The Garden of Earthly Delights

Exterior , probably on the Third Day, after the addition of plant life but before the appearance of animals and humans. When the triptych's wings are closed, the design of the outer panels becomes visible. Rendered in a green–gray grisaille, these panels lack colour, probably because most Netherlandish triptychs were thus painted, but possibly indicating that the painting reflects a time before the creation of the sun and moon, which were formed, according to Christian theology, to "give light to the earth". 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), Above him is inscribed a quote from Psalm 33:9 reading "Ipse dīxit, et facta sunt: ipse mandāvit, et creāta sunt"—For he spoke and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. There is a firmament around the Earth, in reference to Genesis 1:7. 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 biblical Third Day. God appears as the creator of humanity in the left-hand wing, while the consequences of humanity's failure to follow his will are shown in the right. In contrast to Bosch's two other extant triptychs, The Last Judgment (around 1482) and The Haywain (after 1510), God is absent from the central panel. Instead, this panel shows humanity acting with apparent free will as naked men and women engage in various pleasure-seeking activities. According to some interpretations, the right-hand panel is believed to show God's penalties in a 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. Left panel Christ blessing Eve before she is presented to Adam The left panel (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 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 the work's most controversial interpreter, the 20th-century folklorist and art historian Wilhelm Fraenger: 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 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 ... Eve avoids Adam's gaze, although, according to Walter S. Gibson, she is shown "seductively presenting her body to Adam". The outer landscape contains hut-shaped forms, some made from stone, others are at least partially organic. Behind Eve, rabbits – symbolizing 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, a monkey riding an elephant, and a lion that has killed and is about to devour his prey. In the foreground, from a large hole in the ground, emerge birds and winged animals, some of which are realistic, some fantastic. Behind a fish, a person clothed in a short-sleeved hooded jacket and with a duck's beak holds an open book as if reading. Erhard Reuwich's pictures for Bernhard von Breydenbach's 1486 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-15th-century humanist scholar Cyriac of Ancona's travelogues served as Bosch's exposure to these exotic animals. Some of the images contradict the innocence expected in the Garden of Eden. Tuttle and other critics have interpreted the gaze of Adam upon his wife as lustful and indicative of the Christian belief that humanity was doomed from the beginning. On a tree to the right, a snake curls around a tree trunk, while to its right, a mouse creeps; according to Fraenger, both animals are universal phallic symbols. Center panel The skyline of the center panel (220 × 195 cm, 87 × 77 in) matches exactly with that of the left wing, while the positioning of its central pool and the lake behind it echoes the lake in the earlier scene. 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 spatial connection between the two scenes. The garden is teeming with male and female nudes, together with various animals, plants, and fruits. The setting is not the paradise shown in the left panel, nor 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". shell. On the right-hand side of the foreground, there is a group of four figures standing, three white- and one black-skinned. The white-skinned figures, two males and one female are covered from head to foot in light-brown body hair. Scholars generally agree that these hirsute figures represent wild or primeval humanity 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 Fraenger 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. According to Fraenger: 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. or as a self-portrait. The pools in the fore and background contain bathers of both sexes. In the central circular pool, the sexes are mostly segregated, with several females adorned by peacocks and fruit. The women are surrounded by a parade of naked men riding horses, donkeys, unicorns, camels, and other exotic or fantastic creatures. 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 Fraenger'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 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 Fraenger, "a symbolic bird of death". Fraenger 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, referencing 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. Right panel 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, ashamed by their nakedness. 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 various distressed or tortured figures. Some are shown vomiting or excreting, others are crucified by harp and lute, in an allegory of music, thus sharpening the contrast between pleasure and torture. A choir sings from a score inscribed on a pair of buttocks, The focal point of the scene is the "Tree-Man," whose cavernous torso is supported by what could be contorted arms or rotting tree trunks. His head supports a disk populated by demons and victims parading around a huge set of bagpipes—often used as a dual sexual symbol Belting proposed that 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". According to this view, the penalty for such sins is shown in the right panel of the triptych. In the lower right-hand corner, a man is approached by a pig wearing the veil of a nun. The pig is shown trying to seduce the man to sign legal documents. ==Dating and provenance==

