Art History: Bosch "Garden of Earthly Delights"
"Garden of Earthly Delights"
Painted by Jheronimus Bocsh
*Weird, strange and adult content
Surrealism didn't spring onto the scene until the 1920s with the rise of Bosch-admirerSalvador Dali, but Bosch's jarring juxtapositions and head-scratching symbols have caused some modern critics to call him the world's first surrealist, 400 years before Dali.
IT'S BIGGER THAN YOU'D THINK.
Sure, with all that detail you'd expect it to be big. But The Garden of Early Delights is really big. Its central panel measures about 7.25 x 6.5 feet, while each side panel comes in at about 7.25 x 3.25 feet, meaning that when the panels are open, this piece is nearly 13 feet wide.
THE DATE OF ITS CREATION IS UP FOR DEBATE.
Bosch never dated his pieces, which makes art historians’ jobs a little trickier. Some posit that Bosch began The Garden of Earthly Delights in 1490, when he would have been about 40 years old. (His exact birth year is unknown, but assumed to be around 1450.) But the piece has been estimated to have been completed somewhere between 1510 and 1515.
IT MAY HAVE BEEN A HIT IN ITS TIME.
The Garden of Earthly Delights first entered the historical record in 1517, when Italian chronicler Antonio de Beatis probably noted seeing it in a Brussels palace that belonged to counts of Nassau. He didn't note the critical reception of the piece, but the fact that reproductions were made, including a painting and a tapestry, suggests Bosch's bawdy and bizarre take on damnation found an audience.
IT'S A TRIPTYCH NAMED FOR ITS CENTRAL PANEL.
In a bold move, Bosch attempted to depict the whole of human experience from life to afterlife in three related canvases. The first on the left is meant to represent Paradise; the last on the right is hell. And in the center lies The Garden of Earthly Delights.
THOUGH RELIGIOUS, THIS PROBABLY WASN'T PAINTED FOR A CHURCH.
Its message may have been one of morality and chastity, but the imagery of The Garden of Earthly Delights was just too weird to be displayed in a house of worship. It’s far more likely that the work was a commission for a wealthy patron, possibly a member of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady.
THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS IS ONE OF THREE SIMILAR TRIPTYCHS BOSCH COMPLETED.
Bosch also painted the similarly themed The Last Judgment and The Haywain Triptych. Each one can be read chronologically left to right, from the Bible's tale of man's creation in the Garden of Eden, to modern man making a mess of the world God made for him, to the horrible hellscapes created by this behavior.
THERE'S MORE TO THE PAINTING THAN ITS FRONT PANELS.
Painted on oak, the backs of the Paradise and Hell panels can be closed to reveal the piece's final element. There, Bosch is believed to have rendered the third day of God's creation of the world, when plants had been made but not yet animals or man. It's topped off with two inscriptions: “He himself said it, and all was done” and “He himself ordered it and all was created.”
Meant as an introduction to the inner panels, these shutters were painted in a monochrome depiction known as grisaille, a common technique for triptych doors of the era so as not to distract from the colors of the opened piece.
Look through the artwork as an interactive display here:
