The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych oil painting on oak panel painted by the Early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch, between 1490 and 1510. It has been housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since the year 1939. The intricacy of its symbolism has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries.
About The Garden of Earthly Delights in brief
The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych oil painting on oak panel painted by the Early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch, between 1490 and 1510. It has been housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since the year 1939. The intricacy of its symbolism has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries. Twentieth-century art historians are divided as to whether the central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost. It is not known whether The Garden was intended as an altarpiece, but the general view is that the extreme subject matter of the inner center and right panels make it unlikely that it was intended to function in a church or monastery, but was instead commissioned by a lay patron. The outer panels are generally thought to depict the creation of the world, showing greenery beginning to clothe the still-pristine Earth. God, wearing a crown similar to a papal tiara, is visible as a tiny figure at the upper left. The Earth is encapsulated in a transparent sphere recalling the traditional depiction of the created world as a crystal sphere held by God or Christ. It hangs suspended in the cosmos, which is shown as an impermeable darkness, whose only other inhabitant is God himself. Despite the presence of vegetation, the earth does not yet contain human or animal life, indicating that the scene represents the events of the biblical Third Day. Scholars have proposed that Bosch used the outer panels to establish a Biblical setting for the inner elements of the work, and the exterior image is generally interpreted as set in an earlier time than those in the interior.
They show an unpopulated earth composed solely of rock and plants, contrasting sharply with the inner central panel which contains a paradise teeming with lustful humanity. According to some interpretations, the right panel is believed to show God’s penalties in a hellscape through the seductive gaze of Adam. However, in contrast to Bosch’s two other complete Triptychs, The Haywain Triptych and The Last Judgment, God is absent from this panel. Instead, this panel shows humanity acting with apparent free will as naked men and women engage in various pleasure-seeking activities. The scenes depicted in The Garden are thought to follow a chronological order: flowing from left-to-right they represent the garden of Eden, the Last Judgment and Hell, while the right wing shows the consequences of humanity’s failure to follow his will. The left wing is thought to represent the hand of God in the left wing, while in the right hand wing, God appears as creator of humanity in theleft wing, and in the last wing, humanity’s sins are shown in the waning moments of Adam’s life. The inner centerpiece is flanked by heavenly and hellish imagery, with God’s gaze waning through the waning gaze of the waning Adam’s body. The final panel shows the Eden-like scene in which humanity is shown acting in a garden of earthly delights.
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