The Garden of Earthly Delights: A portrait of human avarice
The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymous Bosch Panel 3 excerpt
The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymous Bosch, Panel 3 excerpt
Five hundred years ago Hieronymous Bosch painted The Garden of Earthly Delights. A triptych with two exterior panels depicting the third day of creation (when The Garden of Eden came to be, according to the bible). The exterior panels are grey, grim and lifeless juxtaposing what lies inside. At a glance the three interior panels are playful and decorative like a child’s wistful fable of make believe. Upon closer inspection the gore of Bosch’s figures is unsettling.
Sometimes human, sometimes animal, sometimes hybrid. Gnarly, gothic figures spear, decapitate, eat and pleasure each other. The shameful deterioration from paradise to hell is generally considered a religious warning to resist temptation. Dignity being the most precious thing that a human can lose. The first panel shows the angelic allure of desire, the middle a mystical orgy before the third gets simply hellish. Although the creatures are physically disturbing, most frightening (though unsurprising as Bosch is considered a precursor to the Surrealists) is the sense that this twisted imagery could be plucked from the psyche of today’s anxious nightmares.
A sense of infinite human folly is illustrated through compositional layering, not only across the triptych but also in the rolling hills fore to background, and in the prolific spattering of humans taking part.
Christ looks directly at the viewer including them in the mayhem - you did this.
Beyond a religious and sexual context, Bosch highlights the rippling butterfly effect of temptation and its subsequent destruction. Humans follow one after the other wreaking havoc.
Because to err is the most human thing of all.
Bosch reveals the pitfalls of blindly following others, of wanting what they have and propelling a collective greed. This chaos of individualistic indulgence acts a mirror – as modern news outlets frequently remind us that we humans consume everything in our path.
Consumers of the world rather than citizens,
Bosch insists that there is a cost,
Because nothing comes for free,
Especially in paradise.