Canvases Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch is recognizable by its fantastic scenes and delicate details. One of the most famous and ambitious works of this artist is the triptych “Garden earthly pleasures", which has been causing controversy among art lovers around the world for more than 500 years.
1. The triptych is named for the theme of its central panel
In three parts of one painting, Bosch tried to depict the entire human experience - from earthly life to the afterlife. The left panel of the triptych shows heaven, the right panel shows hell. In the center is the garden of earthly delights.
2. The date of creation of the triptych is unknown
Bosch never dated his works, which complicates the work of art historians. Some claim that Bosch began painting The Garden of Earthly Delights in 1490, when he was about 40 years old (his exact year birth is also unknown, but it is assumed that the Dutchman was born in 1450). And the grandiose work was completed between 1510 and 1515.3. "Paradise"
Art historians claim that the Garden of Eden is depicted at the moment of the creation of Eve. In the picture, it looks like an untouched land inhabited by mysterious creatures, among which you can even see unicorns.4. Hidden meaning
Some art historians believe that the middle panel depicts people driven mad by their sins and missing out on their chance to gain eternity in heaven. Bosch depicted lust with many naked figures engaged in frivolous activities. Flowers and fruits are believed to symbolize the temporary pleasures of the flesh. Some have even suggested that the glass dome, which encloses several lovers, symbolizes the Flemish proverb "Happiness is like glass - it breaks one day."
5. Garden of Earthly Delights = Paradise Lost?
A fairly popular interpretation of the triptych is that it is not a warning, but a statement of fact: a person has lost the right path. According to this decoding, the images on the panels should be viewed sequentially from left to right, and not considered the central panel as a fork between hell and heaven.6. Secrets of the painting
The side panels of the triptych depicting heaven and hell can be folded to cover the central panel. On the outside of the side panels is the last part of the “Garden of Earthly Delights” - an image of the World on the third day after creation, when the Earth is already covered with plants, but there are no animals or humans yet.Since this image is essentially an introduction to what is shown on the interior panel, it is done in a monochrome style known as grisaille (this was common for triptychs of the era, and was intended not to distract attention from the colors of the interior being revealed).
7. The Garden of Earthly Delights is one of three similar triptychs that Bosch created
Two of Bosch's thematic triptychs similar to The Garden of Earthly Delights are " Last Judgment" and "A cart of hay." Each of them can be considered in chronological order from left to right: the biblical creation of man in the Garden of Eden, modern life and its disorder, the terrible consequences in hell.8. One part of the painting demonstrates Bosch’s devotion to his family
About the life of a Dutch artist of the era early Renaissance Very few reliable facts have survived, but it is known that his father and grandfather were also artists. Bosch's father Antonius van Aken was also an advisor to the Illustrious Brotherhood Holy Mother of God- groups of Christians who worshiped the Virgin Mary. Shortly before starting work on The Garden of Earthly Delights, Bosch followed his father's example and also joined the fraternity.
9. Although the triptych has a religious theme, it was not painted for a church.
Although the artist's work clearly had a religious theme, it was too strange to be displayed in a religious institution. It is much more likely that the work was created for a wealthy patron, perhaps a member of the Illustrious Brotherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary.10. Perhaps the painting was very popular in its time
The "Garden of Earthly Delights" was first mentioned in history in 1517, when the Italian chronicler Antonio de Beatis noted it unusual canvas in the Brussels Palace of the House of Nassau.11. The Word of God is shown in the picture with two hands
The first scene is shown in paradise, where God raised right hand, brings Eve to Adam. The Hell panel has this exact gesture, but the hand points dying players to the hell below.12. The colors of the painting also have hidden meanings
Pink symbolizes divinity and the source of life. The color blue refers to the Earth, as well as earthly pleasures (for example, people eat blue berries from blue dishes and frolic in blue ponds). The color red represents passion. Brown symbolizes the mind. And finally, green, which is ubiquitous in “Heaven,” is almost completely absent in “Hell” - it symbolizes kindness.
