Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (Full Length): Great Art Explained

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus  Bosch has been interpreted in so many ways.

I don't think that this is a painting about  sexual freedom or of a medieval acid trip.  

This is not Bosh's erotic fantasy or  even a heretical attack on the church.  

And this is not a painting by a member of an obscure free love cult.

The Garden of Earthly Delights  is pure and simply, hardcore Christianity.

THIS is a painting about sin.

The garden of Earthly Delights consists of three  oak panels, hinged together so that the outer panels

or wings can be closed. The centre panel is  220 by 195 centimetres, and the side panels each,

are 220 by 97.5 centimetres. When the panels are  closed, Bosch presents us with a very different image.

Triptychs usually had one important Biblical  scene in the middle, with donors or saints either side.

But in The Garden of Earthly Delights, all three panels are equally part of the story.  

At first glance the painting is chaotic and  overwhelming - but it has been meticulously planned.  

It has been said that the The Garden of Earthly Delights ignores linear perspective,  

which had become the norm in Renaissance art. But I don't think so. If we look at the dead  

centre of the panels, we find a hidden egg.  It is the only unhatched egg on this panel.  

A possible symbol of new beginnings. If we  use this egg as the vanishing point, Bosch's  

composition has an order - and the action  emanates from the centere of the panel.  

Then the three panels are linked by a  common horizon line - they divide into three  

sections: Foreground, Mid-ground and Background. The foreground contains the most important detail.  

Each panel in the mid-ground contains a body of water. A small lake with a fountain, a pool with female bathers, 

and a frozen lake. The background consists  of towers. Organic in Eden and man-made in Hell. 

And then in each panel there is a central axis  that your eyes are drawn to. Another way he anchors  

the three panels is by repetition. A good example  is Adam whose position is repeated in panel two  

as an Eve figure, and panel three in reverse. As we will see, all of these visual elements pull  

The Garden of Earthly Delights together, and were  planned in the early stages. Jan van Eyke didn't  

invent oil paints, but he did perfect them, one hundred years before Bosch. In my video on van Eyke, I show  

how he depicted minute hyper realistic detail,  by building up oil paint in translucent layers,  

using a tiny brush. Van Eyke didn't leave the  brush strokes or any evidence of the human hand.  

Bosch differed from the Netherlandish painters  at the time, and used a fairly sketchy style,  

along with the "Impasto" technique where paint is  thickly applied. And you can clearly see the brush  

strokes in relief, which gives the surface texture.  Bosch allows us to see the individual at work.

The late middle ages were a pivotal moment in  European history. Explorers were discovering new  

exotic lands, Leonardo da Vinci was painting  "The Mona Lisa", Copernicus proposed that the  

sun was at the center of our solar system, and  Erasmus was exploring radical new ideas.  

The last bloody battles of The Hundred Years War had  been fought, and now Christian Europe was facing an  

onslaught by the Ottoman Empire. It was the eve  of the Reformation and Europe was experiencing  

the first stirrings of a spiritual crisis, and yet  it was also the height of the Spanish Inquisition.  

In 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, a man called  Hieronymus Bosch had no idea that a painting he  

was working on, would still confound and confuse  viewers five centuries after he painted it.  

We cannot look at Bosch's paintings with modern  sensibilities, for while we may be comfortable  

with sex as a part of the human condition, in  the Middle ages, sex was seen as contributing  

to man's fall from grace. This was a time when  European artists, writers, and theologians were  

shaping a new terrifying vision of Hell AND the  punishment awaiting sinners. Bosch's imagery -  

no matter how bizarre - is nothing more than a faithful  representation of the world in which he lived.  

It is an intensely moralistic work that should be  approached as what it is - Religious propaganda.  

As the 15th century turned into the 16th century,  art got darker. The Garden of Earthly Delights

is a compelling way to look back, to a period  that was no longer Medieval but not yet modern.

It is often assumed that Hieronymus Bosch is a  Medieval artist - but he is a Renaissance artist.  

