The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Garden of Earthly Delights
Artist	Hieronymus Bosch
Year	1503-1504
Type	Oil-on-wood triptych
Location	Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Garden of Earthly Delights (or The Millennium) is a triptych painted by the early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516), housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1939. Dating between 1503 and 1504, when Bosch was about 50 years old, it is his best-known and most ambitious work. The masterpiece reveals the artist at the height of his powers; in no other painting does he achieve such complexity of meaning or such vivid imagery. The triptych depicts several biblical and heretical scenes on a grand scale and as a "true triptych", as defined by Hans Belting, was probably intended to illustrate the history of mankind according to medieval Christian doctrine.

The triptych is painted in oil and comprises a square middle panel flanked by two rectangular wings that can close over the center as shutters. These outer wings, when folded shut, display a grisaille painting of the earth during the Creation. The three scenes of the inner triptych are probably intended to be read chronologically from left to right. The left panel depicts God presenting to Adam the newly created Eve, while the central panel is a broad panorama of sexually engaged nude figures, fantastical animals, oversized fruit and hybrid stone formations. The right panel is a hellscape and portrays the torments of damnation.

Art historians and critics frequently interpret the painting as a didactic warning on the perils of life's temptations. However the intricacy of its symbolism, particularly that of the central panel, has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries. 20th-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych's central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost. American writer 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".

During his life, Bosch painted three large triptychs in which each panel was essential to the meaning of the whole. Each of these three works present 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 subtext was contained in the center piece. It is not known whether "The Garden" work 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.

Exterior

When the triptych's wings are closed, the design of the outer panels becomes visible. Rendered in a green–gray grisaille, the panels lack colour, possibly indicating that the painting reflects a time before the creation of the sun and moon, which were formed to "give light to the earth". It was common for the outer panels of Netherlandish altarpieces to be in grisaille, such that their blandness highlighted the splendid colour inside.

The exterior panels show the world during creation, probably on the third day, after the addition of plant life but before the appearance of humanity.

The outer panels are generally thought to depict the Creation of the world, showing greenery beginning to clothe the still-pristine Earth. God, wearing a crown similar to a papal tiara (a common convention in Netherlandish painting), is visible as a tiny figure at the upper left. His expression and gestures seem hesitant and morose, according to the art historian Hans Belting, "as though the world he had created was already slipping beyond his control". Bosch shows God as the father sitting with a Bible on his lap, creating the Earth in a passive manner by divine fiat. Above him is inscribed a quote from Psalm XXXIII reading "Ipse dixit, et facta sunt: ipse mandávit, et creáta sunt"—For he spake and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. The Earth is encapsulated in a transparent sphere recalling the traditional depiction of the created world as a crystal sphere held by God or Christ. Refracting light, it hangs suspended in the cosmos, which is shown as an impermeable darkness, whose only other inhabitant is God himself.

Despite the presence of vegetation, the earth does not yet contain human or animal life, indicating that the scene represents the events of the Third Day. Bosch renders the plant life in an unusual fashion, using uniformly gray tints which make it difficult to determine whether the subjects are purely vegetable or perhaps include some mineral formations. Surrounding the interior of the globe is the sea, partially illuminated by beams of light shining through clouds. The exterior wings have a clear position within the sequential narrative of the work as a whole. The exterior shows an unpopulated earth comprised solely of rock and plant. The inner left panel shows a world occupied only by Adam and Eve and a variety of animal and plant life, while the central panel is a paradise teeming with humanity. The right panel is a hell-scape showing monstrous creatures tormenting the damned.

Interior

Scholars have proposed that Bosch used the outer panels to establish a Biblical setting for the inner elements of the work, and the exterior image is generally interpreted as set in an earlier time than those in the interior. As with Bosch's Haywain triptych, the inner centerpiece is flanked by heavenly and hellish imagery. The scenes depicted in the triptych are thought to follow a chronological order, flowing from left-to-right they represent respectively, Eden, the garden of earthly delights, and Hell. God appears as the creator of humanity in the left hand wing, while the consequences of his will are implied in the right. However, in contrast to Bosch's two other "true" triptychs, The Last Judgment (after 1482) and The Haywain (completed in 1490), God is absent from the central panel. Instead, this panel shows humanity acting with free will and engaging in various sexual activities. The right hand panel is believed to show God wreaking vengeance for these sins in a Last Judgment hellscape.