13. The triptych is much larger than everyone realizes
The triptych “The Garden of Earthly Delights” is actually simply huge. Its central panel measures approximately 2.20 x 1.89 meters and each side panel measures 2.20 x 1 meter. When unfolded, the width of the triptych is 3.89 meters.14. Bosch made a hidden self-portrait in the painting
This is just speculation, but art historian Hans Belting has suggested that Bosch depicted himself in the Inferno panel, split into two parts. According to this interpretation, the artist is a man whose torso resembles a cracked eggshell, smiling ironically while looking at scenes of hell.15. Bosch earned a reputation as an innovative surrealist with The Garden of Earthly Delights
Until the 1920s, before the advent of Bosch admirer Salvador Dali, surrealism was not popular. Some modern critics Bosch is called the father of surrealism, because he wrote 400 years before Dali.
Continuing the topic mysterious paintings we will tell you about the most mysterious of all strangers.
I hung on it for the whole day, and there is a very good article on the picture itself and the interpretation of the symbols compiled by Mikhail Mayzuls, a teacher at the Russian-French UC of Historical Anthropology named after. Mark Blok (the article is large, but very interesting, I’ll remove it under the cut):
Paradise puzzle
A 9,000-piece puzzle is on sale at the Prado Museum in Madrid. As the colored spots form into shapes, naked lovers appear in a transparent sphere; rocks resembling shoots of thorny plants; people biting into cyclopean fruits; two “dancers” whose torsos and heads are hidden inside a red fruit on which an owl sits; a man defecating pearls while lying in a huge shell, etc. All of them are characters from The Garden of Earthly Delights, which Dutch artist Jeroen (Jerome) van Aken, who took the nickname Bosch (after the name of his hometown - Hertongebosch), wrote shortly after 1500.
Trying to understand what the idea of “The Garden of Earthly Delights” is, what its individual scenes mean and what the most bizarre hybrids for which Bosch is so famous symbolize, the researcher is also, in a sense, trying to put together a puzzle, only he doesn’t have it before his eyes finished sample, and he doesn't know what should happen in the end.
Bosch is truly a great schemer. His ingenuity is impressive even against the backdrop of medieval art, which he plays with and replays, and it knew a lot about visual play and permutation of forms: from predatory animals woven into Germanic ornaments, to demons that grinned from the capitals of columns in monasteries of the Romanesque period, from bestial and the anthropomorphic hybrids that wandered in the margins of Gothic manuscripts, to the freaks and monsters carved on the misericordia seats that clergy could sit on during long services. Bosch, who came out of this world, clearly does not fit into it and cannot be entirely reduced to it. Therefore, debate among historians has been raging around his images for decades, and there are countless contrasting interpretations. Erwin Panofsky, one of the greatest art historians of the 20th century, wrote about Bosch’s works: “We drilled several holes in the door of a closed room, but, it seems, we never found the key to it.”
Bunch of keys
Over the past hundred years, many interpretations of Bosch have appeared. Ultra-church Bosch, a Catholic fanatic, obsessed with the fear of sin, argues with Bosch the heretic, an adherent of esoteric teachings that glorified the pleasures of the flesh, and Bosch the anticlerical, almost a proto-Protestant, who could not stand the dissolute, greedy and hypocritical clergy. Bosch the moralist, who satirically exposed the vices inherent in man and the ineradicable sinfulness of the world, competes with Bosch the skeptic, who rather mocked the stupidity and gullibility of mankind (as one Spanish poet of the 16th century wrote, Bosch succeeded in caricatures of devils, although he himself was in them I didn’t believe it). Somewhere nearby stands the alchemical Bosch - if not a practitioner, then an expert in alchemical symbols and a translator of alchemical concepts into the visual language. Let's not forget about Bosch the madman, Bosch the pervert and Bosch the hallucinogens, as well as the psychoanalytic Bosch, who provides inexhaustible material for speculation about the archetypes of the collective unconscious. All these faces of Jeroen van Aken - some of them are fantastic (like Bosch the heretic), while others (like Bosch the moralist or ecclesiastical Bosch) are rather close to the truth - do not always exclude each other and are easily combined in different proportions.
Erwin Panofsky lamented in the 1950s that we still do not have the key to Bosch. The key to the solution is a familiar but evasive metaphor. It usually implies (although Panofsky himself, I think, did not mean this) that there is some kind of master key, key principle or secret code that has to be found, and then everything will become clear. In fact - if we use metaphors - there can be many locks on one door, and behind one door there can be the next one, and so on.