An exact contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci and  influenced by the same ideas. Curiosity of thought,  

a hallmark of the Renaissance fills his  detailed and extremely precise paintings.  

Bosch was part of the Northern Renaissance,  living and working in 's-Hertogenbosch,  

commonly known as Den Bosch,  in what is now the Netherlands.  

The Northern Renaissance artists were not  nearly as well documented as the Italians.  

In fact we know next to nothing about Bosch's  life. History portrays him as a loner, but we know  

he was born to a family of artists in THIS house,  and that he was hugely successful and prolific.  

His real name was Jerome van Aiken and he was  born around 1450. Later he would change his name  

to reflect Den Bosch the town he lived in. He took  "Hieronymus" for his first name - the Latin for Jerome.  

When he was a child, a major fire in Den Bosch burned the Medieval city to the ground.  

As people panicked and screamed for their lives, he  must have been affected, and it's not too much of a  

leap to think it inspired his vivid depictions  of hellfire, which we see in many of his works.  

Den Bosch was a fiercely Catholic city with  over 40 churches, chapels, and monasteries,  

and a spectacular Gothic Cathedral. One in  every 16 citizens worked for the church.  

Hieronymus Bosch was a member of a Conservative  Christian organization - "The Illustrious Brotherhood  

of our Blessed Lady", dedicated to the reverence  of Mary, with their own chapel in St John's  

Cathedral. He received several commissions  from the brotherhood, which was not just a  

religious organization, it was also a social  network. Bosch married Aleyt van den Meerveen,  

a wealthy older woman around 1480. They had no  children and we know Bosch's funeral was in 1516.  

Records show us that Bosch's work originally  filled the brotherhood's chapel in St. John's  

Cathedral, and much of his inspiration  would have come directly from the Cathedral.

As inventive as he was, his hybrid animals and  monsters, were from a well-established church  

tradition, exemplified by St. John's Cathedral.  Bosch's creatures were certainly inspired by  

its Gothic Gargoyles, of curious figures, animals,  and monsters. Elements of gothic architecture

inspired him as well, and in 1492 a baptismal  font arrived in St. John's that is not dissimilar  

in style to Bosch's strange architectural  structures. As part of the brotherhood's inner  

elite, he had easy access to the Cathedral's  archives and library, and another influence  

would have been the Medieval manuscripts where  we find "Drollery" or "Grotesques" in the margins.  

These are small decorative images which are often  humorous or sexual in nature. Many of the images in  

The Garden of Earthly Delights can be traced  back to the drolleries we see in manuscripts.

Books of beasts or "Bestiaries" were amongst the  most popular illuminated texts in Northern Europe.  

A Bestiary consists of both real and mythical  animals. The main purpose of them was not to teach  

about the animal kingdom, but to teach people  how to lead the life of a virtuous Christian.  

Artists would often get their inspiration  from the journals of explorers. The first  

time most people saw a giraffe was in Syriac  of Ancona's "Egyptian Voyage". Bosch would draw  

from this book many times over the years, and  other artists would also use it as a template.  

A busy artist like Bosch would have a  bank of his own images that he would re-use,  

and we can see images repeated over several  different works of his - again and again.

What Hell is like - or whether it exists in the Bible at all - is widely disputed, even within modern Christianity.  

Dante Alighieri's epic poem "The Divine Comedy" from  1320, which describes Dante's journey through the  

nine circles of Hell, was hugely influential in  European art. An earlier book "The Vision of Tundale"  

would be a major influence on Bosch. Based on the  12th century visions of an Irish knight, it was  

part of the Medieval genre of "visionary Infernal  Literature" that helped to define our ideas of Hell.  

By the time Bosch painted The Garden of Earthly Delights, people firmly believed in Heaven and Hell.

Satan became a major figure. Reports  of encounters with demons increased,  

heretics and witches were burned, and vivid  descriptions of Hell were reproduced in art.

Often with paintings, we can look at the person  who commissioned them to give us more insights  

into the work. In 1517, a year after Bosch died, we know for a fact that The Garden of Earthly Delights 

was in the Brussels palace of Henry III of the Nassau dynasty,  

the probable patron. The Netherlands at the time  was ruled by Spain under King Philip the Handsome,  

but the local governors such as  Henry came from the Nassau family.  

Henry was known as a cultured, educated, and  inquisitive ma n, and he was transforming his  

residence into a magnificent Renaissance court. His  art collection was central to that transformation.  

We know Henry visited Den Bosch with King Philip in  1504, and it was probably during this visit, 

that he commissioned The Garden of Earthly Delights. Enigmatic paintings were fashionable in Europe  

at this time, and Henry would have understood the  originality and intelligent thought involved in  

the painting. You would typically find Triptychs  in Churches as altarpieces, where the outer panels  

were kept closed. On special occasions, such as  Holy days, the panels were opened, and the glorious  

religious scenes inside were revealed to the  congregation. We can only imagine Henry inviting  

the crowned heads of Europe and their court to  his Palace to see his collection of "objects of  

wonder", which included a meteorite a giant bed  and this curious painting. The outer panels of  

The Garden of Earthly Delights could not prepare  his guests for what lay within. Leading them over  

to this rather dull image of the third day of creation. Two of his men would open the gloomy panels.

People had never seen anything quite like this.  It was a true sensation - like an early form of cinema,  

that would occupy them for hours - like it  does us - Art historian Reindert Falkenberg  

believes that The Garden of Earthly Delights was designed as a kind of "conversation piece".  

As he points out - its characters are often  pointing or whispering secrets to each other.  

They are inside the painting, reflecting us  doing the same thing, in front of the painting.

It is a perfect reflection of the Renaissance  taste for highly original, intricate allegories,  

full of meaning - only understood  by a limited and elite audience.  

By opening the outer panels you are opening up  a world of metaphors and theological problems,  

starting with the garden itself. The central garden  goes against the basic principle of the time,  

that artists should portray Biblical  stories that actually happened in the Bible.  

In the central panel Bosch shows mankind giving  into temptation - a scene anyone familiar with  

the Bible knows is not depicted in Genesis. It was  only Adam and Eve in the garden. The earth wasn't  

populated until AFTER the expulsion - so this  is a creation of Bosch's imagination. Just by  

fictionalising or imagining a scene in the Bible,  Bosch has freed himself to let his dreams run wild.  

This is new and exciting, as we can see the figures  are unashamed of their nudity, which reflects how  

Adam and Eve were before the expulsion. A lush  garden would have strong sexual connotations  

to Bosch's contemporaries. They would have known  about western literature's most famous love garden  

at the time. Described in the 13th century French  poem "Romance of the Rose" in The Garden of Earthly

Delights, Bosch incorporated the same traditional  iconography depicted in "Romance of the Rose".  

Lush greenery, beautiful flowers, singing birds,  and a fountain in the centre around which the  

lovers gather to stroll or sing. Water too is  associated with love and lovemaking in Bosch's day. 

Even representations of "The Fountain of Life"  frequently received an erotic twist. The concept of  

the Garden of Eden was changing around this period.  It is important to remember that before the age of  

discovery, it was a widely held belief that the  Garden of Eden still existed somewhere on earth.  

But as the undiscovered world opened up, revealing  fantastical beasts and landscapes, the feeling was  

that there was less and less chance of paradise  existing here on earth. It shifted the way people  

saw the world and perceived paradise, and greatly  influenced Bosch's painting. By making his Garden  

of Earthy Delights a place of the "imagination"  Bosch was reflecting this shift in thinking.

Bosch's images are so ambiguous  and their meaning so elusive  

that they cannot be addressed by iconography alone.  

When the outer panels are closed, it shows a  monochrome painting of the creation of the world,  

on a flat landscape enclosed in a transparent  sphere with God the father looking down.

God appears as a tiny luminous figure  in the darkness, his hands are raised  

which is medieval code to tell us he is  speaking. He is reciting verse 9 of psalm 33  

"For he spoke and it was done - for  he commanded and it stood fast"  

If we look at a later verse from the same psalm  it explains the aerial perspective we see inside.

