The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Garden of Earthly Delights
Artist	Hieronymus Bosch
Year	1503–1504
Type	Oil-on-wood triptych
Location	Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Garden of Earthly Delights (or The Millennium) is a triptych painting by the early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516), now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Painted between 1503 and 1504, when Bosch was about 50 years old, the triptych is generally considered to be his best-known and most ambitious work. The work finds Bosch at the height of his artistic powers, and in no other painting does he achieve such complexity of meaning or such vivid imagery. Bosch's masterpiece depicts a number of biblical and heretical scenes on a grand scale and was likely intended to illustrate the history of mankind according to medieval Christian doctrine.

The triptych consists of three inner and two outer panels in oil, with the exterior shutter panels in grisaille. The outer panels, when folded shut, show the earth during the Creation, likely during the third day. The three separate scenes of the inner triptych are probably intended to read chronologically from left to right. A scene of God presenting Adam with the newly created Eve is at the left of the large central panel, which may be either a moralisation on earthly temptation and sin or a celebration of sexuality; the right panel depicts the torments of damnation.

The panels were thought by most art historians and critics to portray the penalties for sins of the flesh through a complicated use of symbolism, although this view has been challenged during the last century. The intricacy of its symbolism has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries, particularly of the central panel. It was long thought that the work was intended by Bosch as a didactic warning to the viewer on the perils of life's temptations. Twentieth-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych's center panel is a moral warning, or instead a panaroma of paradise lost. American writer Peter S. Beagle describes it as an "erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs, a place filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty".

Triptych

Bosch painted three triptychs in his lifetime, each of which presents distinct yet linked themes addressing the history and faith of humanity. Triptychs from this period were generally intended to be read sequentially, and the left and right panels often portrayed Eden and the Last Judgment respectively, while the subtext was contained in the center piece.

Exterior

When the triptych's wings are closed, the design of the outer panels becomes visible. Rendered in a green–gray grisaille, the panels lack colour, possibly indicating that the painting reflects a time before the creation of the sun and moon, which were formed to "give light to the earth". It was common for the outer panels of Netherlandish altarpieces to be in grisaille, such that their blandness highlighted the splendorous colour inside.

The exterior panels show the world on the third day of creation, after the addition of plant life but before the appearance of humanity.

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 (a common convention in Netherlandish painting), is visible as a tiny figure at the upper left. His expression and gestures seem hesitant and morose, according to the writer Hans Belting, "as though the world he had created was already slipping beyond his control". Bosch shows God sitting with a Bible on his lap, creating the Earth in a passive manner by divine fiat. Above him is inscribed a quote from Psalm XXXIII reading Ipse dixit, et facta sunt: ipse mandávit, et creáta sunt—For he spake and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. 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. Refracting light, 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 Third Day. Bosch renders the plant life in an unusual fashion, using uniformly gray tints which make it difficult to determine whether the subjects are purely vegetable or perhaps include some mineral formations. Surrounding the interior of the globe is the sea, partially illuminated by beams of light shining through clouds. The exterior wings have a clear position within the sequential narrative of the work as a whole. The exterior shows an unpopulated earth comprised solely of rock and plant. The inner left panel shows a world where only Adam and Eve exist, while the central panel is a paradise teeming with humanity.

Interior

Scholars have argued 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 being earlier than those in the interior. As with Bosch's The Haywain triptych, the inner centerpiece is flanked by heavenly and hellish imagery. The scenes depicted in the triptych are thought to follow a chronological order, flowing from left-to-right they represent respectively, Eden, the garden of earthly delights, and Hell.

God appears as the creator of humanity in the left hand wing, while the consequences of his will are implied in the right. However, in contrast to Bosch's two other great triptychs, The Last Judgment (after 1482) and The Haywain (completed in 1490), God is absent from the central panel. Instead, this panel shows humanity acting with free will but damning itself through sinful deeds, specifically sexual abandon. The right hand panel is believed to show God wreaking vengeance for these sins in a Last Judgment hellscape. Art historian Charles De Tolnay believed that, through the seductive gaze of Adam, the left panel already shows God's waning influence upon the newly created earth. This view is reinforced by the rendering of God in the outer panels as a tiny figure in comparison to the immensity of the earth.

