of the masculine M, makes his face different from all the others. His coal-black eyes are rigidly focused in a gaze that expresses compelling force. The nose is unusually long and boldly curved. The mouth is wide and sensual, but the lips are firmly shut in a straight line, the corners strongly marked and tightened into final points, and this strengthens the impression — already suggested by the eyes — of a strong controlling will. It is an extraordinarily fascinating face, reminding us of faces of famous men, especially of Machiavelli's; and indeed the whole aspect of the head suggests something Mediterranean, as though this man had acquired his frank, searching, superior air at Italian academies.[36]

A group of figures pluck fruit from a tree. A man carries a large strawberry, while an owl is in the foreground.
The pointing man has variously been described as either the patron of the work (Fraenger in 1947), as an advocate of Adam denouncing Eve (Dirk Bax in 1956), as Saint John the Baptist in his camel's skin (Isabel Mateo Goméz in 1963),[37] or as a self-portrait.[17] The woman below him lies within a semicylindrical transparent shield, while her mouth is sealed, devices implying that she bears a secret. To their left, a man crowned by leaves lies on top of what appears to be an actual but gigantic strawberry, and is joined by a male and female who contemplate another equally huge strawberry.[37]

There is no perspectival order in the foreground; instead it comprises a series of small motifs wherein proportion and terrestrial logic are abandoned. Bosch presents the viewer with gigantic ducks playing with tiny humans under the cover of oversized fruit; fish walking on land while birds dwell in the water; a passionate couple encased in an amniotic fluid bubble; and a man inside of a red fruit staring at a mouse in a transparent cylinder.[38]

The pools in the fore and background contain bathers of both sexes. In the central circular pool, the sexes are mostly segregated, with several females adorned by peacocks and fruit.[33] Four women carry cherry-like fruits on their heads, perhaps a symbol of pride at the time, as has been deduced from the contemporaneous saying: "Don't eat cherries with great lords — they'll throw the pits in your face."[39] The women are surrounded by a parade of naked men riding horses, donkeys, unicorns, camels and other exotic or fantastic creatures.[30] Several men show acrobatics while riding, apparently acts designed to gain the females' attention, which highlights the attraction felt between the two sexes as groups.[33] The two outer springs also contain both men and women cavorting with abandon. Around them, birds infest the water while winged fish crawl on land. Humans inhabit giant shells. All are surrounded by oversized fruit pods and eggshells, and both humans and animals feast on strawberries and cherries.

Detail showing nudes within a transparent sphere, which is the fruit of a plant
The impression of a life lived without consequence, or what art historian Hans Belting describes as "unspoilt and pre-moral existence", is underscored by the absence of children and old people.[40] According to the second and third chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve's children were born after they were expelled from Eden. This has led some commentators, in particular Belting, to theorise that the panel represents the world if the two had not been driven out "among the thorns and thistles of the world". In Fraenger's view, the scene illustrates "a utopia, a garden of divine delight before the Fall, or — since Bosch could not deny the existence of the dogma of original sin — a millennial condition that would arise if, after expiation of Original Sin, humanity were permitted to return to Paradise and to a state of tranquil harmony embracing all Creation."[41]

In the high distance of the background, above the hybrid stone formations, four groups of people and creatures are seen in flight. On the immediate left a human male rides on a chthonic solar eagle-lion. The human carries a triple-branched tree of life on which perches a bird; according to Fraenger "a symbolic bird of death". Fraenger believes the man is intended to represent a genius, "he is the symbol of the extinction of the duality of the sexes, which are resolved in the ether into their original state of unity".[42] To their right a knight with a dolphin tail sails on a winged fish. The knight's tail curls back to touch the back of his head, which references the common symbol of eternity: the snake biting its own tail. On the immediate right of the panel, a winged youth soars upwards carrying a fish in his hands and a falcon on his back.[42] According to Belting, in these passages Bosch's "imagination triumphs ... the ambivalence of [his] visual syntax exceeds even the enigma of content, opening up that new dimension of freedom by which painting becomes art."[17] Fraenger titled his chapter on the high background "The Ascent to Heaven", and wrote that the airborne figures were likely intended as a link between "what is above" and "what is below", just as the left and right hand panels represent "what was" and "what will be".[43]