But if you look not for clues, but for snags, then any interpretation stumbles, first of all, over the plot of the central panel of “The Garden of Earthly Delights” - none of Bosch’s contemporaries or predecessors has anything like it (although there are plenty of separate figures of lovers and paradise gardens with fountains) . What kind of men and women indulge in carnal pleasures, eat huge fruits, tumble somersaults and indulge in many strange activities for which there are simply no names?
There are two opposing interpretations - each with its own subversions, diverging in details. The first, which most Boskhologists adhere to, is that what we have before us is not the Garden of Eden at all, but an illusory, deceptive paradise; an allegory of all kinds of earthly vices (with voluptuousness at the head); the blind joy of sinners who doom themselves to destruction - on the right wing of the triptych the underworld prepared for them is depicted. Ernst Gombrich, fleshing out this idea, suggested that Bosch depicted not a timeless allegory, but antediluvian humanity - the sinful descendants of Adam and Eve, who angered God so much that he destroyed them, not counting Noah and his family, by the waters of the Flood (according to the popular belief, before the flood, the earth was unusually fertile - hence, according to Gombrich, the fruits were of gigantic size). Naked people seem so joyful and carefree because they do not know what they are doing.
According to the second, competing version, we see not a false, devilish, but the most genuine paradise, or golden age, which is either utopianly directed to the future (to the ideal state of man), or, as Jean Wirth and Hans Belting suggested, generally lies outside of time, because it never existed and will never arise. It is a kind of virtual paradise: a depiction of the ideal world in which the descendants of Adam and Eve could have lived if their first parents had not sinned and been expelled from Eden; a hymn to sinless love (because there would simply be no sin) and nature, which would be generous to man.
There are iconographic arguments in favor of both interpretations. But sometimes theories appear that have almost nothing to show, which does not prevent them from gaining popularity.
Any artist and the image he creates exists in some context. For Dutch master XV-XVI centuries, who wrote mainly on Christian themes (and Bosch is still primarily a moralist, author of gospel scenes and images of ascetic saints), is medieval church iconography with its traditions; Latin ecclesiastical wisdom (from theological treatises to collections of sermons); literature on vernacular languages(from chivalric novels to obscene poems); scientific texts and illustrations (from cosmologies and bestiaries to treatises on astrology and alchemy) and so on.
Bosch's interpreters turned to all of them for advice. Someone might suddenly say that the key to its symbols should be sought, say, in the teachings of the Cathars, who had long since disappeared by the turn of the 15th-16th centuries. Theoretically, this could happen. But the more esoteric the hypothesis and the more assumptions it requires, the more strictly it should be treated.
At one time, the theory of the German art critic Wilhelm Frenger, who portrayed Bosch as a heretic and adherent of a secret sexual cult, caused a lot of noise. He claimed that Hieronymus van Aken was a member of the Brotherhood free spirit- a sect that last time was mentioned in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 15th century. Its adherents are believed to have dreamed of returning to the state of innocence in which Adam remained before the Fall (hence their name - Adamites), and believed that they could achieve it through love exercises, in which they saw not debauchery, but prayer glorifying the Creator. If so, then the love pleasures that occupy the characters of “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” according to Frenger, are not at all an exposure of sinful humanity, but a visual ode to carnal love and an almost realistic depiction of the rituals of a sect.
To prove his theory, Frenger builds one guess on another, and we know nothing about the presence of Adamites in Hertongebosch. Bosch's biography, apart from a few administrative milestones recorded in documents (marriage, litigation, death), is a continuous white spot. However, we know for sure that he was a member of the Catholic Brotherhood of Our Lady, which flourished in the city, received orders from the church, and in the 16th century, several of his works, including the frivolous “Garden of Earthly Delights,” were acquired by the Spanish King Philip II, who was fanatically pious and it is unlikely that he would have tolerated the altar of the Adamite heretics in his Escorial. Of course, one can always say that the heretical meaning of the triptych was accessible only to initiates, but Frenger and his followers clearly do not have enough arguments for this.
Distilled metaphors
It has long been noted that many details in Bosch’s works, from strange-looking fountains to glass cylinders, from translucent spheres to bizarre rounded buildings from which flashes of flame can be seen, are painfully reminiscent of vessels, furnaces and other alchemical equipment that were depicted in treatises on the art of distillation . In the 15th-16th centuries, alchemy was not only esoteric knowledge aimed at finding the elixir of life and the redemption of the world and man, but also a completely practical craft (chemistry later emerged from it), which was required, say, for the preparation of medicinal potions.