'' (1483–1538) by Bernard van Orley. Henry may have been the patron of Bosch's triptych: he was well known as an avid collector of art. However, since De Tolnay (1937) consensus among 20th-century art historians placed the work in 1503–1504 or even later. Both early and late datings were based on the "archaic" treatment of space. The 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, between 1492 and 1504. to reconsider an early dating and, consequently, to dispute the presence of any "New World" objects, stressing the presence of African ones instead. '' (1451–1504) in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 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 Nassau palace. 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 of the strawberry tree (madroño in Spanish) features prominently in the center panel. Early Spanish writers referred to the work as La Lujuria ("Lust"). It is probable that the patron of the work was Engelbrecht II of Nassau, who died in 1504, or his successor Henry III of Nassau-Breda, the 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 various 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 by Steppe in the 1960s, Nevertheless, The Gardens bold depictions do not rule out a church commission, such as the contemporaneous fervor to warn against immorality. In 1566, the triptych served as the model for a tapestry that hangs at El 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 heir and the Spanish commander in the Netherlands. Philip II acquired the painting at auction in 1591; two years later he presented it to El Escorial. A contemporaneous description of the transfer records the gift on 8 July 1593 After an unbroken 342 years at El Escorial, the work moved to the Museo del Prado in 1939, along with other works by Bosch. The triptych was not particularly well-preserved; the paint of the middle panel especially had flaked off around joints in the wood. The painting usually is on display in a room with other works by Bosch. ==Sources and context==

, Man Tree, c. 1470s. The "Tree-Man" of the right-hand panel, depicted in an earlier drawing by Bosch. This pen and bistre version contain no suggestion of Hell, yet its outline was adapted into one of The Gardens most memorable grotesques. 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. 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. 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 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. 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 Garden references exotic travel literature of the 15th century through 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 visiting Egypt during the 1440s. The exoticism of Cyriac's sumptuous manuscripts may have inspired Bosch's imagination. on the right side of the left panel may be drawn from copies of those in Cyriac of Ancona's Egyptian Voyage (left), which was published . 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, "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 his work as a whole has remained elusive. 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 infernal scenes, which prevails today (1937) in the public at large, and prevailed with historians until the last quarter of the 19th century. 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. 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 was 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. , in a c. 1550 drawing once thought to be a copy of 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. Fränger believed 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." 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 hypotheses only and built on an unstable foundation and what can only be conjecture. Critics argue that artists during this period painted not for their pleasure but for commission, while the language and secularization of a post-Renaissance mindset 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==

Because Bosch was such a unique and visionary artist, his influence has not spread as widely as that of other major painters of his era. However, there have been instances of later artists incorporating elements of The Garden of Earthly Delights into their work. Pieter Bruegel the Elder (–1569) in particular directly acknowledged Bosch as an important influence and inspiration, and incorporated many elements of the inner right panel into several of his most popular works. Bruegel's Mad Meg depicts a peasant woman leading an army of women to pillage Hell, while his The Triumph of Death () echoes the monstrous Hellscape of The Garden, and uses, according to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, the same "unbridled imagination and the fascinating colours". While the Italian court painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo () did not create Hellscapes, he painted a body of strange and "fantastic" vegetable portraits—generally heads of people composed of plants, roots, webs and various other organic matter. These strange portraits rely on and echo a motif that was in part inspired by Bosch's willingness to break from strict and faithful representations of nature. , Winter, 1573. The concept of the "Tree-man", the hybrid organism, as well the engorged fruit, all bear hallmarks of Bosch's Garden. David Teniers the Younger () was a Flemish painter who quoted both Bosch and Bruegel 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 underwent a rise in critical and popular appraisal. 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 Dalí 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. ==Notes==