The panels represent the third day of creation,  when God is separating the land from the water,  

and the earthly paradise or Eden was created.  These exterior doors are designed to act as a  

prologue to the interior. The use of monochrome or  what is known as "Grisaille" for the outer panels of a  

Triptych, was quite conventional and is there to  set the stage for the explosion of colour within.  

There is some vegetation forming and strange  hybrid landscapes, which connect with what we'll  

see inside, but man has not yet been created  and so not had a chance to abuse God's earth:  

The theme of the inner panels. The Nuremberg chronicle published in 1493  

was an important source of inspiration  for Bosch and one we will come back to.  

The first of its more than 1,800 illustrations  shows God the father crowned and enthroned,  

holding an orb with his left hand and making  a sign of benediction with his right. He also  

quotes Psalm 33. The dome is peculiar to modern eyes.  In researching this video I used a translation of  

the Volgate Bible, the first official Bible of the  Catholic Church and the one Bosch would have used.  

The meaning can often vary from translation to  translation. On day two in Genesis, the Vulgate  

translated the Hebrew as "God created the sky under  a dome". This is sometimes translated as "Firmament"  

from the word firm or solid. There was theological  disagreement, but Bosch would have been well aware  

of this idea that the world was created in a solid  dome, and it was a standard artistic convention.  

Around this time, science made more discoveries  about the earth, and a solid dome became a big  

theological problem. By the time Galileo began  examining the sky a hundred years after 

The Garden of Earthly Delights, the concept of  a solid dome was no longer a common belief.  

This of course met with opposition from within  the Catholic Church AND accusations of heresy.

This panel is sometimes known  as "The joining of Adam and Eve"  

and shows a scene in the Garden of Eden when  God presents Eve to Adam. God's right hand is  

raised in blessing while he holds Eve's wrist  with his left. It is an uncommon scene in art.  

God is very Christ-like and has blonde hair and  blue eyes. It is likely that this image was used  

to illustrate the belief that Jesus is God  in human form - God Incarnate - We know from  

infrared scans and analysis that Bosch originally  intended God to be more traditionally portrayed,  

and he was looking down at Adam. The original plan  was a more classic image we have seen many times.  

That of god creating Eve from Adam's  rib. But Bosch changed it to the moment  

when God blesses their union, and urges them to  procreate. He is saying "Be fruitful and multiply".  

By changing this panel from one of the creation  of Eve, to one that is associated with marriage,  

it changes the entire reading of the Triptych:T hat  marriage and reproduction are inextricably linked.  

But the theological questions raised here, is the  role of sexual activity and lust in Eden.  

Adam, who has just woken up is smiling and wide-eyed  at the sight of Eve - his cheeks are flushed.  

Eve is looking down innocently, while at the same  time seductively presenting her body to Adam.  

God as christ is looking directly at us,  so we too are complicit in what is to come.  

Eve is on the left of God and he is holding  her with his left hand. Left is "Sinistra" in  

latin or sinister. Adam, however is to God's  right - the place of honour in religious art.  

Below Eve's feet are rabbits, who for obvious  reasons symbolise fertility. Besides Adam, a tomcat  

has captured its prey. As anachronistic as  it is to us, to the medieval viewer having  

a Christ as God in the garden of Eden was common,  and would be seen as an omen of the crucifixion,  

a direct result of original sin. The point is  emphasised further by the position of Adam's feet  

which echo Christ on the cross. Over Christ's  shoulder is the tree of life. It is a Dragon  

blood tree which when cut, releases a dark red pulp,  giving it its name. The flat leaves of the tree  

resemble the wafers of Eucharist, and the grapes reference the wine.  

Giving us a direct link to the body and blood  of Christ. The vaguely crucifix form of the  

tree, may be the medieval belief that Jesus was  crucified on a cross linked to the tree of life.  

Bosch would not have known the dragon blood  species found only in tropical climates. 