American art historian Lorinda Dixon went even further and tried to prove that alchemy is the key to the entire Garden of Earthly Delights. According to her version, Bosch, picking up an allegory popular among alchemists, likens the transformation of a person moving towards merging with God to the most important alchemical process - distillation. Traditionally, distillation was thought to consist of four main steps. Their sequence, according to Gibson, determines the structure of the “Garden”.
The first stage - mixing ingredients and combining opposites - was represented in alchemical manuscripts as the union of man and woman, Adam and Eve. This is the main plot of the left wing of the “Garden”, where we see the marriage of the first people: the Lord gives Eve to Adam and blesses the first couple to be fruitful and multiply. The second stage - slow heating and transformation of the ingredients into a single mass - was likened to the jumping, somersaults and fun of children born in an alchemical marriage. This is the plot of the central panel of the triptych, where crowds of men and women indulge in love and strange games. The third stage - purification of the mixture by fire - in alchemical treatises was symbolically represented as execution or the torment of hell. The right wing of the “Garden” depicts a burning underworld with dozens of different tortures. Finally, the fourth stage is the purification of ingredients in water, which was likened to Christian resurrection and cleansing of the soul. This is the plot that we see on the outer doors of the triptych, where the Earth appears on the third day of creation, when the Creator separated the land from the sea and plants appeared, but there was no man yet.
Many of Dixon’s finds are captivating in their clarity. Bosch's buildings and glass pipes are, indeed, too similar to illustrations from treatises on distillation for the resemblance to be accidental. The problem is different: the similarity of details does not mean that the entire “Garden of Earthly Delights” is a huge alchemical metaphor. Bosch, as Dixon's critics object, could have borrowed images of flasks, furnaces and alchemical lovers, not glorifying, but criticizing scientific pseudo-wisdom (if heaven is still false and diabolical), or using alchemical symbols as building material for his visual fantasies, which served completely other purposes: they scourged animal passions or sang the lost purity of man.
Meaning constructor
To find out the meaning of a detail, it is important to trace its genealogy - but this is not enough. It is still necessary to understand how it fits into the new context and how it plays in it. In The Temptation of Saint Anthony, another triptych by Bosch, now in Lisbon, a white shipbird soars across the sky - a creature that looks like a heron from the front and a ship with bird legs from behind. There is a fire burning inside the ship, from which tiny birds fly out in the smoke. Bosch clearly loves this motif - in “The Garden of Earthly Delights” black birds, as if from hell, appear from the backside of a sinner who is devoured by a bird-headed devil - the master of the underworld.
French art critic Jurgis Baltrusaitis once showed that this strange hybrid, like many others, was invented long before Bosch. Similar shipbirds are known from ancient seals, which were valued as amulets in the Middle Ages. Moreover, they depicted not mythical creatures, but real Greek or Roman ships with a bow in the shape of a swan or other bird. What Bosch did was replace the oars with bird wings, transfer the shipbird from the ocean to heaven and build a small hellish fire in it, turning it into one of the demonic obsessions that besieged St. Anthony in the desert.
In the interpretation of such hybrids - and there were many of them in medieval art even before Bosch - it is difficult to say where the researcher has reached the bottom and when it is time to stop. Fascinated by the bizarre creatures Bosch assembled from all imaginable materials, his beastmen, treefish and birdships, blurring the boundaries between living and inanimate nature, animals, plants and humans, historians often interpret them according to the principle of a designer. If a figure is assembled from many elements, it is necessary to find out how they were used and how they were interpreted in medieval iconography. Then, in order to find out the meaning of the whole, they suggest, they have to add up the meanings of the parts. The logic is generally sound, but sometimes it goes too far, since two plus two does not always equal four.
Let's take one case. In the depths of The Temptation of St. Anthony, a fish, “dressed” in a red “case” resembling the back of a grasshopper, locust or scorpion, devours another, smaller fish. Dirk Bax, one of the most authoritative interpreters of Bosch, has long shown that many of his images are constructed as literal illustrations of Flemish proverbs or idiomatic expressions, a kind of visual puzzles or materialized puns - this was probably clear to his first viewers, but from us most often it escapes.
