The Garden of Earthly Delights
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Garden of Earthly Delights is the center panel of a triptych by Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. Painted around 1504, The Garden of Earthly Delights is his best-known work. It depicts the Creation of Earth and the infiltration of sin into mankind. The Garden of Earthly Delights in its entirety can be read from exterior to interior and then left to right, featuring a full narrative. Chronologically, the creation of the world becomes imparted onto the creation of Man, followed by earthly sin, culminating in damnation. The left interior panel of Eden depicts animals living together with humans without interaction. Curiously, death exists, exemplified by a cat carrying a mouse and a lion eating a deer or antelope. Moving to the center panel, animals and humans begin to coexist and intermingle. On the right side, animals torture humans, completing a transformation of “simple” creatures into anthropomorphic superiors.
The Garden of Earthly Delights is an oil painting on wood panels. The exterior shutters are grisaille on panel. The centre panel measures 220 by 195 cm, and the wings measure 220 by 95 cm. Although the triptych format was standard for church altarpieces at the time, it is likely that The Garden of Earthly Delights was produced for the private enjoyment of a noble family.
It is currently hangs in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. The title is a later attribution. It was registered in the inventory of the Spanish crown as "the picture with the strawberry-tree fruits".
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Exterior
When closed, the shutters depict an image of the earth as a flat disc within a sphere with the land floating upon a sea. Although the earth is bright from sunlight slipping through receding storm clouds, strange organic and even obscene forms are seen rising from the ground. A small representation of God the Father appears enthroned in the outer firmament at the upper left corner. At the top of the panels is a quote from Psalm 33:9 of the Bible: "For he spake and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." Some critics have taken the verse to imply that the scene is one from Creation; others hold that it is of the receding waters of the Flood during the days of Noah. The interior triptych is thus interpreted to represent the days of sexual fornication prior to the Flood. Other critics have supposed that the outer shutters represent a metaphor for the last days and not a specific moment in Biblical history. It is argued that there is no ark or human and animal corpses present on the outer shutters, and that it is therefore unlikely that it could be representing the specific Flood of Noah. Yet another interpretation describes the picture as depicting the third day of the Creation of Earth.
The shutters open to reveal the three-paneled triptych.
Interior
Garden of Eden
The leftmost panel features the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge (the one at the middle of the right edge), and God (in the form of Jesus), presenting Eve to Adam.
Garden of Earthly Delights
The centre panel details the descent of humanity into sin, featuring giant birds, abundant fruit, and many people frolicking nude in a lush, green field.
The Hell
Finally, the rightmost panel illustrates Hell. People are treated to various nightmarish torments including being eaten by a giant bird and defecating coins. The seven deadly sins are featured prominently throughout.
- The bird sitting in the chair eating the man is supposed to be Satan himself.
- The face staring out from under the dish holding the pink bagpipes is said to be a portrait of Bosch himself.
- The woman near the bottom, under the bird's chair, in the clutches of a monster, staring into a mirror (which is also the rear end of some creature), is guilty of the deadly sin of pride (vanity).
- The person defecating coins into the pit under the bird's chair is guilty of the deadly sin of avarice.
- The man nearby, vomiting into the same pit, is guilty of the deadly sin of gluttony.
Legacy
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".
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.
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.
See also