Left panel

The left panel (220 × 97.5 cm) (sometimes known as the Joining of Adam and Eve) depicts a scene from the paradise of the Garden of Eden commonly interpreted as the moment when God presents Eve to Adam. The painting shows Adam waking from a deep sleep to find God holding Eve by her wrist and giving the sign of his blessing to their union. God is shown as younger-looking than on the outer panels, and is likely to represent Christ as the incarnation of the Word of God, as described in John 1:14. Eve chastely avoids Adam's gaze, although, according to art historian Walter S. Gibson, she is shown "seductively presenting her body to Adam."

Detail from the left hand panel, showing Christ anointing Eve before she is presented to Adam.

The landscape is populated by various hut-shaped forms, some of which are organic. Behind Eve, rabbits symbolising fecundity play in the grass, while a dragon tree opposite is thought to represent eternal life. The background reveals a number of animals that would have been exotic to contemporaneous Europeans, including a giraffe, an elephant and a lion that has killed and is about to devour his prey. In the foreground, a circular hole in the ground emits birds and winged animals, some of which are realistic, some fantastic. A fish with human hands and a duck's head holds a book while emerging from the cavity in flight, while to the left of the area a cat holds a small creature in its jaws.

According to art historian Virginia Tuttle, the scene is "highly unconventional [and] cannot be identified as any of the events from the Book of Genesis traditionally depicted in Western art." Some of the image's details seem to contradict the innocence that might be expected in the Garden of Eden before the expulsion. Tuttle and other critics have interpreted the gaze of Adam upon his wife as lustful, and indicative of the Christian belief that man was doomed from the beginning. Gibson believes that Adam's facial expression betrays not just surprise but also expectation. According to a belief common in the Middle Ages, before the fall Adam and Eve would have copulated without lust, solely to reproduce. Many believed that the first sin committed after Eve tasted the forbidden fruit was carnal lust. Art historian Rosemarie Schuder, however, suggests that the obvious sensuality of the panel may have been intended as a jab against the Inquisition's hostility towards physicality.

Center panel

The water-bound globe in the center panel's upper background. The globe floats in a body of water, adorned by nude figures cavorting with each other and with strange creatures.

The center panel (220 × 195 cm) depicts the expansive "garden" landscape which gives the triptych its common name. The panel shares a common horizon with the left wing, suggesting a temporal and spatial connection between the two scenes. The garden is teeming with male and female nudes, together with a variety of animals, plants and fruit. The setting is not the paradise shown in the left panel, but neither is it based in the terrestrial realm. Fantastic creatures mingle with the real; otherwise ordinary fruits appear engorged to a gigantic size. The figures are engaged in diverse amorous sports and activities, both in couples and in groups. Gibson describes them as behaving "overtly and without shame", while art historian Laurinda Dixon wrote that the human figures exhibit "a certain adolescent sexual curiosity".

The numerous human figures revel in an innocent, self-absorbed joy as they engage in a wide range of activities: some enjoy sexual pleasures, others play unselfconsciously in the water, and yet others cavort in meadows with a variety of animals, seemingly at one with nature. In the middle of the background, a large blue globe resembling a fruit pod rises in front of an embracing couple. Visible through its circular window is a man fondling his partner's genitals, and the bare buttocks of yet another figure hover in the vicinity. According to the 20th-century folklorist and art historian Wilhelm Fränger, the eroticism of the center frame could be considered either as an allegory of transience or a playground of corruption.

A group of nude females from the center panel. One woman wears a cherry, a symbol of pride, on her head, while another carries a male encased in a mussel shell.