Right panel
A scene from the hellscape panel showing the long beams of light emitted from the burning city in the panel's background[20]
The right panel (220 × 97.5 cm, 87 × 38.4 in) illustrates Hell, the setting of a number of Bosch paintings. Bosch depicts a world in which humans have succumbed to temptations that lead to evil and reap eternal damnation. The tone of this final panel strikes a harsh contrast to those preceding it. The scene is set at night, and the natural beauty that adorned the earlier panels is noticeably absent. Compared to the warmth of the center panel, the right wing possesses a chilling quality—rendered through cold colourisation and frozen waterways—and presents a tableau that has shifted from the paradise of the center image to a spectacle of cruel torture and retribution.[44] In a single, densely detailed scene, the viewer is made witness to cities on fire in the background; war, torture chambers, infernal taverns, and demons in the midground; and mutated animals feeding on human flesh in the foreground.[45] The nakedness of the human figures has lost all its eroticism, and many now attempt to cover their genitalia and breasts with their hands.

Large explosions in the background throw light through the city gates and spill into the water in the midground; according to writer Walter S. Gibson, "their fiery reflection turning the water below into blood".[20] The light illuminates a road filled with fleeing figures, while hordes of tormentors prepare to burn a neighbouring village.[46] A short distance away, a rabbit carries an impaled and bleeding corpse, while a group of victims above are thrown into a burning lantern.[47] The foreground is populated by a variety of distressed or tortured figures. Some are shown vomiting or excreting, others are crucified by harp and lute, in an allegory of music, thus sharpening the contrast between pleasure and torture. A choir sings from a score inscribed on a pair of buttocks,[44] part of a group that has been described as the "Musicians' Hell".[48]

The "Tree-Man" of the right panel, and a pair of human ears brandishing a blade. A cavity in the torso is populated by three naked persons at a table, seated on an animal, and a fully clothed woman pouring drink from a barrel.
The focal point of the scene is the "Tree-Man", whose cavernous torso is supported by what could be contorted arms or rotting tree trunks. His head supports a disk populated by demons and victims parading around a huge set of bagpipes—often used as a dual sexual symbol[44]—reminiscent of human scrotum and penis. The tree-man's torso is formed from a broken eggshell, and the supporting trunk has thorn-like branches which pierce the fragile body. A grey figure in a hood bearing an arrow jammed between his buttocks climbs a ladder into the tree-man's central cavity, where nude men sit in a tavern-like setting. The tree-man gazes outwards beyond the viewer, his conspiratorial expression a mix of wistfulness and resignation.[49] Belting wondered if the tree-man's face is a self-portrait, citing the figure's "expression of irony and the slightly sideways gaze [which would] then constitute the signature of an artist who claimed a bizarre pictorial world for his own personal imagination".[44]

Many elements in the panel incorporate earlier iconographical conventions depicting hell. However, Bosch is innovative in that he describes hell not as a fantastical space, but as a realistic world containing many elements from day-to-day human life.

Gibson compares this "Prince of Hell" to a figure in the 12th-century Irish religious text Vision of Tundale, who feeds on the souls of corrupt and lecherous clergy.[49]
Animals are shown punishing humans, subjecting them to nightmarish torments that may symbolise the seven deadly sins, matching the torment to the sin. Sitting on an object that may be a toilet or a throne, the panel's centerpiece is a gigantic bird-headed monster feasting on human corpses, which he excretes through a cavity below him,[45] into the transparent chamber pot on which he sits.[49] The monster is sometimes referred to as the "Prince of Hell", a name derived from the cauldron he wears on his head, perhaps representing a debased crown.[45] To his feet a female has her face reflected on the buttocks of a demon. Further to the left, next to a hare-headed demon, a group of naked persons around a toppled gambling table are being massacred with swords and knives. Other brutal violence is shown by a knight torn down and eaten up by a pack of wolves to the right of the tree-man.