Art historian Charles De Tolnay believed that, through the seductive gaze of Adam, the left panel already shows God's waning influence upon the newly created earth. This view is reinforced by the rendering of God in the outer panels as a tiny figure in comparison to the immensity of the earth. According to Belting, the three inner panels seek to broadly convey the old testament notion that, before the fall, there was no defined boundary between good and evil; humanity in its innocence was unaware of consequence.

Left panel

The left panel (220 × 97.5 cm, 87 x 38.4 in) (sometimes known as the Joining of Adam and Eve) 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 shown as 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. God's right hand is raised in blessing, while he holds Eve's wrist with his left, according to Fränger:

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.

Detail from the left hand panel, showing Christ anointing Eve before she is presented to Adam

Eve chastely avoids Adam's gaze, although, according to art historian Walter S. Gibson, she is shown "seductively presenting her body to Adam". Adam's expression is one of amazement, and Fränger 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 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.

Birds swarming through cavities in 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. 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 about to devour his prey. In the foreground, a circular hole in the ground emits birds and winged animals, some of which are realistic, some fantastic. A fish with human hands and a duck's head clutches a book while emerging from the cavity in flight, while to the left of the area a cat holds a small 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". Erhard Reuwich's pictures for Bernhard von Breydenbach's 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-1400s humanist scholar Cyriac of Ancona's travelogues served as Bosch's exposure to these exotic animals.

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". Some of the image's details seem to contradict the innocence that might be expected in the Garden of Eden before the expulsion. Tuttle and other critics have interpreted the gaze of Adam upon his wife as lustful, and indicative of the Christian belief that man was doomed from the beginning. 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. On a tree to the right a snake curls around a tree trunk, while to its right a mouse creeps—both animals are universal phallic symbols. Art historian Rosemarie Schuder, however, suggests that the obvious sensuality of the panel may have been intended as a jab against the Inquisition's hostility towards physicality.

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 x 77 in) matches exactly with that of the left wing, while the positioning of its two central pools echoes the lake in the earlier panel. 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 temporal and spatial connection between the two scenes. The garden is teeming with male and female nudes, together with a variety of animals, plants and fruit. The setting is not the paradise shown in the left panel, but neither is it based in the terrestrial realm. 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", while art historian Laurinda Dixon writes that the human figures exhibit "a certain adolescent sexual curiosity".

The numerous human figures revel in an innocent, self-absorbed joy as they engage in a wide range of activities: some enjoy sexual 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 pond. Visible through its circular window is a man fondling his partner's genitals, and the bare buttocks of yet another figure hover in the vicinity. According to the 20th-century folklorist and art historian Wilhelm Fränger, the eroticism of the center frame could be considered either as an allegory of transience or a playground of corruption.

A group of nude females from the center panel. One female wears a cherry—a symbol of pride—on her head. To her left a male drinks lustfully from an organic vessel. Behind the group one male carries another encased in a mussel shell.

In the right-hand side of the foreground stand a group of both fair and black-skinned figures. Some of these fair-skinned figures, male and female alike, are covered from head to foot in light-brown body hair. Scholars generally agree that these hirsute figures represent wild or primeval man 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". Writer Peter Glum, in contrast, sees the figures as intrinsically connected with whoredom and lust.

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 Fränger observes, "he is clothed with emphatic austerity right up to his throat". In addition, he is one of the few human figures with dark hair, and the only human who does not have an idealised face; instead his features are remarkably individual. According to Fränger:

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.

The pointing man has variously been described as either the patron of the work (Fränger 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), or as a self portrait. The woman below him lies within a semicylindrical transparent shield, while her mouth is sealed, devices implying that she bears a secret. To their right, a man crowned by leaves lies on top of a gigantic strawberry, and is joined by a male and female who contemplate another large fruit.

There is no perspectival order in the foreground; instead it comprises a series of brief 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 bubble; and a man inside of a red fruit staring at a mouse in a transparent cylinder.

