Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights: A Triptych of Sin and Salvation
The Garden of Earthly Delights is the best-known work of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. This is a triptych painted in oil, comprising a central panel and two side panels (painted on both sides) which can be closed on the central panel. It is considered that the work reflects a moralizing intention that would have been understandable for the people of the time. In this sense, King Philip II of Spain, soon suspected of heresy, purchased the painting because of his interest in it.
Triptych Opened
When opened, the triptych presents in the left panel an image of Paradise, which is the last day of creation, with Adam and Eve. The central panel depicts the madness unleashed: lust. This central panel shows the sexual act, where you will discover all sorts of carnal pleasures, which are proof that man had fallen from grace. Finally, we have the right table where the condemnation in Hell is depicted. In it, the artist shows us a magnificent and cruel scene in which human beings are condemned by their sin. The structure of the work itself, but also the frame, has a symbolic opening. Symbolically, it really closes because its content is the beginning and end of humanity: the beginning in the first panel, which represents Genesis and Paradise, and the end in the third, representing Hell.
Left Panel: The Garden of Eden
The flap on the left represents earthly Paradise. In the background, you can see the Source of Life. In the foreground is a scene not at all unusual because it does not represent the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib, nor how to behave in the garden, or the counterclaim that follows the expulsion from Paradise, the only issues reported in Genesis in relation to this episode. In this funny and original skit are God, Eve, and Adam. Adam is awake, which appears only in miniature, and God is featuring Eve, just created. God is represented in a way outdated for the times of Bosch as Jesus Christ. Eve is kneeling on the floor and takes the hand of God. Adam, lying, looks to the future sinner. Next to the first man and first woman is the Tree of Good and Evil (a palm tree) as it is wound around the tempting serpent and the Tree of Life (an exotic dragon). Given that the next panel depicts a lewd world, this table has been interpreted as the prelude of what would later happen.
In what at first glance seems a typical Eden, associated with the idea of peace and quiet, with little to look at, this idyllic setting is truncated. Several signs of harassment burst, the animals face each other: a lion brings down a deer and eats it; a strange biped is chased by a wild boar. In the pond, the disputes between the animals resume again: a leopard in the mouth has a mouse, a bird eats a frog. These are signs outside Paradise’s peace that are usually interpreted as a warning to women. Sin is personified in the stupid, that moves on land (insects and reptiles) or swim in water (amphibians and fish), since the four elements (earth, water, fire, and air), land and water were considered passive, full essence of fertility, as women receive seed. Sin is represented by the beasts that fly (flying insects, birds, bats, etc.) because the air is considered an active element, associated with fire and away from the earth, therefore masculine.
The devil is hidden in the ponds and rocks, which are, for Bosch, the evil spirits that haunt the work. Real animals appear, but extremely exotic at the time of Hieronymus Bosch, such as giraffes, elephants, lions, and leopards, when Africa was virtually unknown in Europe.
Middle Panel: The Garden of Delights
The central panel is the Garden of Earthly Delights, a false Paradise in which mankind has fully succumbed to sin, especially lust, and goes to his doom. Dozens of different symbols, whose keys we can only suspect, populate this oppressive and distressing space in which madness has gripped the world. Both men and women, white and black, are displayed naked, showing all types of sex and erotic scenes, primarily heterosexual but also homosexual and masturbatory. In addition, there are also erotic or sexual relations between animals and even between plants.
The bottom of the table is dominated by numerous naked figures, in groups or pairs, with rare plants, minerals, and shells or eating large fruits. All fruit (cherries, raspberries, strawberries, grapes, etc.) are a clear allusion to sexual pleasures. In the Middle Ages, fruits symbolized the transience of pleasure, as they spend a few days of freshness to putrefaction. The strange structures that imprison and oppress the characters, sometimes they are like bubbles, some as crusts or shells. Indirectly, they make known that sin takes hold of man, it corrupts and traps forever. The ponds are not clean, but outbreaks of lust, power, and the source of all evil.
The extraordinary dimensions of animals (including fish and mussels) and plants, which even exceed the height of men, are striking. It is the idea of the world upside down, very much in the iconographic and literary language of the time. There is an obsession with animals and people present in inverted positions. All these scenes show that we are in a false Paradise in which everything in him is not what it seems. Another key element of the table is sexual differentiation. You can barely distinguish men from women. The only signs of differentiation between the two sexes are female breasts (not too voluptuous) and male genitalia. Bosch could be looking to show that all mankind was involved in sin.
This is the traditional interpretation of the central panel. However, there have been others who depart from it, given that Bosch does not really condemn what is being seen in this panel. By contrast, it seems a positive world, highly “desirable.” It represents a universe of happiness, without pain, illness, or death. The passage of time is not represented (no children or elderly), no one is working, and it could be describing the earthly Paradise.
Right Panel: Hell
The shutter on the right represents Hell. It is also known as the musical hell, for the many representations of musical instruments displayed. It is not known why Bosch associated music with sin. He painted the torments of Hell, to which mankind is exposed. He describes a dream world, demonic, oppressive, with countless torments. The table is very stark in relation to the other two in terms of colors: pale shades of Hell’s ice, living flames of Hell’s fire. The table can be divided into three levels.
At the top level is the typical image of Hell’s fire and torture. The architectures are mired in weird fluorescent lighting. The atmosphere is totally demonic. Critics seem to agree that a knife attached to the two ears is a male genital, while bagpipes holding a monster on the head might be a homosexual element or perhaps feminine.
In the central part appears a dream world, fantastic creatures, and whose central figure is a “man-tree” looking directly at the viewer. It has been interpreted on numerous occasions as the artist’s own face. On his head is a disk, in which little monsters dance. His arms are like tree trunks and are resting on boats. His chest is open and hollow like an eggshell, and inside there are more beings. Below it, there is a frozen lake, skating on some convicts, while the ice cracks. In the Middle Ages, the contrast between cold and heat was considered one of the tortures of Hell. It features a character with a raptor head sitting on a toilet, and a boiler in the head. It is thought that might be Satan devouring the damned and defecating in a black hole in which other characters spew filth or excrement gold, the latter perhaps as an allusion to greed. Under the mantle of Satan, a naked woman is forced to look in a convex mirror placed on the buttocks of a demon, referring to the sin of pride.
In the bottom left is a group of players (no dice, playing cards, board backgammon, a nude woman holding a jug) tormented and tortured by demons in the midst of great chaos, all of which alluded to laziness, lust, and greed. On the right is a man embraced by a pig in a nun’s veil, probably referring to lust.