During the Middle Ages, sexuality and lust were seen, by some, as evidence of humanity's fall from grace, and the most foul of the seven deadly sins. In the eyes of some viewers, this sin is depicted in the left-hand panel through Adam's, allegedly lustful, gaze towards Eve, and it has been proposed that the center panel was created as a warning to the viewer to avoid a life of sinful pleasure.[50] According to this view, the penalty for such sins is shown in the right panel of the triptych. In the lower right-hand corner, a man is approached by a pig wearing the veil of a nun. The pig is shown trying to seduce the man to sign legal documents. Lust is further said to be symbolised by the gigantic musical instruments and by the choral singers in the left foreground of the panel. Musical instruments often carried erotic connotations in works of art of the period, and lust was referred to in moralising sources as the "music of the flesh". There has also been the view that Bosch's use of music here might be a rebuke against traveling minstrels, often thought of as purveyors of bawdy song and verse.[51]

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The Garden of Earthly Delights is Hieronymus Bosch's best known work. A grand, three-part altarpiece, this triptych was the artist's most ambitious and unconventional project and in it he used vivid imagery to ensure a painting with a complexity of meaning.

The date of this work remains something of a mystery but 20th century art historians agree that it was most probably created between 1503 and 1504 or even later. The original title for this piece has not survived.

The Garden of Earthly Delights shows Adam and Eve and various animals on the left panel, cavorting nude figures, oversized fruit and earthly delights in the middle (from which the triptych takes its name), and hell ensuring torment for sinners on the right panel. This work sums up the history of the world and focuses on the progression of sin.

When closed, the exterior panels depict God creating the Earth, painted in grisaille which was rather bland but a common technique that ensured the vibrancy and appeal of colors on the inner panels.

The first mention of The Garden of Earthly Delights was in 1517, one year after Bosch's death, when Italian canon Antonio de Beatis discussed the decoration in the town palace of the House of Nassau, Brussels. Due to the fact the work has no central religious image, it had been presumed to be an atypical altarpiece. Nevertheless, despite its larger-than-normal panels and lack of donor portraits some still believed it could have been created for a church.

After de Beatis' description, however, it was proposed that The Garden of Earthly Delights was commissioned by Engelbrecht II of Nassau or his successor, Henry III of Nassau-Breda, who was a renowned art collector. Large Italian paintings of this scale were typically commissioned to celebrate a wedding.

Many writers and historians have attempted to find the source of inspiration for The Garden of Earthly Delights but to no avail. In 1953 Erwin Panofsky wrote that, "In spite of all the ingenious, erudite and in part extremely useful research devoted to the task of "decoding Jerome Bosch", I cannot help feeling that the real secret of his magnificent nightmares and daydreams has still to be disclosed. We have bored a few holes through the door of the locked room; but somehow we do not seem to have discovered the key".

One suggested influence is humanist and writer Desiderius Erasmus who lived in 's-Hertogenbosch, Bosch's hometown, in the 1480s and is likely to have known the artist. Glum points to similarities between the tone of The Garden of Earthly Delights and Erasmus's view that theologians "explain (to suit themselves) the most difficult mysteries ... is it a possible proposition: God the Father hates the Son? Could God have assumed the form of a woman, a devil, an ass, a gourd, a stone?"

It is also possible that Bosch was inspired by German artist Albrecht Dürer. An avid student of exotic animals, Durer created many sketches based on his visits to European zoos. He visited 's-Hertogenbosch during Bosch's lifetime, and it's probable the two artists were acquaintances.

