On the Cover

Cover image: Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516)

Allegory of luxury, central panel of The Garden of Earthly

Delights, c. 1503-04 triptych.

Museo del Prado, Madrid

Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY

We know little about the thoughts of Hieronymus

Bosch, an inmensely talented painter who lived in the

Netherlands during the Northern Renaissance. The

fragment reproduced on the cover is from a tryptych

(The Garden of Earthly Delights) that he painted around

1503 (Bosch did not date his paintings). Following the

Dutch revolt against the Spanish occupiers the painting

was brought to the Escorial by the Duque de Alba and

eventually found its way to the Prado Museum where it

is today. The three panels of The Garden depict Adam

and Eve (left), a utopian garden of delights (centre) and

hell (right).

The decoding of this painting has been the subject of

much research and speculation over time. As befits the

Christian culture of the time it has been generally

interpreted as showing - from left to right -Creation, the

excesses of carnal pleasure and the punishment that will

follow.

But one can question fairly if this is what Bosch

intended. As you would expect, the early Spanish writers

who became acquainted with this painting referred to it

with a morally inbued name: "The Lust’’. Some

interpreters of this work deduced that Bosch must have

been a member of a sect of pleasure seekers, the

Adamites, others went to posit that Bosch was

schizophrenic or even a closet gay.

The left and center panels share the same horizon as if the

events related there happened at the same site: the utopian

paradise. Perhaps he tells us how the world would have

been had Adam and Eve had been left in peace in their

Paradise. In the center panel men, women and all sorts of

exotic animals frolic around a pool enjoying fruits, music

and sex in an environment of innocence and joy.

Proportion and perspective are ignored. The story is told

in small vignettes. There are gigantic birds and fruit, fish

walk on land and birds swim in the water. The bodies of

the dancers and lovers have an air of etherealness to

them. In contrast the folks tortured and roasting in Hell,

in the right panel, are not engaging in carefree love

games: they are painted as individuals who indulge in

gluttony, gambling, gossiping and other ethical and moral

transgressions. None is engaged in free love.

This painting was made at a time when the principle of

Reason was eroding the primacy of Faith and Obedience

dictated by a Church that had linked sex and sin since the

time of Adam and Eve punishment away from Paradise.

The primatologist Fran de Waal commenting of this

painting wrote: "It is almost as if the painter is saying that,

yes, the world is full of misery and sin, and sin will be

punished, but don’t look at carnal love as its source". The

great thinker Erasmus of Rotterdam who lived a stone

throw from Bosch in the same town and must have known

and befriended him, also decried in his writings the

Church’s dictum that sexual enjoyment was shameful and

had its origin in sin: "As if marriage, whose function cannot

be fulfilled without these incitements, did not rise above

blame". And he asked, "In other living creatures, where do

these enticements come from? From Nature or Sin?

The images of exotic animals and strange bodies and

objects, the cryptic and enigmatic symbols, have

attracted the attention of surrealists and some, like Joan

Miro, and Salvador Dali, have repeated his imagery in

their works. It is possible to see the Garden of Earthly

Delights as a story told by a painter that, although he

had to be prudent not to incur in the wrath of the

dominant Church, would have agreed with the Utopia of

his contemporary Thomas More.

R. Berguer

A9