Detail showing a group of figures plucking fruit from a tree. A man carries a large strawberry, while an owl looks on in the foreground.

The pools in the fore and background contain bathers of both sexes. In the central lake, the sexes are segregated, and several females adorned by peacocks and fruit stand in a round pond. One woman carries a cherry on her head, a common symbol of pride at the time, as can be deduced from the contemporaneous saying: "Don't eat cherries with great lords – they'll throw the pits in your face." The women are surrounded by a parade of naked men riding horses, donkeys, unicorns, camels, and other exotic or fantastic creatures. One man somersaults on the back of his ride, an act designed to gain the females' attention that subtly highlights the attraction already felt between the two sexes. 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 over-sized fruit pods and eggshells, and both humans and animals feast on strawberries and cherries.

Detail showing nudes cavorting within a transparent sphere. What appear to be cracks in the sphere, may forecast the fragility of joyful passion. The figures's arms are entwined, while the female's head bends towards the male's attentive mouth. Their innocence contrasts with the atmosphere of the right-hand panel, where human figures are depicted in shame of their nakedness.

The impression of a life lived without consequence, or what art historian Hans Belting describes as "unspoilt and immoral existence", is underscored by the absence of children and old people. 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 Fränger'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.

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 Fränger "a symbolic bird of death". Fränger 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". 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. 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." Fränger 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'.

Right panel

A scene from the hellscape panel showing the long beams of light emitted from the burning city in the panel's background

The right panel (220 × 97.5 cm, 87 x 38.4 in) illustrates Hell, the setting of a number of Bosch paintings. Bosch depicts a world in which humans have succumbed to the temptations of the devil 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. 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. 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 gate and spill forth onto the water in the midground; according to writer Walter S. Gibson, "their fiery reflection turning the water below into blood". The light illuminates a road filled with fleeing figures, while hordes of tormentors prepare to burn a neighbouring village. A short distance away, a rabbit carries an impaled and bleeding corpse, while a group of victims above are thrown into a burning lantern. The foreground is populated by a variety of distressed, condemned figures. Some are shown vomiting or excreting, others are crucified by harp and lute, in a hallucinatory depiction of the consequences of sin. A choir sings from a score inscribed on a pair of buttocks, part of a group that has been described as the "Musicians' Hell".

The "Tree-Man" of the right panel, and a pair of human ears brandishing a blade. A cavity in the torso is populated by gamblers and drunkards. It is believed that the tree-man may represent the Antichrist.

The focal point of the scene is the "Tree-Man", whose cavernous torso stands on a pair of rotting tree trunks. His head supports a disk populated by demons and victims together with bagpipes—often used as a dual sexual symbol—reminiscent of human viscera. The tree-man's torso is formed from a broken eggshell, and is supported by the trunk of a rotten tree whose thorn-like branches pierce his 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 conspirative expression a mix of wistfulness and resignation. 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".

Detail showing the "Prince of Hell". Gibson compares the monster to a similar figure in the 12th century Irish religious text Vision of Tundale, who feeds on the souls of corrupt and lecherous clergy.

Below him a gigantic bird-headed monster feeds on the tormented, which he defecates into the transparent chamber pot on which he sits. 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.

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. 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 bird-headed monster feasting on human corpses, which he excretes through a cavity below him. To his left, a group afflicted by a hare-headed demon is being punished for unchastity. Anger is represented by a knight torn down by a pack of wolves to the right of the tree-man. A man lying in his bed is visited by devils punishing sloth, while a proud female gazes at her face reflected on the buttocks of a demon.

During the Middle Ages, sexuality and lust were seen as evidence of man's fall from grace, and the most foul of the seven deadly sins. This sin is depicted in the left-hand panel through Adam's gaze towards Eve, and there are many indicators in the center panel to suggest that the panel was created as a warning to the viewer to avoid a life of sinful pleasure. The penalty for such sins is shown in the right panel of the triptych. In the lower right-hand corner, a man is punished for lust as he is beaten by a sow wearing the veil of a nun. The pig is shown forcing the man to sign legal documents. Lust is further 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". It may also be that Bosch's representation here is a rebuke against traveling minstrels, widely thought of as purveyors of bawdy song and verse.