In the right hand side of the foreground stand a group of both fair and black skinned figures, and some of the fair skinned figures, both male and female, are covered from head to foot in light brown body hair. In a cave to their lower right a male figure points towards a reclining female who is also covered in hair. The female lies behind a semicylindrical transparent shield, while her mouth is sealed, probably a device to indicate that she bears a secret. The pointing man has variously been described as either the patron of the work (Fränger in 1947), an advocate of Adam in denouncing Eve (Dirk Bax in 1956), or because he is clothed in a brown cloth, Saint John the Baptist in his brown cloak (Isabel Mateo Goméz in 1963). To their right, a man crowned by leaves lies on top of a gigantic strawberry, and is joined by a male and female who contemplate another large fruit.

There is no perspectival order in the foreground, instead it comprises a series of brief motifs wherein proportion and terrestrial logic are abandoned. Bosch presents the viewer with gigantic ducks playing with tiny humans under the cover of oversized fruit; fish walking on land while birds dwell in the water; a passionate couple encased in an amniotic bubble; and a man inside of a red fruit staring at a mouse in a transparent cylinder.

Detail from the center panel showing nudes cavorting within a transparent sphere. Their innocence and abandon contrasts with the right hand panel, where the human figures seem ashamed of their nakedness.

The pools in the fore and background contain bathers of both sexes. In the central lake, the sexes are segregated, and a number of females adorned by peacocks and fruit stand in a round pond. One woman carries a cherry on her head, a common symbol of pride at the time: "Don't eat cherries with great lords - they'll throw pits in your face." The women are surrounded by a parade of naked men riding horses, donkeys, unicorns, camels, and other exotic or fantastic creatures. One man somersaults on the back of his ride, an act designed to gain the females' attention that subtly highlights the attraction already felt between the two sexes. The two outer springs also contain both men and women cavorting with abandon. Around them, birds infest the water while winged fish crawl on land. Humans inhabit giant shells. All are surrounded by oversized fruit pods and eggshells, and both humans and animals feast on strawberries and cherries.

The impression of a life lived without consequence, or what art historian Hans Belting describes as "unspoilt and immoral existence,” is underscored by the absence of children and old people. According to the second and third chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve's children were born after they were expelled from Eden. This has led some commentators to theorise that the panel represents the world if the two had not been driven out "among the thorns and thistles of the world". In Fränger's view, the scene illustrates

a Utopia, a garden of divine delight before the Fall, or—since Bosch could not deny the existence of the dogma of Original Sin—a millennial condition that would arise if, after expiation of Original Sin, humanity were permitted to return to Paradise and to a state of tranquil harmony embracing all Creation.

Right panel

The right panel (220 × 97.5 cm) illustrates Hell, the setting of a number of Bosch's paintings. Bosch depicts a world in which humans have succumbed to the temptations of the devil and reap eternal damnation. The tone of this final panel strikes a harsh contrast to those preceding it. The scene here is set at night, and the natural beauty that characterised the earlier panels is noticeably absent. Set against the warmth of the center panel, the right wing possesses a bone-chilling quality, rendered through colour and frozen waterways, presenting a tableau that has shifted from the paradise of the center image to a spectacle of cruel torture. In a single, densely-detailed scene, the viewer is made witness to cities on fire in the background; war, torture chambers, taverns, and demons in the midground; and mutated animals feeding on human flesh in the foreground. The nakedness of the human figures has lost all its eroticism, and many now attempt to cover their genitalia and breasts with their hands.

A scene from the hellscape panel showing the long beams of light emitted from the burning city in the panel's background.

Large explosions in the background throw light through the city gate and spill forth onto the water in the midground,’’their fiery reflection turning the water below into blood”, as writer Walter S. Gibson describes the scene. The light illuminates a road filled with fleeing figures, while hordes of tormentors prepare to burn a neighbouring village. A short distance away, a rabbit carries an impaled and bleeding corpse, while a group of victims above are thrown into a burning lantern. The foreground is populated by a variety of distressed, condemned figures. Some are shown vomiting or excreting, others are crucified by harp and lute, in an hallucinatory depiction of the consequences of sin. A choir sings from a score inscribed on a pair of buttocks, part of a group that has been described as the "Musicians' Hell".

