Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights

0:00Dr. Steven Zucker: We're in the Prado in Madrid looking at one of their most famous paintings. It's enormous, and there's a huge crowd around it. This is Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, or at least that's the title that we call it now. Dr. Beth Harris: We don't know its original title. We don't know the circumstances of its commission. And the real challenge for us is that as we walk through the museum, we see paintings from the Christian tradition, and they all have subject matter that we recognize. But when we get to Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, those traditions fail us.

0:43Dr. Steven Zucker: But that's not keeping an enormous crowd of people from enjoying this painting. If you stand over by the wall, you can just catch an oblique view of the outside. This is a painting made of three panels, and what you would have seen originally when this painting was closed was the exterior view. Dr. Beth Harris: Triptychs were generally made for church altarpieces. We'll see that this painting was clearly not meant for a church. We know that this was commissioned by a member of the court of the Duke of Burgundy, who was one of the wealthiest men in Europe. And common for the outside of triptychs, we see a scene in grisailles and shades of gray. Dr. Steven Zucker: He's giving us this eternal darkness. There is this large crystalline globe,

1:32which is the earth, and then just in the upper left corner, we see God the creator. Dr. Beth Harris: God is holding a book. He looks very small and far away. And then there are two inscriptions. They read, "For he spake and it was done." And, "For he commanded and they were created." Dr. Steven Zucker: So this is the moment when God has separated the land from the seas. You can see that there are plants, and they seem almost primordial. So this is the time before the creation of Adam and Eve, but we'll see that on the inside. Let's open this up. The left panel shows God, although here a very young God. So young, in fact, that he looks very much like Christ. Who's holding the arm of the newly created Eve and is presenting

2:19Eve to Adam. What Bosch is representing is Adam taking in the beauty of Eve, but she doesn't return his glance. She looks down demurely. Dr. Beth Harris: Art historians have noted the touches of pink paint on Adam's cheeks as though he's flush with desire. Dr. Steven Zucker: And look at the way that this Christ like figure looks out at us.

2:43And it's almost as if he's questioning: Do you look at Eve in the same way that Adam does? Is there a desire in your eyes as well? Dr. Beth Harris: "God blessed Adam and Eve and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Now, what we would expect to see next would be the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by the serpent, and it's that event of eating the apple from the Tree of Knowledge that sets in motion the history of mankind, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the presence of death and sin. So it's the critical moment, but it's not here. If we look toward the upper right,

3:29we see a tree with a serpent around it, which certainly alludes to the idea of the temptation, but we don't see the actual temptation. Behind them and around them we have this lush garden filled with trees and vines and fruits and animals. Dr. Steven Zucker: And we also see in the center of a pond this almost flesh colored construction that seems to be both stone and animal and plant at the same time.

3:59It's a wildly inventive structure. Dr. Beth Harris: It seems to me that these evoke growth and fecundity. There are forms that give birth to other forms from which yet other forms emerge. There's this constant growing, this constant emerging of life, and this sits on precious stones in the middle of this body of water, animals perch on it.

4:24Dr. Steven Zucker: And in fact, the entire scene is filled with life. It's filled with plant and animal life. Some that we recognize, some that we don't recognize. Some mythic, some entirely invented. In the very center of this fountain is an aperture, and perched in the hole, barely visible, is an owl. Dr. Beth Harris: He peers out.

4:44We could almost read this pink circular form as an eye and the black circle as the pupil and the owl peering out from that. All of this at the very center of this panel, this creature of darkness, of evil, seems to look down at God introducing Adam to Eve. Dr. Steven Zucker: The central panel is overwhelming. It shows this deep landscape.

5:10Here we see a foreground, a middle ground, a background, and then even more distant lands beyond that. And every segment of this landscape is packed with creatures, people, and things. There is so much to look at. Dr. Beth Harris: We see hundreds of figures who appear to be in a land of pure, sensual pleasure. There is no death, there's no growing old, there are no children, but what we do see are often oversized animals, oversized fruits, human beings insatiably gobbling, eating, licking the fruit. The fruit sometimes appears where someone's private parts would be.

5:56Natural forms, plants, spring from the fruit. Flowers, birds perch on them. Figures float in fruit along bodies of water. Figures are engaged in sexual activity, but it's all very confused. All of these different forms interact in myriads of different ways. Dr. Steven Zucker: Needless to say, this is not what you would expect to see by an artist who was deeply religious within a society that was deeply Christian. This is shocking. It's so unexpected. There is no parallel in the entire history of Western art. Dr. Beth Harris: Bosch confounds our ability to even talk about what we see. His imagination has run wild.