Provenance

The dating of The Garden of Earthly Delights is uncertain. Consensus among 20th-century art historians places the work in 1503 or 1504, while earlier conjectures attributed it to Bosch's youthful period around 1485, based on its "archaic" treatment of space. Dendrochronology dates the oak of the panels between the years 1460 and 1466, providing a terminus post quem for the work. Wood used for panel paintings during this period customarily underwent a lengthy period of storage for seasoning purposes, so the age of the oak might be expected to predate the actual date of the painting by several years. Internal evidence, specifically the depiction of a pineapple (a "New World" fruit), suggests that the painting itself postdates Columbus' voyages to the Americas. The Garden was first documented in 1517, one year after the artist's death, when Antonio de Beatis, a canon from Molfetta, Italy, described the work as part of the decoration in the town palace of the Counts of the House of Nassau in Brussels. The palace was a high-profile location, a house often visited by heads of state and leading court figures. The prominence of the painting has led some to conclude that the work was commissioned, and not "solely … a flight of the imagination". A description of the triptych in 1605 called it the "strawberry painting", because the fruit features prominently in the center panel. Early Spanish writers referred to the work as La Lujuria ("lust").

Bernard van Orley, Henry III of Nassau-Breda, (1483–1538), who may have been the patron of Bosch's triptych. Henry III was well-known as an avid collector of art.

The aristocracy of the Burgundian Netherlands, influenced by the humanist movement, were the most likely collectors of Bosch’s paintings, but there are few records of the location of his works in the years immediately following his death. It is probable that the patron of the work was Henry III of Nassau-Breda, the Stadtholder or governor of several of the Habsburg provinces in the Low Countries. De Beatis 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 blacks doing all sorts of different activities and poses." Because the triptych was publicly displayed in the palace of the House of Nassau, it was visible to many, and Bosch's reputation and fame quickly spread across Europe. The work’s popularity can be measured by the numerous surviving copies—in oil, engraving and tapestry—commissioned by wealthy patrons, as well as by the number of forgeries in circulation after his death. Most are of the central panel only and do not deviate from the original. These copies were usually painted on a much smaller scale, and they vary considerably in quality. Many were created a generation after Bosch, and some took the form of wall tapestries.

The de Beatis description, only rediscovered in the 1960s, casts new light on the commissioning of a work that was previously thought—since it has no central religious image—to be an atypical altarpiece. Many Netherlandish diptychs intended for private use are known, and even a few triptychs, but the Bosch panels are unusually large compared with these and contain no donor portraits. Possibly they were commissioned to celebrate a wedding, as large Italian paintings for private houses frequently were. Nevertheless, The Garden's bold depictions do not rule out a church commission, such was the contemporaneous fervor to warn against immorality. In 1566, the triptych served as the model for a tapestry that hangs in the Escorial monastery near Madrid.

Upon the death of Henry III, the painting passed into the hands of his nephew William the Silent, the founder of the House of Orange-Nassau and leader of the Dutch Revolt against Spain. In 1568, however, the Duke of Alba confiscated the picture and brought it to Spain, where it became the property of one Don Fernando, the Duke’s illegitimate son and the Spanish commander in the Netherlands. Phillip II acquired the painting at auction in 1591; two years later he presented it to the Escorial. A contemporaneous description of the transfer records the gift on 8 July 1593 of a "painting in oils, with two wings depicting the variety of the world, illustrated with grotesqueries by Hieronymus Bosch, known as 'Del Madroño'". The work passed from the Escorial to the Museo del Prado in 1939, along with other works by Bosch. The triptych is not particularly well-preserved; the paint of the middle panel especially has flaked off around joints in the wood.

Sources and context

Little is known for certain of the life of Hieronymus Bosch or of the commissions or influences that may have formed the basis for the iconography of his work. His birthdate, education and patrons are unknown. There is no surviving record of Bosch's thoughts or evidence as to what attracted and inspired him to such an individual mode of expression. Through the centuries art historians have struggled to resolve this question yet conclusions remain fragmentary at best. Scholars have debated Bosch's iconography more extensively than that of any other Netherlandish artist. His works are generally regarded as enigmatic, leading some to speculate that their content refers to contemporaneous esoteric knowledge since lost to history.