The "Tree Man" of the right-hand panel, depicted in an earlier drawing by Bosch. This version of the figure contains no suggestion of Hell, yet its outline was adapted into one of the "Garden"’s most memorable grotesques.

The focal point of the scene is the so-called "Tree-Man", whose cavernous torso stands on a pair of rotting tree trunks. His head supports a disk populated by demons and victims together with bagpipes reminiscent of human viscera. A hooded figure with an arrow jammed between his buttocks climbs a ladder into the Tree-Man’s central cavity, where nude men sit in a tavern-like setting. The Tree-Man gazes outwards beyond the viewer, his expression a mix of wistfulness and resignation.

Many elements in the panel are faithful to earlier iconographical conventions of depicting hell. Bosch's innovation was in describing his hell scene not in a fantastical space, but in a realistic world with elements of day-to-day human life. Animals are shown punishing humans, subjecting them to nightmarish torments that may symbolise the seven deadly sins, matching the torment to the sin. Sitting on an object that may be a toilet or a throne, the panel's centerpiece is a bird-headed monster feasting on human corpses, which he excretes through a cavity below him. To his left, a group afflicted by a hare-headed demon is being punished for unchastity. Anger is represented by a knight torn down by a pack of wolves to the right of the Tree-Man. A man lying in his bed is visited by devils punishing sloth, while a proud female gazes at her face reflected on the buttocks of a demon.

During the Middle Ages, sexuality and lust were seen as evidence of man's fall from grace, and the most foul of the seven deadly sins. This sin is depicted in the left-hand panel through Adam's gaze towards Eve, and there are many indicators in the center panel to suggest that the panel was created as a warning to the viewer to avoid a life of sinful pleasure. The penalty for such sins is shown in the right panel of the triptych. In the lower right-hand corner, a man is punished for lust as he is beaten by a sow wearing the veil of a nun. The pig is shown forcing the man to sign legal documents.

Lust is further symbolised by the gigantic musical instruments and by the choral singers in the left foreground of this panel. Musical instruments often carried erotic connotations in works of art of the period, and lust was referred to in moralising sources as the "music of the flesh". It may also be that Bosch's representation here is a rebuke against traveling minstrels; widely thought of as purveyors of bawdy song and verse.

Provenance

The dating of The Garden of Earthly Delights is uncertain. Consensus among twentieth century art historians places the work in 1503 or 1504, while earlier conjectures attributed it to Bosch's youthful period, c. 1485, citing its "archaic" treatment of space. The Garden was first documented in 1517, one year after the artist's death, when Antonio de Beatis, a canon from Molfetta, Italy, described the work as part of the decoration in the town palace of the Counts of the House of Nassau in Brussels. The palace was a high-profile location, a house often visited by heads of state and leading court figures. The prominence of the painting has led some to conclude that the work was commissioned, and not "solely … a flight of the imagination". A description of the triptych in 1605 called it the "strawberry painting", because the fruit features prominently in the center panel. Early Spanish writers referred to the work as la lajuria (lust).

Bernard van Orley, Henry III of Nassau-Breda, (1483-1538), who may have been the patron of Bosch's triptych.

The aristocracy of the Burgundian Netherlands, influenced by the humanist movement, were the most likely collectors of Bosch’s paintings, but there are few records of the location of his works in the years immediately following his death. It is probable that the patron of the work was Henry III of Nassau-Breda, the Stadtholder or governor of several of the Habsburg provinces in the Low Countries, and an avid collector of art. De Beatis wrote in his travel journal that "there are some panels on which bizarre things have been painted. They represent seas, skies, woods, meadows, and many other things, such as people crawling out of a shell, others that bring forth birds, men and women, white and blacks doing all sorts of different activities and poses." Because the triptych was publicly displayed in the palace of the House of Nassau, it was visible to many, and Bosch's reputation quickly spread across Europe. The work’s popularity can be measured by the numerous surviving copies commissioned by wealthy patrons. Most are of the central panel only and do not deviate from the original. These copies were usually painted on a much smaller scale, and they vary considerably in quality. Many were created a generation after Bosch, and some took the form of wall tapestries.