Composition:
The scenes depicted in The Garden of Earthly Delights are believed to be in chronological order, running from left to right. The first section shows a scene from paradise - the Garden of Eden - and this is thought to be the moment God appears to Adam and Eve, before the eating from the tree of knowledge.

Upon waking from a peaceful sleep Adam sees God holding Eve by her wrist and he gives his blessing to their union. God is painted younger than he is on the outer panels and all of the figures are notably refined.

The centre panel of the triptych features men and women participating in sexual and ungodly activities. It was a popular belief in the middle ages that debauchery was the worst of all sins committed by man and that the source of such temptation came from women.

The final panel depicts a gruesome image of hell and here Bosch illustrates different punishments for the individual sins carried out by man.

Color palette:
The outer panels of The Garden of Earthly Delights lack color and this was probably to ensure consistency with Netherlandish triptychs of the time, which saved their beautiful shades for the inner panels. The tones used are definite yet subtle.

It could also be the case that this triptych reflects a time before the sun and moon were created, which, according to Christian theology, were responsible for providing the earth with light.

Use of technique:
Bosch painted each panel, particularly the last one depicting hell, in a rather sketchy manner. This was distinct from traditional Flemish techniques whereby multiple transparent glazes were applied, resulting in a smooth surface that hid traces of the artist's brush work.

The Garden of Earthly Delights is not very well preserved and paint on the middle section in particular has flaked off around joints in the wood.

Mood, tone and emotion:
In this triptych Bosch is elaborating on his early ideas and his thought process has clearly and brilliantly evolved. The Garden of Earthly Delights is a mix of fantasy, chaotic scenes and monstrous images starkly contrasted with the nature of mankind in the age of innocence.

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It’s not the most auspicious of song titles. ‘The Music Written on This Dude’s Butt’, however, has one of art’s most celebrated paintings as its inspiration. After looking closely at The Garden of Earthly Delights, student Amelia Hamrick decided to transcribe “music written upon the posterior of one of the many tortured denizens of the rightmost panel of the painting”. This particular denizen appears to have been crushed by a giant harp plunged into a lute, with an audience of nuns, monsters and a person wielding a flaming toad on a spear. Welcome to the mind of Hieronymus Bosch, who died 500 years ago.

The Early Netherlandish painter’s artwork (c. 1490-1510) is a vision of sin and morality: and the devil is in the detail. As the art critic Alastair Sooke wrote in BBC Culture, The Garden of Earthly Delights has been called ‘probably the most famous scene of the underworld in all Western art’. If hell is other people, Bosch’s version involves people cavorting with owls, strawberries – and derrières tattooed with musical scores.
“I decided to transcribe it into modern notation, assuming the second line of the staff is C, as is common for chants of this era,” Hamrick wrote on her blog, before promptly going viral. The 500-Year-Old Butt Song from Hell, as it’s also known, is an entrancing piece: played on lute, harp and hurdy-gurdy or sung in a Gregorian choral arrangement, the music soars beyond a tiny patch of paint on the third panel of a triptych. And that is where Bosch’s genius lies: in among what appears to be a sweeping panorama encompassing Eden, a place of hedonistic abandon and Hell, small details pop up to reveal the unexpected.

Torture, mutilation – and backgammon. One area of the painting’s third panel shows diabolical creatures stabbing a man in the back and impaling a heart on a sword, as well as dice and board games. The grotesque figures aren’t just inflicting pain; they’re gambling with their victims. According to an interactive tour of the painting created as part of a ‘transmedia triptych’ including the new documentary Jheronimus Bosch, Touched by the Devil, “Bosch’s hell panel is a far cry from other mediaeval depictions of inferno, where we often see people being boiled, burned or eaten alive. The suffering going on in this panel is not just on the physical level, it’s also psychological: the souls are being driven mad by fear, anxiety, chaos and distress”.