Hieronymous Bosch, Man Tree, c. 1470s. The "Tree-Man" of the right-hand panel, depicted in an earlier drawing by Bosch. This pen and bistre version contains no suggestion of Hell, yet its outline was adapted into one of The Garden’s most memorable grotesques.

Although Bosch’s career flourished during the High Renaissance, he lived in an area where the beliefs of the medieval Church still held moral authority. He would have been familiar with some of the new forms of expression, especially those in Southern Europe, although it is difficult to attribute with certainty which artists, writers and conventions had a bearing on his work.

José de Sigüenza is credited with the first extensive critique of The Garden of Earthly Delights, in his 1605 History of the Order of St. Jerome. He argued against dismissing the painting as either heretical or merely absurd, commenting that the panels "are a satirical comment on the shame and sinfulness of mankind".

The art historian Carl Justi observed that the left and center panels are drenched in tropical and oceanic atmosphere, and concluded that Bosch was inspired by "the news of recently discovered Atlantis and by drawings of its tropical scenery, just as Columbus himself, when approaching terra firma, thought that the place he had found at the mouth of the Orinoco was the site of the Earthly Paradise". The period in which the triptych was created was a time of adventure and discovery, when tales and trophies from the New World sparked the imagination of poets, painters and writers. Although the triptych contains many unearthly and fantastic creatures, Bosch still appealed in his images and cultural references to an elite humanist and aristocratic audience. Bosch reproduces a scene from Martin Schongauer's engraving Flight into Egypt.

The giraffe (right) in the left panel of The Garden may be drawn from copies of those in Cyriac of Ancona's Egyptian Voyage (left) which was published c. 1440.

Conquest in Africa and the East provided both wonder and terror to European intellectuals, as it led to the conclusion that Eden could never have been an actual geographical location. The exotic travel literature of the 15th century is referenced in the animals, including lions and a giraffe, in the left panel. The giraffe has been traced to Cyriac of Ancona, a travel writer known for his visits to Egypt during the 1440s. The exoticism of Cyriac's sumptuous manuscripts may have inspired Bosch's imagination.

The charting and conquest of this new world made real regions previously only idealised in the imagination of artists and poets. At the same time, the certainty of the old biblical paradise began to slip from the grasp of thinkers into the realms of mythology. In response, treatment of the Paradise in literature, poetry and art shifted towards a self-consciously fictional Utopian representation, as exemplified by the writings of Thomas More (1478–1535).

Albrecht Dürer, Rhinoceros, 1515

Albrecht Dürer was an avid student of exotic animals, and drew many sketches based on his visits to European zoos. Dürer visited 's-Hertogenbosch during Bosch's lifetime, and it is likely the two artists met, and that Bosch drew inspiration from the German's work.

Attempts to find sources for the work in literature from the period have not been successful. Art historian Erwin Panofsky wrote in 1953 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." The humanist Desiderius Erasmus has been suggested as a possible influence; the writer lived in 's-Hertogenbosch in the 1480s, and it is likely he knew Bosch. Glum remarked on the triptych's similarity of tone with 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?".

Interpretation

Because only bare details are known of Bosch's life, interpretation of his work can be an extremely difficult area for academics as it is largely reliant on conjecture. Individual motifs and elements of symbolism may be explained, but so far relating these to each other and to his work as a whole has remained elusive. The enigmatic scenes depicted on the panels of the inner triptych of The Garden of Earthly Delights have been studied by many scholars, who have often arrived at contradictory interpretations. Analyses based on symbolic systems ranging from the alchemical, astrological, and heretical to the folkloric and subconscious have all attempted to explain the complex objects and ideas presented in the work. Until the early 20th century, Bosch's paintings were generally thought to incorporate attitudes of Medieval didactic literature and sermons. Charles De Tolnay wrote that,

The oldest writers, Dominicus Lampsonius and Karel van Mander, attached themselves to his most evident side, to the subject; their conception of Bosch, inventor of fantastic pieces of devilry and of infernal scenes, which prevails today (1937) in the public at large, and prevailed with historians until the last quarter of the 19th century.