Once again the Nuremberg Chronicle is his  source. In this image of the Garden of Eden,  

we find all three trees in Bosch's painting:  The dragon blood tree, the tree of knowledge,  

and the date palm, symbolic of Resurrection, which  bosch paints with the serpent waiting to strike.  

Earthly paradise looks peaceful at first glance.  but it already holds the dark promise of sin.  

The pool below, is already starting to be populated  by strange creatures, the three-headed bird perhaps  

points to the trinity. A unicorn representing purity drinks from the pond on the left.

accompanied by a boar, a goat, a horse, a deer and a bull. These animals are going to reappear in the second panel.

The fountain of paradise is a direct link to God, by being on the same vertical axis

and being the same colour as his robes. It is a Christian symbol associated with baptism, and the  Eucharist.

It serves as a symbol of life, fertility, and reproduction.

Sitting inside it we find the owl,   which is a kind of signature for Bosch.

The Garden of Earthly delights has six owls. One owl barely visible

is looking down over the entire scene. The  sixth owl will appear later as the Prince of Hell.  

Contrary to its modern association with  wisdom or intelligence, for many people in  

the middle ages, the owl, as a nocturnal animal  looking for prey, represented the Devil himself, 

waiting for an opportunity to strike. In Bosch's  world, evil exists even in the Garden of Eden.  

Just to the right of the fountain is a  small swan, a symbol of purity and grace.  

But here I think, a nod to the Illustrious  Brotherhood of the Virgin Mary, who were also  

called "The Swan's Faternity" as they serve swan  at their banquets. Continuing the theme of hidden  

dangers in the Garden of Eden, there are a group  of repulsive reptilian amphibious creatures 

coming ashore. Many of Bosch's paintings feature  toads, which were considered both poisonous  

AND demonic in the middle ages. And in Hell they  will take on the role of the devil's henchmen.  

An unusual rock formation is in the form of a weeping face. This is Golgotha or "Skull Hill".

It is based on a widespread belief in the Middle Ages, that Adam's skull was buried in a cave

as seen here. Underneath the spot where Jesus would be crucified.

400 years after Bosch painted The Garden of Earthly Delights,  

it will inspire the Surrealist movement and  in particular Salvador Dali.

Hieronymus Bosch is often seen as a precursor to the Surrealists 

 who called Bosch "the first modern artist". 

Unlike the Surrealists we cannot view Bosch's  visions as images from his subconscious.  

As far as Bosch was concerned, HIS images were   realistic portrayal of sin and its consequences.  

So in that sense it wasn't "Surrealism" - it was "Realism".

This panel is a carnal interpretation and direct corruption of God's words: "Be fruitful and multiply".

In the Vulgate Bible, the Garden of Eden is referred to as "Paradisum Voluptatis"

It might not be the best translation of the Hebrew, but it is extraordinary.

To Bosch, Eden would have been known as "The Paradise of Pleasure"  

Explanations like these are not just for  "Art History". Bosch himself - as part of the  

religious orthodoxy - needed to be able  to explain the theology of his paintings.  

Everything in this "Paradise of Pleasure"  has some kind of sexual connotation.  

Hollowed-out fruit is referring to female  genitalia. Two cherries together, male genitalia.  

In the Middle Ages to "pluck fruit"  in Dutch was a euphemism for sex.  

And the dutch word "Vogelen" meaning "Bird" was  a double-entendre for sexual intercourse.  

All of these pleasures are transient  as none of earth's pleasures will last. 

This fountain is a version of the previous  one. It is surrounded by four towers covered  

in thorns and spikes, and four rivers  reflecting the Biblical location of Eden.  

But this fountain is broken and fragile - as  are the delights being enjoyed in the garden.  

Despite the many naked figures and suggestions  of lust in the image, there are no sexual acts  

explicitly portrayed, except for THIS scene.  Inside the dark hole in the central sphere  

of the fountain, a bearded man shamelessly touches  the crotch of a naked young woman as others watch.  

The owl has gone - and lust has found its way.

