The Continuous Allure of The Garden of Earthly Delights

A man is hiding in a drum while his fellow humans cover their ears in anguish at the sound of a trumpet that one of them is playing. Another one has a flute sticking out from his bottom. Some of them are riding giant birds, while others watch a man being crucified on a harp. They are all naked. Although surreal and terrifying, these images are not created by a contemporary artist or writer lamenting over the present condition. Depicted between 1490 and 1504, they come from a triptych of oil paintings on oak panels painted by the celebrated Dutch painter, Hieronymus Bosch in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

The exhibition titled The Garden of Earthly Delights, through the artworks of Colección SOLO that opened last month, is dedicated to this Bosch's triptych that has been a puzzle for art historians, iconographers, and other researchers for centuries. While today we can decipher some of its meaning by investigating medieval folk tales, symbolism, religious imagery, and alchemy, its major part is still shrouded in mystery. 

Even one of the leading art historians, Erwin Panofsky, laid his sharp iconographic skills before the painting, conceding that we have only "bored a few holes through the door of the locked room; but somehow we do not seem to have discovered the key" to understanding this work. In his Early Netherlandish Painting, he states that despite all the research, "the real secret of his magnificent nightmares and daydreams has still to be disclosed." 

The work is taken up again by contemporary artists in a show staged at Matadero Centro de Creación Contemporánea in Madrid. A group of fifteen artists have reexamined and reinterpreted the famous triptych through a contemporary lens and, using new technologies, such as digital animation, social media, sound, and artificial intelligence, created multi-sensory and immersive art. Among them are SMACK, Mario Klingemann, Miao Xiaochun, Cassie McQuater, Lusesita, La Fura dels Baus-Carlus Padrissa, Filip Custic, and Mu Pan. Their works are visual and sensory adventures, reflective of the present moment that demand a careful gaze, just as their Renaissance predecessor. 

Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights

Today in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, the triptych has been an inspiration for artists, including Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró. It opens with the Genesis story of the creation of Eve, and the representation of God, centrally painted, leading Eve towards Adam, who is sitting next to them. Paradise is rising behind them, populated with various creatures, animals, plants, and fantastic images without explicit references in the real world. While the atmosphere seems peaceful enough, we can still see a cat carrying a caught mouse just below Adam and other hints at violence between animals in the panel. 

The exuberance of the central panel is difficult to describe. The story or stories unfold in every inch of the garden that looks absurd and overbearing. If we extract different animals and figures from the view, the peaceful, green and blue landscape unfolds, resembling many paradise imaginings from Bosch's and later epochs. However, with the figures, animals, hybrid creatures, plants, and surreal constructions, the presentation develops into one of a disorderly orgy, where scales, interactions, and events transgress any probable explanation. Humans ride on birds, have erotic encounters inside translucent spheres, join the circular processions of animals that include fishes, and explore each other's orifices. It appears that Paradise, assumed to be an orderly and harmonious place, has slid in Bosch's interpretation into a carnival of depravities, the luxurious and unchecked eroticism that lingers on absurd and carnivalesque degeneration that will assuredly become a true horror in the last panel. 

The right panel is a dark and more unsettling place than the others, presumably depicting Hell. The celestial world has already transformed into an evil place, where nightmarish mirages take over. Human figures seem exhausted from revelling, acceptant of their faith, and lost. The creatures that are mixtures of animals and humans torment them, gobble their extremities, and capture them in their traps. The world is burning. Upper segments show a nightmarish outline of flaming structures against the air filled with smoke and other hellish fumes. The creatures below wait for the night to settle, trying their twisted entrapments on each other, perhaps for the last time.

Formal Characteristics

When open, the triptych measures 2,2 x 3,89 m. It was not made to serve as an altarpiece, as many triptychs in history. The work can be displayed both closed and opened, as its outside Bosch decorated with an image of the Earth's orb. While we are accustomed to seeing and recognizing the Earth through the famous photos taken from space, Bosch's Earth is horizontally divided between the elements that make it, with the lower part reserved for water, the middle one for earth, and the top for air and murky clouds. The background is dark, but in the upper left corner, there is a small figure of a bearded man, presumably God, and an inscription referencing the Earth's creation - "For he spoke and it was; he commanded, and it stood."

While the outer image Bosch painted with subdued colours, limited to grey, whiteish, and black tones, the interior probably caught its first viewers by surprise, with its rich narrative, the melange of forms and figures, and exuberant colours. Compared with his Dutch and Flemish contemporaries, Bosch's style appears fresh, immediate, and innovative. He was admired in history for his approach to colour, as he used translucent paint over gesso to achieve brilliance. He also developed a unique painterly space. While his early works preserve linear perspective, in the later ones, including The Garden, the space is vague, continuous, and not adherent to perspective rules. 

The Relevance

The painting is commonly associated with a critique of human feebleness before life's many temptations. The images of lust and carnal desires are also symbolically present through depictions of berries, which directly reference courtly romance. In Bosch's piece, however, they get devoured by naked figures entangled around them. The symbolism is ubiquitous, but it is not deciphered fully yet. Although some understanding may not be recovered due to the passage of time and lost knowledge, The Garden of Earthly Delights still manages to captivate as a forewarning for what can happen in the future if we are guided just by our shallow instincts. It is a huge puzzle waiting to be solved and perhaps offer new insight into our contemporary garden of delights.

The Garden of Earthly Delights through the artworks of Colección SOLO exhibition will be on view at Matadero Madrid until February 27th, 2022. 

Featured image: Hieronymus Bosch - The Garden of Earthly Delights (detail), 1490 and 1504. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Image via Creative Commons.