Hieronymus Bosch, in a c. 1516 copy of a drawing thought to be a self-portrait. His age in this representation (believed to be around 60 years) has been used to estimate his date of birth, although its attribution remains uncertain.

Generally, his work is described as a warning against lust, and the central panel as a representation of the transience of worldly pleasure. In 1960, the art historian Ludwig von Baldass wrote that Bosch shows "how sin came into the world through the Creation of Eve, how fleshly lusts spread over the entire earth, promoting all the Deadly Sins, and how this necessarily leads straight to Hell". De Tolnay wrote that the center panel represents "the nightmare of humanity", where "the artist's purpose above all is to show the evil consequences of sensual pleasure and to stress its ephemeral character". Supporters of this view hold that the painting is a sequential narrative, depicting mankind's initial state of innocence in Eden, followed by the subsequent corruption of that innocence, and finally its punishment in Hell. At various times in its history, the triptych has been known as La Lujuria, The Sins of the World and The Wages of Sin.

Proponents of this idea point out that moralists during Bosch's era believed that it was woman's—ultimately Eve's—temptation that drew men into a life of lechery and sin. This would explain why the women in the center panel are very much among the active participants in bringing about the fall. At the time, the power of femininity was often rendered by showing a female surrounded by a circle of males. A late 15th-century engraving by Israhel van Meckenem shows a group of men prancing ecstatically around a female figure. The Master of the Banderoles's 1460 work the Pool of Youth similarly shows a group of females standing in a space surrounded by admiring figures.

This line of reasoning is consistent with interpretations of Bosch's other major moralising works which hold up the folly of man; the Death of the Miser and the Haywain. Although each of these works is rendered in a manner, according to the art historian Walter Bosing, that it is difficult to believe "Bosch intended to condemn what he painted with such visually enchanting forms and colors." Bosing concluded however that a medieval mindset was naturally suspicious of material beauty, in any form, and that the sumptuousness of Bosch's description may have been intended to convey a false paradise, teeming with transient beauty.

Detail from the center panel showing two cherry-adorned dancing figures who carry a surface on which an owl is perched. In the front right corner a bird standing on a reclining human's foot is about to eat from a cherry offered to it.

In 1947, Wilhelm Fränger argued that the triptych's center panel portrays a joyous world when mankind will experience a rebirth of the innocence enjoyed by Adam and Eve before their fall. In his book The Millennium of Hieronymus Bosch, Fränger wrote that Bosch was a member of the heretical sect known as the Adamites—who were also known as the Homines intelligentia and Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit. This radical group, active in the area of the Rhine and the Netherlands, strove for a form of spirituality immune from sin even in the flesh and imbued the concept of lust with a paradisical innocence.

Fränger believed the The Garden of Earthly Delights was commissioned by the order's Grand Master. Later critics have agreed that, because of their obscure complexity, Bosch's "altarpieces" may well have been commissioned for non-devotional purposes. The Homines intelligentia cult sought to regain the innocent sexuality enjoyed by Adam and Eve before the Fall. Fränger writes that the figures in Bosch's work "are peacefully frolicking about the tranquil garden in vegetative innocence, at one with animals and plants and the sexuality that inspires them seems to be pure joy, pure bliss." Fränger argued against the notion that the hellscape shows the retribution handed down for sins committed in the center panel. Fränger saw the figures in the garden as peaceful, naive, and innocent in expressing their sexuality, and at one with nature. In contrast, those being punished in Hell comprise "musicians, gamblers, desecrators of judgment and punishment".