So the voracious fish probably refers to the famous proverb “ Big fish eats the little one,” that is, the strong devours the weak, and the weak devours the weakest. Let us recall the drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1556), where dozens of small fish that it had eaten fall out of the ripped open belly of a dead fish, each with a smaller fish in its mouth, and the other with a very tiny one. The world is cruel. So perhaps our fish reminds us of greed and insatiability.
But what do the remaining details mean: insect legs and tail, a blue concave shield on which this structure can roll, a Gothic chapel standing at the top and, finally, a demon (or maybe a person) who uses a rope to push a small fish into its mouth big? If we see the tail of a scorpion (although it is unknown whether Bosch meant it specifically), then in medieval texts it was often associated with the devil, and in the life of St. Anthony it is directly said that demons besieged the ascetic in the images of various animals and reptiles: lions, leopards, snakes , echidnas, scorpions. Since there is a chapel on the back of the monster, it means, as interpreters suggest, that this whole diabolical structure exposed the greed of the church.
All this is quite possible, and in the Middle Ages one can find myriad examples of symbolic interpretations, where general meaning the whole (say, the architecture of a temple) is made up of the sum of dozens of elements, each of which symbolizes something. However, this does not mean that in Bosch every detail was necessarily a visual rebus, and even more so that every contemporary of his, scanning with his gaze the hundreds of figures inhabiting the “Garden of Earthly Delights” or “The Temptation of St. Anthony”, was able to count all these meanings. Many details were clearly needed to create a demonic setting and a kaleidoscope of forms, and not for a hidden game of symbols. When we are faced with something incomprehensible, sometimes looking too hard is just as harmful as not looking at it.
Popular interpretations of some images
Giant strawberry
"The Garden of Earthly Delights"
The first interpreter of strawberries was the Spanish monk José de Seguenza, the author of the oldest surviving description of the triptych (1605). Perhaps defending Bosch from accusations of promoting debauchery, he argued that his frivolous scenes, on the contrary, satirically expose human vices, and strawberries (whose smell and taste are so fleeting) symbolize the futility and vanity of earthly joys.
Although strawberries sometimes had positive associations in medieval texts (the spiritual benefits that God bestows on mystics, or the spiritual food that the righteous enjoy in heaven), more often they symbolized sinful sexuality and the hidden dangers behind the pleasures (a snake ready to bite the one who will pick the berry). So, most likely, the giant strawberry indicates that the serenity of people indulging in frivolous games in a beautiful garden is the path to hell.
Glass pipes
"The Garden of Earthly Delights"
Glass pipes are scattered throughout the garden here and there, looking not like bizarre creations of nature (like other strange objects around), but the work of human hands. It has long been noted that they most closely resemble various devices from a chemical laboratory, which means they work towards an alchemical interpretation of the entire triptych in the spirit of Lorinda Dixon.
However, not everyone agrees with this. Hans Belting believed that alchemical tubes were rather a mockery of the futile attempts of alchemists (or humans in general) to master the secrets of nature, imitate them with the help of technical tricks and become like the Creator. And before him, Ernst Gombrich, commenting on one of these “pipes,” suggested (though not very convincingly) that this was not an alchemical device at all, but a column on which, according to one of the medieval legends, people who lived before the flood and knew that the world will soon perish, they wrote down their knowledge.
Pig nun
"The Garden of Earthly Delights"
In the corner of the underworld, a pig with a monk's cap climbs with tenderness towards a frightened man, who turns away in horror from her annoying snout. On his lap lies a document with two wax seals, and a monster in knightly armor thrusts a pen and inkwell at him.
According to one version, the pig forces him to sign a will in favor of the church (which is a little late in hell, when the soul can no longer be saved), and the whole scene exposes the greed of the churchmen. According to another (less convincing) one, we have before us a (parody) image of a pact with the devil.
Be that as it may, attacks against the clergy do not at all mean that Bosch was an adherent of some kind of heresy. The art of the late Middle Ages is full of satirical and accusatory images of greedy and careless priests, lustful monks and ignorant bishops - and it does not occur to anyone that their creators were one and all heretical artists.