The de Beatis description, only rediscovered in the 1960s, casts new light on the commissioning of a work that was previously thought—since it has no central religious image—to be an atypical altarpiece. Many Netherlandish diptychs intended for private use are known, and even a few triptychs, but the Bosch panels are unusually large compared with these and contain no donor portraits. Possibly they were commissioned to celebrate a wedding, as large Italian paintings for private houses frequently were. Nevertheless, The Garden's bold depictions do not rule out a church commission, such was the contemporaneous fervor to warn against immorality. In 1566, the triptych served as the model for a tapestry that hangs in the Escorial monastery near Madrid.

Upon the death of Henry III , the painting passed into the hands of his nephew William the Silent, the founder of the House of Orange-Nassau and leader of the Dutch Revolt against Spain. In 1568, however, it was confiscated and taken to Spain, where it became the property of one Don Fernando, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Alba, the Spanish commander in the Netherlands. By 1591, the painting had been acquired at auction by Phillip II; two years later he presented it to the Escorial. A contemporaneous description of the transfer records the gift on 8 July 1593 of a "painting in oils, with two wings depicting the variety of the world, illustrated with grotesqueries by Hieronymus Bosch, known as 'Del Madroño'". The work passed from the Escorial to the Museo del Prado in 1939, along with other works by Bosch. The triptych is not particularly well-preserved; the paint of the middle panel especially has flaked off around joints in the wood.

Sources

Little is known for certain of the life of Hieronymus Bosch or of the commissions or influences that may have formed the basis for the iconography of his work. There is no record of his thoughts, and there has been much conjecture on the sources and intended meaning of his paintings. Although he lived in the era of the High Renaissance, he lived in an area where the beliefs of the medieval Church still held authority. Art scholars have debated Bosch's iconography more extensively than that of any other Netherlandish artist. His works are widely regarded as enigmatic, and it may be that their content refers to contemporaneous esoteric knowledge now lost to history. José de Sigüenza is credited with the first extensive critique of The Garden of Earthly Delights, in his 1605 History of the Order of St. Jerome. He argued against dismissing the painting as either heretical or merely absurd, commenting that the panels "are a satirical comment on the shame and sinfulness of mankind."

The giraffe (right) in the left panel of The Garden may be drawn from copies of that in Cyriac of Ancona's Egyptian Voyage (left).

The period in which the triptych was created was a time of adventure and discovery, when tales and trophies from the New World sparked the imagination of poets, painters and writers. Although the triptych contains many unearthly and fantastic creatures, Bosch still appealed in his images and cultural references to an elite humanist and aristocratic audience. Bosch literally reproduces a scene from Martin Schongauer's engraving Flight into Egypt. Travel literature of the fifteenth century is referenced in the animals of the left panel. The giraffe, for example, has been traced to Cyriac of Ancona, a travel writer known for his visits to Egypt during the 1440s. The exoticism of Cyriac's sumptuous manuscripts may have inspired Bosch's imagination.

Attempts to find sources for the work in literature from the period have not been successful. Art historian Erwin Panofsky wrote in 1953:

In spite of all the ingenious, erudite and in part extremely useful research devoted to the task of "decoding Jerome Bosch," I cannot help feeling that the real secret of his magnificent nightmares and daydreams has still to be disclosed. We have bored a few holes through the door of the locked room; but somehow we do not seem to have discovered the key.

The humanist Desiderius Erasmus has been suggested as a possible influence; the writer lived in Hertogenbosch in the 1480s, and it is likely he knew Bosch. Critic Peter Glum remarked on the triptych's similarity of tone with Erasmus's view that theologians "explain [to suit themselves] the most difficult mysteries … is it a possible proposition: God the Father hates the Son? Could God have assumed the form of a woman, a devil, an ass, a gourd, a stone?".

Interpretation

Hieronymus Bosch, in a c.1516 copy of a portrait thought to be by the artist. His age (around 60) in this representation has been used to estimate his date of birth.