Follow your eyes up, and we see the crescent moon, a fairly explicit reference to the Ottoman empire and Islam, 

The enemies of Christianity in the Middle Ages.  

We have seen it many times in other works  by Bosch - and we will see it again in Hell.

But we have to go to the bottom right hand corner  to find the main message. It is of course debated  

but I think this is Adam and Eve who are now  fully aware of the existence of "good" and "evil",  

A concept that didn't exist before the fall of man  according to the Bible. Adam is looking directly  

at us, as if he's the only one to understand  what's going on. Pointing at Eve as if to say  

"SHE is to blame". Eve is holding the fruit she has  just picked, and she is gagged by what looks like  

a communion wafer. This is theologically  controversial and I think it refers to  

chapter two in "Timothy", one of the  most debated verses in the Bible.

Adam and Eve, now aware of shame - are the  only ones wearing clothes in the panel. 

Animal skins -which ties into the Biblical story.  

Over Adam's shoulder - it is hard to make out - but  the man behind him has vine leaves on his head.  

This is pre-flood and I think this is Noah, there  to remind us that Eve's sin will lead to the flood.  

Noah - as the originator of vineyard  cultivation, often is depicted with vine leaves.  

Eve is encased within a semi-cylindrical  transparent shield - we see these glass contraptions  

throughout the painting, and they are the only  man-made objects in this panel. These instruments  

were associated with alchemists, who were common  in the middle ages but were seen as heretics,  

meddling with forbidden knowledge. This woman's  body is entirely covered in glistening golden hair,  

except for her face, hands, and feet, and notably  her breasts. She and other figures like her in  

the painting are "wild men and women", uncivilised  savages, a popular subject in the age of discovery.  

In and around the strange  orange tent, you can only see men,  

some of whom are turning their buttocks towards  each other - a clear reference to homosexuality, 

that no one in the middle ages would have missed.  Sodomy like all non-reproductive sexual acts  

are seen as a sin. One of the men is holding a  fish. Like all of the fish in this panel it is  

out of its element and there to remind us that the  world order is in chaos. In this corner a group of  

men are having a conversation, while pointing  to Adam and Eve in the previous frame. It is as  

if they are saying: "THIS is where it all started".  Exactly what henry III's court might be saying.  

The empty muscle shell should be seen like all  of the empty metaphors Bosch employs:

The peeled fruit, The broken egg, The carcasses. "Emptiness" is lack of spirituality which leads to sin.  

Pearls are perfectly round and pure white, so often  represent "purity" and "virginity", and the fact that  

the pearls are falling out of the muscle shell,  tell us exactly what the couple are up to inside.  

it is this type of "scene within a scene" of visual  conundrums that make me believe the theory that it  

WAS designed as a "conversation piece". Although the  message overall is cautionary - the piece is highly entertaining. 

There is a particular focus on the  devouring of grotesquely huge and fleshy fruit.  

All the fruits featured are soft fruits, whose  taste and fragrance are fragile and transient.  

Blackberries have multiple seeds, and so stand  in for promiscuity. Fruit of course, has a sexual  

connotation - thanks to Eve. Although the Bible  doesn't specifically say which fruit Eve ate.  

And anyway it wasn't "lust" that Eve succumbed to  but "temptation". A common belief in the Middle Ages,  

was that AFTER Eve gave into temptation, and after  "The Fall" - Eve's next sin was "carnal lust".

It's not scriptures - just early misogyny.

It's a common misconception, but even today the viewer mixes up temptation and lust.

Here we see a transparent sphere - it contains a man and a woman umbilically attached to a large flower.

This could be a Boschian variation on the "May boats" depicted in late medieval books, with courting couples. 

Cracks are appearing in the glass - suggesting  that "Pleasure is as fragile as glass".

Keeping watch is another owl, who has taken a human lover.  

Bosch's work shows a lot of interracial lovemaking.  In Medieval Europe, "Moors" came to mean anyone who  

was Muslim or who had dark skin. Views of Africans  in Europe were often negative, and like the "wild men" 

in The Garden of Earthly Delights, they were  seen as uncivilized sexual beings.