Lovers in a ball
"The Garden of Earthly Delights"
As Lorinda Dixon suggests, this scene should be interpreted alchemically. In treatises on distillation, the image of lovers in a round glass vessel regularly appears. It symbolizes one of the phases of the alchemical process, when elements with opposite properties combine at elevated temperatures. They were metaphorically likened to man and woman, Adam and Eve, and their union to carnal intercourse. However, even if Dixon is right, and this motif is taken from the symbolism of alchemy, it is likely that Bosch used it to create an exotic setting, and not at all to glorify secret wisdom.
Foot to foot
"The Garden of Earthly Delights"
The foot of Adam, to whom the Lord presents Eve, created from his rib while he was sleeping, for some reason lies on the foot of the Creator. Most likely, this detail literally illustrates the biblical metaphor for godly living and obedience to God: “walking in the ways of the Lord.” In accordance with the same logic, in the Middle Ages, during anointing (confirmation), the person receiving the sacrament, according to one version of the ritual, put his foot on the foot of the bishop who was performing the sacrament.
Devil's feast
"The Temptation of Saint Anthony"
It is clear to everyone that something bad is happening behind the back of Saint Anthony (the monk who is looking at us). But what? Someone, comparing the round table with a church altar, believes that before us is a black mass, or a devilish parody of worship, where instead of a wafer, which is transformed into the body of Christ, there is a toad on a tray - one of the traditional symbols of the devil; someone interprets this scene through astrological symbolism and engravings circulating at the time depicting restless “children of the moon”: gamblers and various kinds of swindlers crowded around a table with dice and cards.
Bird on skates
"The Temptation of Saint Anthony"
This big-eared creature with an upside-down funnel and a letter sealed in wax on its beak is one of Bosch's most famous monsters. In the same funnel, Bosch in another work depicted a rogue doctor removing a stone of stupidity from the head of a naive patient.
He also has a lot of speed skating characters. In the middle of hell, on the right wing of the “Garden of Earthly Delights”, several human figures and a humanoid shaggy duck cut through thin ice on cognacs or huge skate-like devices. Judging by archaeological finds, Bosch depicted skates more than realistically. The question is what they meant to him. There is a version that skates symbolized a slippery slope, a quick path to death. But maybe it was just skates.
Tree Man with Rat-Fish Tail
"The Temptation of Saint Anthony"
One of the means of treatment - in addition to prayers to the saint and the miraculous water in which particles of his relics were dipped - were considered cooling substances (for example, fish) and mandrake root, which sometimes resembles a human figurine. In medieval herbalists he was depicted as a tree-like man and in reality they made human-like amulets out of him, which were supposed to protect against the flames of disease.
So the tree man with a rat's tail covered with fish scales is not just a figment of Bosch's imagination, but, as Lorinda Dixon suggests, the personification of a cure for ergotism or one of the hallucinations associated with this disease.
List of sources
Bosing V. Hieronymus Bosch. Around 1450-1516. Between heaven and hell. Moscow, 2001.
Mareynissen R.H., Reifelare P. Hieronymus Bosch. Artistic heritage. Moscow, 1998.
Baltrušaitis J. Le Moyen Âge fantastique. Paris, 1956.
Belting H. Hieronymus Bosch. Garden of Earthly Delights. New York, 2002.
Bax D. Hieronymus Bosch: His Picture-Writing Deciphered. Rotterdam, 1979.
Dixon L. Bosch. New York, 2003.
Fraenger W. The Millennium of Hieronymus Bosch. London, 1952.
Gombrich E.H. Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’: A Progress Report // Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1969, Vol. 32.
Wirth J. Le Jardin des délices de Jérôme Bosch // Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 1988, T. 50, no. 3.
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Hieronymus Bosch. Garden of earthly delights. 1505-1510
When you first look at one of the most... mysterious paintings Bosch, you rather experience mixed feelings: she attracts and fascinates with a cluster large quantity unusual details. At the same time, it is impossible to understand the meaning of this accumulation of details, both in aggregate and separately.
There is nothing surprising in this impression: most of the details are full of symbols that are not known to modern people. Only Bosch's contemporaries could solve this artistic puzzle.
Let's try and figure it out. Let's start with the general meaning of the picture. It consists of four parts.