6:40He's just invented so many things here that we could never even have thought about in our wildest imaginations. Dr. Steven Zucker: One art historian has suggested that one of the things that Bosch is attempting to do in this painting is to elevate the visual arts to the level of creativity that was permitted in literature. That is, there was a long tradition that allowed authors to be wildly inventive. But because painting is representative, and because painting had always been at the service of religion, it was inherently more conservative. This line of thinking suggests that Bosch is here creating room for the level of creativity that one finds in literature. Dr. Beth Harris: And we should see here

7:25something that helps us move from left, from the creation of the world, to the right panel, which as we'll see represents hell, but all that we have here are frolicking, oblivious figures engaged in all sorts of carnal pleasures. This is not at all what we expect to see in the central panel of a triptych that begins with the creation and ends with hell. Dr. Steven Zucker: Art historians have tried to solve this every which way. But one of the most compelling theories is that the central panel is an alternate story. What if the temptation had not taken place? What if Adam and Eve had remained innocent and had populated the world? And so is it possible that what we're seeing is that reality played out in Bosch's imagination? But I want to step back because although

8:15it is wonderfully playful and wonderfully inventive and just an incredible thing to look at, it would have been deeply troubling to Bosch's generation. That is, Bosch would not have looked at this kindly. His society would have looked at this as sinful, even though the people that are being represented here didn't understand sin. Dr. Beth Harris: In the fountain, in the center of the panel, we see an orb that's cracking and this fabulous fountain that rises above it. But if we look carefully at the circle where we saw the owl in the first panel, we see a highly erotic scene that makes more explicit the kind of sexuality that's being portrayed in the central panel. This is a kind of riotous, unlimited sexuality that doesn't have at its end procreation. This

9:10is sensual pleasure for its own sake. Dr. Steven Zucker: And of course, procreation was the only kind of sexuality that the church at this time found acceptable. If we look at the lower left corner of this panel, we see a group of people who are looking directly at the creation of Adam and Eve in the panel on the left.

9:29Dr. Beth Harris: As though they're saying, "This is where it all began. Here's Adam and Eve, our first parents." Dr. Steven Zucker: There are two oversized owls that frame this central panel. Animals that are meant to signal the presence of evil. Dr. Beth Harris: There's so much in this central panel that is inexplicable, dreamlike, imaginative, and its scenes of rampant sexuality, of sensuality and pleasure, have an effect on the viewer and almost implicate us in any enjoyment that we might be taking in looking at these scenes of pleasure. We begin to feel guilty ourselves.

10:10Dr. Steven Zucker: We'll remember that in the leftmost panel, God is looking out at us, and he seems to be gauging our reaction to what we're looking at. Dr. Beth Harris: The far right panel, which is hell, is much more in line with other images of hell and damnation from the long history of art. Dr. Steven Zucker: Although I might add, through the eyes of Bosch, who is not only extraordinarily skilled in his ability to represent, but what he represents is constructions of the most outrageous kind that they're almost impossible to describe.

10:44Dr. Beth Harris: The largest figure is a figure that art historians call the "Tree Man". His legs look like the branches of trees with more branches growing from them. But where we might see his feet, we see two unsteady boats in the water with figures in them, suggesting that there's an inherent instability to this figure who can barely balance in this way.

11:08Dr. Steven Zucker: And while at one moment his body seems as if it's made of wood, his torso is broken, cracked, almost as if it was the shell of an egg. And so it is both bark and eggshell at the same time, and then that body is itself pierced by its own branches. And that's before we even recognize that there's an entire tavern scene within the cavity of the body, and that there's a face that's turning around and looking back at us.

11:37Dr. Beth Harris: So we have this tavern scene, these associations of drinking, of gambling, of prostitution, taking place within the body of this figure. And then on top of his head, this round surface with figures moving in a circle around this bagpipe, which has also suggestions of sexuality.

11:58Dr. Steven Zucker: The bagpipe is monstrous and oversized. In fact, Bosch uses oversized musical instruments as instruments of torture, which we see throughout this panel. There's an enormous harp on which a man is being crucified. There are expressions of particular people's sins that are related to their tortures. Dr. Beth Harris: For example, gambling we see in the lower left. We see dice, we see cards. So things that are pleasurable in life become sources of interminable pain and suffering in the eternity of hell. Dr. Steven Zucker: Here it's night and the flames are shown vividly against the dark sky. The ruined buildings are shown in silhouette.

12:41There's smoke rising, violence everywhere. There is no escape. Dr. Beth Harris: This is absolutely terrifying, these dark armies moving through the night, being led over bridges, through tunnels. Dr. Steven Zucker: In the lower right corner of the panel, there's a particularly menacing figure. This devil has enormous eyes like an owl, and he's also got a bit of a beak. He's devouring a body who has blackbirds flying out of his anus, and this devil sits on a throne that's also a kind of toilet and below is a bubble that he's excreting which figures that he's devoured seem to be swimming through. It is this awful grotesque scene. Dr. Beth Harris: And below that, a pit in which we see the faces of figures trapped there while another figure seems to

13:34defecate into this pit while another figure vomits into it. Nearby, a female figure is embraced by an animal and she seems to be the sin of vanity as she looks at her reflection in a mirror, but that mirror is formed on the rear end of a demon. Dr. Steven Zucker: Multiply those descriptions by a thousand, and you have a sense of the complexity, the detail, and the horrific inventiveness of this scene.

14:02But I want to go back to the Tree Man for a moment, because he's looking out, perhaps at us, but if you look at the pupils of his eyes, he seems to be looking back perhaps to Adam and Eve, to Adam's lustful look at Eve. Dr. Beth Harris: It is as though the desire that is aroused in Adam by the sight of Eve is the originary moment of the story of mankind.

14:26Dr. Steven Zucker: In this representation, we don't need the apple. We don't need the serpent. All we need is Adam's lustful gaze as he's introduced to Eve.