Alongside the suffering, there is humour. In the central panel, we see naked people riding oversized birds including a robin, a duck and a woodpecker. Bosch might have been making a visual joke: according to the interactive tour, “the birds could also be taken as a double entendre. As well as being an obsolete plural form, the Dutch word ‘vogelen’ (vogel meaning bird) could refer to having sexual intercourse”. There are other hidden messages to decode: art critic Kelly Grovier has written in BBC Culture about an “Easter egg that’s concealed in plain sight: the secret symbol that centres the eye… to find it, one’s eyes need merely draw an ‘X’ from the four corners of the work and an egg marks the spot, smack before us at the dead centre of the painting”. Despite depicting damnation, the painting is playful. According to Sooke, “Bosch has a reputation, above all, as the preeminent image-maker of hell… It seems he found jubilation in his peculiar creations, as well as fire and brimstone”.

The Garden of Earthly Delights was first documented in 1517, when the Italian canon Antonio De’ Beatis, who was accompanying the Cardinal of Aragon on a visit to Brussels, wrote in his travel journal that “there are some panels on which bizarre things have been painted. They represent seas, skies, woods, meadows, and many other things, such as people crawling out of a shell, others that bring forth birds, men and women, white and black doing all sorts of different activities and poses”. Writing in A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature, Gordon Williams suggests that shellfish have been ‘venereal symbols’ since ancient times, arguing that although Bosch’s shell is from a mussel rather than an oyster, “it has a scattering of semen pearls… Pliny mentions a species of mussel called Venereae, or Venus-Shell”.

Early descriptions of the triptych refer to it as the ‘strawberry painting’, and the fruit appears several times in the central panel. It allows Bosch to reference other forms of imagery: in one section, people pick apples from trees while a man offers a strawberry to a woman with a leering expression, a twist on biblical depictions of Eden. In another, couples feed each other berries, a scene traditionally associated with courtly romance, yet here they are doing more than merely flirting. According to one critic, Bosch ‘subverts and perverts’ the theme of courtly love, with “‘love fruit’, a traditional metaphor for amorous union, both religious and worldly, now transformed into a hellish prison”.

It might seem that the pig in a nun’s habit is the most significant element of this detail: but the amputated foot in fact offers the more surprising insight. Bosch paints the sawn-off appendage as a reminder of a condition known as St Anthony’s Fire – gangrene caused by eating bread infected with a black mould, or ergot fungus. In the 1950s, a component of the fungus was synthesised to create LSD. According to Pieter van Huystee’s interactive documentary, “If you ate bread from the wrong baker… limbs would rot away while the mind would be addled by hallucinations, ultimately leading to insanity. Did Hieronymus Bosch paint his Garden of Earthly Delights while suffering from a bad trip?”

Hans Belting – who sees the painting as utopian rather than apocalyptic – believes that this figure is a self-portrait of Bosch. Art historian Reindert Falkenburg argues that the painter’s anthropomorphic images are ‘double’ or Gestalt, requiring an imaginative response by the viewer to see the veiled imagery. Ultimately, The Garden of Earthly Delights evades analysis. According to Falkenburg, it’s a work deliberately designed to resist interpretation; while Erwin Panofsky claims in Early Netherlandish Painting that “In spite of all the ingenious, erudite and in part extremely useful research devoted to the task of ‘decoding Jerome Bosch’, I cannot help feeling that the real secret of his magnificent nightmares and daydreams has still to be disclosed. We have bored a few holes through the door of the locked room; but somehow we do not seem to have discovered the key”.

Deciphering the indecipherable
To write about Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych, known to the modern age as The Garden of Earthly Delights, is to attempt to describe the indescribable and to decipher the indecipherable—an exercise in madness. Nonetheless, there are a few points that can be made with certainty before it all unravels.
The painting was first described in 1517 by the Italian chronicler Antonio de Beatis, who saw it in the palace of the counts of Nassau in Brussels. It can therefore be considered a commissioned work. The fact that the counts were powerful political players in the Burgundian Netherlands made the palace a stage for important diplomatic receptions and the work must have caused something of a sensation with its viewing audience, since it was copied, both in painting and tapestry, after Bosch’s death in 1516.