Examining the symbolism in Bosch's art—"the freakish riddles … the irresponsible phantasmagoria of an ecstatic"—Fränger concluded that his interpretation applied to Bosch's three altarpieces only: The Garden of Earthly Delights, Temptation of Saint Anthony, and The Haywain Triptych. Fränger distinguished these pieces from the artist's other works and argued that despite their anti-cleric polemic, they were nevertheless all altarpieces, probably commissioned for the devotional purposes of a mystery cult. While commentators accept Fränger's analysis as astute and broad in scope, they have often questioned his final conclusions. These are regarded by many scholars as hypothesis only, and built on an unstable foundation and what can only be conjecture. Critics argue that artists during this period painted not for their own pleasure but for commission, while the language and secularization of a post-Renaissance mind-set projected onto Bosch would have been alien to the late-Medieval painter.

Fränger's thesis stimulated others to examine The Garden more closely. Writer Carl Linfert also senses the joyfulness of the people in the center panel, but rejects Fränger's assertion that the painting is a "doctrinaire" work espousing the "guiltless sexuality" of the Adamite sect. While the figures engage in amorous acts without any suggestion of the forbidden, Linfert points to the elements in the center panel suggesting death and temporality: some figures turn away from the activity, seeming to lose hope in deriving pleasure from the passionate frolicking of their cohorts. Writing in 1969, E. H Gombrich drew on a close reading of Genesis and the Gospel According to Saint Matthew to suggest that the central panel is, according to Linfert, "the state of mankind on the eve of the Flood, when men still pursued pleasure with no thought of the morrow, their only sin the unawareness of sin."

Legacy

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Mad Meg, 1562. While Bruegel's Hellscapes were influenced by The Garden's right panel, his aesthetic betrays a more pessimistic view of humanity's fate.

As Bosch was such a distinctly unique and visionary artist his influence has not spread as wide as other major painters of his era. However, there have been instances of later artists incorporating elements of The Garden of Earthly Delights into their own work. Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c.1525–1569) in particular directly acknowledged Bosch as an important influence and inspiration, and incorporated many elements of The Garden of Earthly Delights's inner right panel in several of his most popular works. Brueghel's painting Mad Meg depicts a peasant woman leading an army of women to pillage Hell, while his The Triumph of Death (c.1562) echoes the monstrous Hellscape of The Garden, and utilizes, according to the Antwerp Royal Museum of Fine Arts, the same "unbridled imagination and the fascinating colours".

Winter, 1573, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The concept of the "Tree-man", the hybrid organism, as well the engorged fruit all bear hallmarks of Bosch's Garden.

While the Italian court painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (c.1527–1593) wasn't a creator of Hellscapes, he painted a body of strange and "fantastic" vegetable portraits—generally heads of people comprised from plants, roots, webs and various other organic matter. These strange portraits rely on a motif that was in part inspired by, and visually echoes the willingness Bosch shows in the central panel to break from strict and faithful representations of nature. David Teniers the Younger (c. 1610–1690) was a Flemish painter who quoted both Bosch and Breughel throughout his career in such works as his versions of the Temptation of St Anthony, the Rich Man in Hell, and his version of Mad Meg.

Joan Miró, The Tilled Field, (1923–1924). This early Surrealist complex of objects and figures structurally and figuratively quotes Bosch's involved arrangement of sexually active characters from the center inner panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights .

During the early 20th-century Bosch's work enjoyed a popular resurrection and the early surrealists fascination with dreamscapes, the autonomy of the imagination, and a free flowing connection to the unconscious, brought about a renewed interest in his work. Bosch's imagery struck a chord with Joan Miró and Salvador Dali in particular. Both knew his paintings firsthand, having seen The Garden of Earthly Delights in the Museo del Prado, and both regarded him as an art-historical mentor. Miró’s The Tilled Field contains several parallels to Bosch’s Garden': similar flocks of birds; pools from which living creatures emerge; and oversize disembodied ears all echo the Dutch master’s work. When André Breton wrote his first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, his historical precedents as inclusions named only Gustave Moreau, Georges Seurat and Uccello. However, after the beginnings of the Surrealist movement both Bosch and Breughel were rediscovered and quickly became popular among the Surrealist painters. René Magritte and Max Ernst both were inspired by Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Bibliography

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External links

• At the Museo Nacional del Prado
• "Hieronymus Bosch, Tempter and Moralist" Analysis by Larry Silver.
• Gardenofearthlydelights An exploration in dance-theater of the painting by Martha Clarke.