Because only bare details are known of Bosch's life, interpretation of his work can be an extremely difficult and dangerous area for academics, as it is largely reliant on conjecture. Individual motifs and elements of symbolism may be explained, but so far relating these to each other and to his work as a whole has remained elusive. The enigmatic scenes depicted on the panels of the inner triptych of The Garden of Earthly Delights have been studied by many scholars, who have often come to contradictory interpretations. The complex objects and ideas presented in the work have been analysed in relation to many different symbolic systems, including those of alchemy, astrology, folklore, heresy and the unconscious mind. Until the early 20th century, Bosch's paintings were generally thought to incorporate attitudes of Medieval didactic literature and sermons. De Tolnay wrote that,

The oldest writers, Dominicus Lampsonius and Karel van Mander, attached themselves to his most evident side, to the subject; their conception of Bosch, inventor of fantastic pieces of devilry and of infernal scenes, which prevails today (1937) in the public at large, and prevailed with historians until the last quarter of the 19th century.

Generally, the work is described as a warning against lust, and the central panel as a representation of the transience of worldly pleasure. In 1960, the art historian Ludwig von Baldass wrote that Bosch shows "how sin came into the world through the Creation of Eve, how fleshly lusts spread over the entire earth, promoting all the Deadly Sins, and how this necessarily leads straight to Hell". Charles de Tolnay wrote that the center panel represents "the nightmare of humanity", where "the artist's purpose above all is to show the evil consequences of sensual pleasure and to stress its ephemeral character". Supporters of this view hold that the painting is a sequential narrative; the left panel shows human beings' initial state of innocence in Eden, the center shows the subsequent corruption of that innocence, and finally in the right panel, their punishment in Hell. At various times in its history, the triptych has been known as La Lujuria, The Sins of the World and The Wages of Sin.

Supporters of this view point out that moralists during Bosch's era believed that it was woman's—ultimately Eve's—temptation that drew men into a life of lechery and sin. This would explain why the women in the center panel are very much among the active participants in bringing about the fall. At the time, the power of femininity was often rendered by showing a female surrounded by a circle of males. A late 15th century engraving by Israhel van Meckenem shows a group of men prancing ecstatically around a female figure (right). The Master of the Banderoles's 1460 work the Pool of Youth similarly shows a group of females standing in a space surrounded by admiring figures.

Detail from the center panel showing two cherry adorned dancing figures who are perched by an Owl.

In 1947, Wilhelm Fränger argued that the triptych portrays a joyous world when mankind will experience a rebirth of the innocence enjoyed by Adam and Eve before their fall. In his book The Millennium of Hieronymus Bosch, Fränger wrote that Bosch was a member of the heretical sect known as the Adamites—who were also known as the Homines intelligentia and Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit. This radical group, active in the area of the Rhine and the Netherlands, strove for a form of spirituality immune from sin even in the flesh and imbued the concept of lust with a paradisical innocence.

Fränger believed the The Garden of Earthly Delights was commissioned by the order's Grand Master. Later critics have agreed that, because of their obscure complexity, Bosch's "altarpieces" may well have been commissioned for non-devotional purposes. The Homines intelligentia cult sought to regain the innocent sexuality enjoyed by Adam and Eve before the Fall. Fränger writes that the figures in Bosch's work "are peacefully frolicking about the tranquil garden in vegetative innocence, at one with animals and plants and the sexuality that inspires them seems to be pure joy, pure bliss." Fränger argued against the notion that the hellscape shows the retribution handed down for sins committed in the center panel. Fränger saw the figures in the garden as peaceful, naive, and innocent in expressing their sexuality, and at one with nature. In contrast, those being punished in Hell comprise "musicians, gamblers, desecrators of judgment and punishment".