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, c. 1480-1505, oil on panel, 220 x 390 cm (Prado)
Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delight s (outer panels), c. 1480-1505, oil on panel, 220 x 390 cm (Prado, Madrid)
We can assume, therefore, that Bosch’s bizarre lexicon of human congress must have held some appeal, or some meaning, for a contemporary audience. In a period marked by religious decline in Europe and, in the Netherlands, the first blush of capitalism following the abolition of the guilds, the work has often been interpreted as an admonition against fleshly and worldly indulgence, but that seems a rather prosaic purpose to assign to a highly idiosyncratic and expressively detailed tour-de-force. And, indeed, there is very little agreement as to the precise meaning of the work. It is a creation and damnation triptych, starting with Adam and Eve and ending with a highly imaginative through-the-looking glass kind of Hell. No one really knows why Bosch imagined the world in this particular way.
Here’s what I think. What concerned Bosch, in his triptych of creation, human futility and damnation (the Garden of Earthly Delights is a modern misnomer for the work), was the essentially comic ephemerality of human life. Allow me to explain.

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The Garden of Earthly Delights is Bosch’s most complex and enigmatic creation. For Falkenburg the overall theme of The Garden of Earthly Delights is the fate of humanity, as in The Haywain (P02052), although Bosch visualizes this concept very differently and in a much more explicit manner in the centre panel of that triptych than in The Garden of Earthly Delights. In order to analyse the work’s meaning the content of each panel must be identified. On the outer faces of the triptych Bosch depicted in grisaille the Third Day of the Creation of the World, when the waters were separated from the earth and the earthly Paradise (Eden) created. At the top left we see God the Father as the Creator, according to two Latin inscriptions, one on each panel: For he spake, and it was done and For he commanded, and they were created (Psalms 33:9 and 148:5). On the inner face of the triptych, painted in brilliant colours which contrast with the grisaille, Bosch painted three scenes that share the single common denominator of the concept of sin, which starts in Paradise or Eden on the left panel, with Adam and Eve, and is punished in Hell in the right panel. The centre panel depicts a Paradise that deceives the senses, a false Paradise given over to the sin of lust. This deception is encouraged by the fact that the centre panel is shown as a continuation of Eden through the use of a single, continuous landscape with a high horizon line that allows for a broad, panoramic composition arranged as three superimposed planes, in the panels of the earthly Paradise, the Garden of Earthly Delights and Hell.

While sin is the connecting link between the three scenes, the iconography in the Paradise panel requires further analysis in order fully to appreciate its meaning. As will be noted below in the analysis of the technical documentation, when he initially embarked on the work Bosch included the Creation of Eve on the left panel, but in a second phase he replaced it with God presenting Eve to Adam. This very uncommon subject was associated with the institution of marriage, as Falkenburg and Vandenbroeck discuss (Bosch, 2016). For the latter, the centre panel represents the false paradise of love, known as Grail in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which implied a carnal interpretation of God’s mandate to Be fruitful and multiply, as instituted in marriage. The men and women that Bosch depicts in the Garden of Earthly Delights believe they are inhabiting a paradise for lovers, but this is false and their only fate is punishment in Hell. The extremely pessimistic message that the centre panel conveys is that of the fragility and ephemeral nature of happiness and delight in these sinful pleasures.

