12
The Garden of Earthly Delights
(painting, c. 1500)
No other artist was as effective as Hieronymus Bosch at depicting the dark creatures that inhabit our nightmares. But he did it with such a sly sense of humor that, while his art sometimes might creep us out a bit, it mostly fascinates us. During his lifetime Bosch painted a number of triptychs (works of art divided into three separate panels), and the most famous of these by far is The Garden of Earthly Delights, an altarpiece that was probably never used as such but rather hung in the collection of a nobleman. The left panel depicts a pre-fall paradise peopled by Adam and Eve and a collection of wondrous creatures. The middle and largest panel depicts the delights of earthly existence and is filled with nude figures, oversized fruit (often a symbol for sexuality), and strange exotic birds and animals. The right panel, probably the most famous, graphically depicts the horrors of hell and judgment. When the hinged panels are closed they form another image, that of God creating the earth.
Instead of relying on traditional religious iconography, Bosch employed his own unique vision and an unfamiliar system of symbols in his work. It is a profoundly personal vision—dream and nightmare—rather than an approved ecclesiastical portrayal of heaven and hell. Bosch seemed intent on revealing human nature for what it is—weak, prone to foolishness and sin, and in grave danger of eternal judgment. But he did this with a laugh and wink as he rewrote all the rules about depicting the biblical narrative or the afterlife. Though the triptych is humorous, weird, and continually surprising—sometimes also impenetrable and ambiguous—Bosch was indeed earnest about his message regarding sin and morality.
The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, Prado Museum, Madrid [Wikimedia Commons, CC-PD-Mark]
The Garden of Earthly Delights is not a painting that can be comprehended in a glance but rather a complex chaos of images with few central points of focus. Our eyes wander over the numerous little clusters of activity, pausing over strange and wonderful creatures, writhing human figures, and terrifying beasts. There is a blending of close scientific observation of the natural world with wild, unexpected invention in his people and animals, as well as in the vegetation and landscape. In the left panel we see God blessing the newly created couple in the pristine first days of the world. In the right panel, Hell, we no longer see much of nature as God intended it but instead a world that sinful humanity has made, a world where the things we have created have turned upon us. Human beings are tortured, impaled, eaten, excreted, and variously abused in payment for their sins. Their cities burn and even the musical instruments they have fashioned turn upon them and become instruments of torture. Bosch seems to be clearly saying that we have brought such judgment upon ourselves.
The central panel is the most difficult to interpret. Some suggest that this panel is a warning against unchecked human sensuality and where it leads, an illustration of unbridled lust. Others have postulated that Bosch is depicting an imagined world where the fall never occurred, where humans are free to frolic and enjoy the pleasures of existence without guilt and recrimination. Or perhaps it is his idea of heaven. We’ll probably never know exactly what Bosch intended, but it is undoubtedly a depiction of teeming pleasures with large, oversized fruit and birds, and fountains in which people splash and play and couple.
Born Jheronimus van Aken about 1450 in the Netherlands, he derived the name under which he painted from his birthplace, Bosch, hence Hieronymus Bosch. We know very little about the details of his life, but we know he came from a family of painters and belonged to the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady, a conservative religious group that had a wide influence throughout Europe. His early work is similar to many other artists of his time, but he soon developed a style of painting and a grammar of symbols that were uniquely his own. There really is no one who preceded him to whom he can be compared—a true original. Nor is there anyone who came after him who painted in quite the same manner at which he excelled.
Some interpreters of Bosch’s work have explored his strange symbolism and suggested that he was a member of a heretical sect, such as the Cathars or the Adamites, but there is no evidence to suggest that his theology was anything other than orthodox. His paintings of saints and biblical narratives show a deep familiarity with the Bible and the stories of the saints. There is little pious sentimentality in his paintings, and he is not adverse to attacking traditional religious institutions. While there are many caustic attacks on religious hypocrisy within the details of his paintings, including a pig dressed in a nun’s habit among the denizens of hell, such a decorative denunciation of the failings of institutional Christianity does not indicate that he was operating outside that belief system. Instead, they reveal him as a passionate critic of the abuse of religious power and the scandalous behavior that he witnessed among members of the clergy, a corruption that clearly did not harmonize with the teachings of the Bible.
Bosch created his art to impart lessons about virtue and vice as well as offer warnings of judgment upon those who persisted in immoral behavior. In addition to imagery drawn from the Bible, there is much in his work that draws its message from contemporary folklore—aphorisms, wise sayings, and humorous parables illustrated from the daily lives of his contemporaries. Through humor and through the shock of recognition, he raised questions about the way people lived their lives and the immediate and eternal consequences of continuing in a life of sin.
Bosch had a mostly pessimistic view of humanity, and saw our various forms of self-indulgence as the cause of our downfall. He is the great painter of the folly of humanity, seeing foolishness as our universal state of being. In fact, one of his most well-known paintings is entitled The Ship of Fools (c. 1490–1500), an illustration of our shared journey into perdition. In another, The Seven Deadly Sins (c. 1500), he enumerates some of the forms that this folly takes.
Hell (detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights) by Hieronymus Bosch, Prado Museum, Madrid [Wikimedia Commons, CC-PD-Mark]
Perhaps it is Bosch’s rich and vivid sense of humor that saves his work from solemn self-righteousness and moralism. His paintings are spiced with depictions of foolishness being repaid in appropriate coin, and with many subtle puns and not-so-subtle jabs at hypocrisy and corruption. He created rich and unforgettable satire, peopled with the strange and exotic visions that burst forth from his imagination. Sometimes these delight, but sometimes they horrify.
Death was an ever-present reality in late medieval times, with life expectancies much shorter than in our own time, and there were always the specters of famine, pestilence, and disease. After death, Bosch reminds us, comes judgment. He illustrated the hell we create for ourselves on earth, what follows our life on this planet, and how our sinful actions might be repaid in kind in the afterlife. Though Bosch painted other subject matter, he is best known for his depictions of hell, the place where judgments are meted out. For Bosch, the devil is quite literally in the details, the nightmarish elements present in his depictions of hell.
Sometimes the grotesque creatures that inhabit his imaginative visions of judgment are hybrids of humans and beasts, or of humans and trees, or of humans and inanimate objects. The variety of Bosch’s invention is stunning. His paintings often work in the same way our nightmares do, merging elements of things that are familiar to us in combinations that make them seem menacing and horrific, playing on our fear of the unknown and unfamiliar. He can often be scatological, as we see demons of hell excreting sinners from their rectums or a man standing over a pit defecating gold coins into the abyss. The later Surrealist painters owe a sizable debt to Bosch’s work for showing how the familiar can be made unfamiliar, and even frightening, by combining elements of reality in unexpected ways.
The other great subject for Bosch was the passion and suffering of Jesus. His images of The Mocking of Christ (c. 1490–1500), Christ Crowned with Thorns (c. 1490–1500), and Christ Carrying the Cross (1515–16) are all memorable for the quiet composure on the face of Christ as he accepts his fate, contrasted with the hideous faces of those who laugh and hurl scorn at him. Perhaps Bosch is reminding us that in these stories we—sinful humanity—are the real horrors.
Hieronymus Bosch was realistic about the human condition—our tendency to pursue pleasure at the expense of that which is truly good. His paintings are stern warnings against living a life oblivious to the eternal consequences of our actions, and his is a harsh message. But because it is couched with such creativity, endless invention, earthiness, and a bold sense of humor, these paintings have continued to amaze, puzzle, horrify, and delight viewers down to our own time.