Examining the symbolism in Bosch's art—"the freakish riddles … the irresponsible phantasmagoria of an ecstatic"—Fränger concluded that his interpretation applied to Bosch's three altarpieces only: The Garden of Earthly Delights, Temptation of Saint Anthony, and The Haywain Triptych. Fränger distinguished these pieces from the artist's other works, and argued that since they essentially contained anti-cleric polemic, they were yet all, he thought, altarpieces, commissioned for devotional purposes; likely, he concluded, to a mystery cult. While commentators accept Fränger's analysis as astute and broad in scope, they have often questioned his thesis, as well as his anti-clerical and anti-pagan invective. His conclusions are regarded by many scholars as a hypothesis only, and built on an unstable foundation. Critics argue that artists during this period painted not for their own pleasure but for commission: the language and secularization of a post-Renaissance mind-set projected onto Bosch would have been alien to the late-Medieval painter.

Fränger's thesis stimulated others to examine The Garden more closely. Writer Carl Linfert also senses the joyfulness of the people in the center panel, but rejects Fränger's assertion that the painting is a "doctrinaire" work espousing the "guiltless sexuality" of the Adamite sect. While the figures engage in amorous acts without any suggestion of the forbidden, Linfert points to the elements in the center panel suggesting death and temporality: some figures turn away from the activity, seeming to lose hope in deriving pleasure from the passionate frolicking of their cohorts. Writing in 1969, E. H Gombrich drew on a close reading of Genesis and the Gospel According to Saint Matthew to suggest that the central panel is, according to Linfert, "the state of mankind on the eve of the Flood, when men still pursued pleasure with no thought of the morrow, their only sin the unawareness of sin."

Bibliography

• Baldass, Ludwig von. Hieronymus Bosch. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1960.
• Belting, Hans. Garden of Earthly Delights. Munich: Prestel, 2005. ISBN 3-7913-3320-8.
• Bosing, Walter. Hieronymus Bosch, C. 1450-1516: Between Heaven and Hell. Berlin: Taschen, September 29, 2000. ISBN 3-8228-5856-0.
• Cinotti, Mia. The Complete Paintings of Bosch. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969.
• De Beatis, Antonio The Travel Journal of Antonio De Beatis Through Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, France and Italy, 1517-18, (Second) (Hardcover) Publisher: Hakluyt Society (January 31, 1999) ISBN 10-0904-1800-77.
• De Tolnay, Charles. Hieronymus Bosch. Eyre Methuen, 1975. ISBN 0-4133-3280-2.
• Delevoy, Robert L. Bosch: Biographical and Critical Study. Lausanne: Skira, 1960.
• Fränger, Wilhelm and Kaiser, Ernst. The Millennium of Hieronymus Bosch. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1951.
• Gibson, Walter S. Hieronymus Bosch. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1973. ISBN 0-5002-0134-X
• Glum, Peter. Divine Judgment in Bosch's 'Garden of Earthly Delights'. The Art Bulletin, Volume 58, No. 1, March 1976.
• Gómez, Isabel Mateo. Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights, in Gaillard, J. and M. Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1989, 11-39. ISBN 0-517-57230-3.
• Harbison, Craig. The Art of the Northern Renaissance, 1995, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0297835122.
• Koldeweij, A. M., Paul Vandenbroeck, and Bernard Vermet. Hieronymus Bosch: The Complete Paintings and Drawings. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001.
• Larsen, Erik. Hieronymus Bosch. New York: Smithmark, 1998. ISBN 0-7651-0865-8.
• Linfert, Carl (tr. Robert Erich Wolf). Bosch. London: Thames and Hudson, 1972. ISBN 0-500-09077-7.
• Moxey, Keith. Hieronymus Bosch and the 'World Upside Down': The Case of 'The Garden of Earthly Delights'. Bryson, Norman, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey. Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations. Wesleyan University Press, 1994, 104–140. ISBN 0-8195-6267-X.
• Snyder, James. Hieronymus Bosch. New York: Excalibur Books, 1977. ISBN 0-8967-3060-3.
• ———. Hieronymus Bosch. London: Grange Books, 2005. ISBN 1-8401-3657-X.

External links

• At the Museo Nacional del Prado
• "Hieronymus Bosch, Tempter and Moralist" Analysis by Larry Silver.