In the centre panel, from which the triptych derives its name, Bosch included a large number of naked human figures, with the exception of the pair at the lower right, who are usually identified as Adam and Eve after the Expulsion from Paradise. Men and women, both black and white, are generally seen in groups or pairs, maintaining amorous relations (some of a forbidden nature) with a powerful erotic charge that refers to the panel’s pre-eminent theme, the sin of lust. The animals, both real and imaginary, are much larger than their proper scale. Among them, Bosch particularly emphasizes two different types of owl that evoke evil. Staring straight out, they direct their disturbing gazes at the viewer at the two lateral edges of the panel, slightly set back from the immediate foreground. Also present are plants and fruit, which are again much larger than their scale dimensions. The entire composition is dotted with pieces of red fruit that contrast with other large and small blue ones, these being the two principal colours in the scene. In contrast to the apparent confusion that prevails in the foreground, geometry imposes itself in the middle ground and background. In the former, Bosch depicted a pool full of naked women. Around it, in an anti-clockwise direction, rides a group of men on different mounts (some of them exotic or imaginary), who have been associated with different Cardinal Sins. In the background of the scene Bosch included five fantastical architectural constructions in the water, the central one similar to the fountain of the Four Rivers in the Paradise panel, although here broken to symbolize its fragility and the ephemeral nature of the delights being enjoyed by the men and women who fill this garden. And now the owl depicted inside the fountain in the Paradise panel is replaced here by human figures in sexually explicit poses.

The right panel depicts Hell and is Bosch’s most striking representation of this subject, on occasions referred to as the musical Hell owing to the significant presence of instruments used to torture sinners who have devoted their time to secular music. In his text in the present catalogue Larry Silver describes the punishments meted out to each sin. While lust prevails in the centre panel, in the scene of Hell all the Cardinal Sins are punished. A good example is the punishment of the avaricious, who are devoured and immediately expelled from the anus of a theriomorphic creature with a bird’s head (a variety of owl) seated on a type of child’s lavatory stool. Gluttons and the sin of gluttony are undoubtedly referred to in the tavern scene located inside the tree-man, in which semi-naked people seated at a table wait to be served toads and other unpleasant creatures by devils, while the envious are tortured by immersion in frozen water. Further punishments correspond to vices censured by society at the time, including board games, while particular social classes are also singled out, including the clergy, who were notably criticized at this period, as reflected in the pig wearing a nun’s veil embracing a naked man in the lower right corner.

Although the triptych in the Museo del Prado is not signed, its attribution to Bosch has never been doubted. Its dating, however, is the subject of considerable debate. The results of the dendrochronological analyses could allow it to be located within the early years of the artist’s activity, around 1480-85, as Vermet stated without any supporting evidence. However, the work’s stylistic proximity to the Adoration of the Magi Triptych in the Prado (P02048), which can be securely dated to 1494 following Duquenne’s identification in 2004 of the donors, Peeter Scheyfve and Agneese de Gramme from Antwerp, confirms that the present work must have been painted in the 1490s and not after 1505, as most authors preferred to believe prior to Duquenne’s discovery. It has recently been argued that it must have been painted in or after 1494 as the image of God the Father creating the world on the reverse of the triptych is inspired by a print by Michel Wolgemut of the same subject -including the same text from the Psalms as appears on the wings- which appeared in Hartman Schedelsche Weltchronik published in Nuremberg in 1493.

Research undertaken in 1967 by Gombrich and Steppe allowed The Garden of Earthly Delights to be associated with the Nassau family. An account by Antonio de Beatis, who accompanied Cardinal Luis de Aragon as his secretary on his trip to the Low Countries, states that on 30 July 1517 the triptych was in the Nassau palace of Coudenberg in Brussels, where De Beatis presumably saw it. Since in the late 1960s the painting was considered to be a late work by Bosch, executed after the death of Engelbert’s II of Nassau in 1504, it was therefore thought that the patron was Henry III of Nassau (1483-1538), Engelbert nephew and heir. In the present day and in the light of the information that locates the triptych in the 1490s, it can be confirmed that it was commissioned from Bosch by Engelbert, who must have intended it for the Coudenberg Palace (Text drawn from Silva, P.: Bosch. The 5th Centenary Exhibition, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2016, pp. 330-346).

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Hieronymus Bosch

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