Closed doors of the triptych. Creation of the world
Hieronymus Bosch. Closed doors of the triptych “Creation of the World”. 1505-1510 The first part (closed doors of the triptych). According to the first version, it is an image of the third day of the creation of the world. There are no humans or animals on earth yet; rocks and trees have just emerged from the water. The second version is the end of our world, after the universal flood. In the upper left corner is God contemplating his creation.
Left wing of the triptych. Paradise
Hieronymus Bosch. Paradise (left wing of the triptych “Garden of Earthly Delights”). 1505-1510 Second part (left wing of the triptych). Depiction of a scene in Paradise. God shows the surprised Adam Eve, newly created from his rib. All around are animals recently created by God. In the background are the Fountain and the lake of life, from which the first creatures of our world emerge.
The central part of the triptych. Garden of Earthly Delights
Hieronymus Bosch. The central part of the triptych. 1505-1510 . The third part (the central part of the triptych). A depiction of the earthly life of people who massively indulge in the sin of voluptuousness. The artist shows that the Fall is so serious that people cannot take a more righteous path. He conveys this idea to us with the help of a kind of procession in a circle:
People on different animals move around the lake of carnal pleasures, unable to choose another road. Therefore, their only destiny after death, according to the artist, is Hell, which is depicted on the right wing of the triptych.
Right wing of the triptych. Hell
Hieronymus Bosch. The right wing of the triptych “Hell”. 1505-1510 The fourth part (right wing of the triptych). A depiction of hell, where sinners experience eternal torment. In the middle of the picture is a strange creature made from a hollow egg, with legs in the form of tree trunks with human face- presumably this is a guide through Hell, the main demon. Read the article about which sinners he is responsible for tormenting.
This is the general meaning of the warning picture. The artist shows us how easy it is to fall into sin and end up in Hell, despite the fact that humanity was once born in Paradise.
Symbols of Bosch's painting
Why so many characters and symbols?
I really like Hans Belting's theory on this, put forward in 2002. Based on his research, Bosch created this painting not for the church, but for private collection. Allegedly, the artist had an agreement with the buyer that he would deliberately create a rebus painting. The future owner intended to entertain his guests, who would guess the meaning of this or that scene in the picture.
In the same way, we can now unravel fragments of the picture. However, without understanding the symbols adopted in Bosch's time, it is very difficult for us to do this. Let's look at at least some of them to make it more interesting to “read” the picture.
Eating “voluptuous” berries and fruits is one of the main symbols of lust. That is why there are so many of them in the Garden of Earthly Delights.
People are in glass spheres or under a glass dome. There is a Dutch proverb that says that love is as short-lived and fragile as glass. The depicted spheres are just covered with cracks. Perhaps the artist also sees in this fragility the path to the Fall, since after a short period of love adultery is inevitable.
Sins of the Middle Ages
It is also difficult for a modern person to interpret the depicted torment of sinners (on the right wing of the triptych). The fact is that in our minds, a passion for idle music or stinginess (frugality) are not perceived as something bad, unlike how people perceived it in the Middle Ages.
Hell - Hieronymus Bosch (Part of the triptych “The Garden of Earthly Delights”). 1500-1510. Wood, oil. 389 x 220 cm
Hell is the right wing of the artist’s famous triptych called “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” Under this lyrical name lies a far from sweet and idyllic picture. In fact, the triptych is made quite in the style of Bosch - eerie visions, grotesque figures, terrible images are almost everywhere here.
In the artist's vision, hell appears as a monstrous surreal place. The right wing of the triptych is often called “Musical Hell” by critics due to the fact that many different musical instruments are used here. However, one should not hope that they are used for their intended purpose. In fact, even the devils don’t play them, as one might suspect. Bosch decided to use methods of using them that were completely far from the direct purpose of musical instruments. In most cases, they act as torture devices.
For example, the artist’s harp plays the role of a cross for a crucifixion or a rack - an unfortunate sinner is stretched out on it. The innocent lute became the object of torture for another poor fellow, who lies face down. Interestingly, on his buttocks are printed the notes on which a completely unimaginable choir sings - the damned, led by a conductor with a fish “face”.
The foreground of the picture is capable of shocking even those seasoned with horror films. modern man. A rabbit is dragging a man with his belly cut open, who is tied to a pole. At the same time, a stream of blood literally pours out of the poor fellow. The predatory rabbit looks very peaceful, and this is a truly monstrous contrast to what he does and what his action should imply in the future.
The abnormality of this place is emphasized by the incredible size of the berries and fruits scattered here and there throughout the building. When you look at this, it’s not clear who is eating whom here – people’s berries or people’s berries? The world turned upside down and became hell.
A frozen pond with a wormwood, where a sinner rushes astride a huge skate, people flying into the light like mindless midges, a man stuck in a door lock - all these images are allegorical and certainly were understandable to the artist’s contemporaries. Some of what was seen can be interpreted and interpreted even today, but from the point of view of a person of our time, and not of the late Middle Ages.
Interestingly, a researcher of Bosch’s work was able to decipher the notes engraved on the sinner’s fifth point. It turns out that the artist recorded a completely coherent melody that can be played and listened to. But this is the only normal, real element in the delusional world of his hell.
Art of the Netherlands 15th and 16th centuries
The altar “The Garden of Earthly Delights” is the most famous triptych of Hieronymus Bosch, which got its name from the theme of the central part, dedicated to the sin of voluptuousness – Luxuria. It is unlikely that the triptych could have been in the church as an altar, but all three paintings are generally consistent with other triptychs by Bosch. Perhaps he did this work for some small sect that professed "free love." It is this work by Bosch, especially fragments of the central painting, that is usually cited as illustrations; it is here that the artist’s unique creative imagination manifests itself to the fullest. The enduring charm of the triptych lies in the way the artist expresses main idea through many details. The left wing of the triptych depicts God presenting Eve to a stunned Adam in a serene and peaceful Paradise.
In the central part, a number of scenes, variously interpreted, depict a true garden of pleasures, where mysterious figures move with heavenly calm. The right wing depicts the most terrible and disturbing images of Bosch’s entire work: complex torture machines and monsters generated by his imagination. The picture is filled with transparent figures, fantastic structures, monsters, hallucinations that have taken on flesh, hellish caricatures of reality, which he looks at with a searching, extremely sharp gaze. Some scientists wanted to see in the triptych a depiction of human life through the prism of its futility and images of earthly love, others - a triumph of voluptuousness. However, the simplicity and certain detachment with which individual figures are interpreted, as well as the favorable attitude towards this work on the part of the church authorities, make one doubt that its content could be the glorification of bodily pleasures. Federico Zeri: “The Garden of Earthly Delights is an image of Paradise, where the natural order of things has been abolished and chaos and voluptuousness reign supreme, leading people away from the path of salvation. This triptych by the Dutch master is his most lyrical and mysterious work: in the symbolic panorama he created, Christian allegories are mixed with alchemical and esoteric symbols, which gave rise to the most extravagant hypotheses regarding the artist’s religious orthodoxy and his sexual inclinations.”
At first glance, the central part represents perhaps the only idyll in Bosch’s work. The vast space of the garden is filled with naked men and women who feast on gigantic berries and fruits, play with birds and animals, splash in the water and - above all - openly and shamelessly indulge in love pleasures in all their diversity. Riders in a long line, like on a carousel, ride around a lake where naked girls are swimming; several figures with barely visible wings float in the sky. This triptych is better preserved than most of Bosch’s large altarpieces, and the carefree joy floating in the composition is emphasized by its clear, evenly distributed light over the entire surface, the absence of shadows, and a bright, rich color. Against the background of grass and foliage, like strange flowers, the pale bodies of the inhabitants of the garden sparkle, seeming even whiter next to the three or four black figures placed here and there in this crowd. Behind are fountains and buildings shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow. surrounding the lake in the background, a smooth line of gradually melting hills can be seen on the horizon. Miniature figures of people and fantastically huge, bizarre plants seem as innocent as the patterns of the medieval ornament that inspired the artist.
It may seem that the picture depicts the “childhood of mankind”, the “golden age”, when people and animals lived peacefully side by side, without the slightest effort receiving the fruits that the earth gave them in abundance. However, one should not assume that according to Bosch’s plan, a crowd of naked lovers was supposed to become the apotheosis of sinless sexuality. For medieval morality, sexual intercourse, which in the 20th century they finally learned to perceive as a natural part of human existence, was more often proof that man had lost his angelic nature and fallen low. At best, copulation was viewed as a necessary evil, at worst as a mortal sin. Most likely, for Bosch, the garden of earthly pleasures is a world corrupted by lust.