The middle of this panel is dominated by the circuit of men on all kind of mounts, corralling a group of women.  

In this "dance", the unicorn and other animals  we saw drinking peacefully in the first panel  

have been corrupted, and now serve as mounts  in the circular procession of lust.

Many of the scenes in The Garden of Earthly Delights can be  traced back to the court games of the aristocracy.  

The "circuit" references Medieval fertility  rituals. Morris dances with several men  

dancing around a single woman, or around the "May tree".  This parade is something the court of Henry III  

would have understood. The 14th century  book "Lumen Anime" by Matthias Faronata,  

was hugely influential in the Netherlands.  Bosch had a preoccupation with the deadly  

sins, and in this widely read book, Faronata  portrayed the deadly sins as riding animals.  

Pride wrote a Dromedary, Lust a Bear, Wrath a camel,  Sloth a Leopard and Gluttony a wild cat.  

The object of their lust, Bosch's bathing women, were  probable nods to the 16th century Dutch expression  

"Swim in the bath of Venus", which meant being in love. The women as classical representations of Venus,

have a negative "pagan" connotation. Even here  the Venus are involved in a deep conversation.

The previous scenes are set in nature, but Hell  is a man-made world. There is nothing here that  

they have not brought on themselves, and even the  musical instruments they created have turned on them.  

The demons are clothed, but the humans  - or "souls" - are still naked, but they have lost  

any element of eroticism, and many of them are  covering their bodies ashamed of their nakedness.  

What is so extraordinary, is that  the strange creatures in this panel, 

are painted with the same conviction and realism  as the humans - as though they actually existed.  

In the bottom right, we find this curious  scene, which for me is the beginning of the panel.

A pig, dressed as a nun, is trying  to persuade a soul to sign a document.  

A helmeted demon offers a quill, and he  has the ink at the ready for him to sign.  

The red seals, show us this is a serious legal  document. For many historians, this is seen as a  

critique of the church by Bosch - specifically  the sale of "indulgences". I don't think it is.  

The wealthy could buy an "indulgence" from the  church to have their sins forgiven, and secure  

a place in Heaven. It led to widespread corruption,  and only one year after Hieronymus Bosch's death,  

Martin Luther published his attack on - amongst  other things - the sale of indulgences, leading  

to the Reformation. In the late 13th century,  work started on a gothic Cathedral in Den Bosch,  

and there is strong evidence that the church raised most of the funds required, by selling these indulgences.

The Illustrious Brotherhood of our Blessed Lady, played a key role in the indulgence  

industry, so Bosch, as a member of the inner elite  was hardly likely to be critical of it. 

I think this man is being tricked into signing a pact  with the Devil, by the demon disguised as a nun.  

A major preoccupation in the Middle Ages was the  selling of one's soul in exchange for diabolical favours.

It looks like the man is on to them - as  he is casting anxious looks at us the viewer,  

as if pleading for help. The toad on the notary's  lapel a sign of the Devil's henchmen we saw in the  

left panel, will appear again and again in Hell. The helmeted demon offering the pen to sign has a foot,  

hanging off his helmet, which could refer to an  affliction caused by fungus in bread called "Ergot".  

Victims suffered from burning sensations and  hallucinations of being attacked by monsters.  

Limbs, would rot and fall off. In Bosch's time they  thought this condition was caused by possession  

by demons. In the 1950s, a component  from Ergot was synthesised to produce  

the psychedelic drug we know today as LSD. This would inevitably lead to supposition  

that Bosch painted The Garden of Earthly Delights while he was tripping.  

As we've seen, the sin of lust was thought  to give rise to other deadly vices.  

And once again, Bosch looks to the seven deadly sins.  The deadly sins, again, are not scripture, but were  

described by Pope Gregory in the 6th century.  By the time of Bosch they were a popular theme  

in morality plays and hugely influential in art.  Lust and envy are everywhere throughout the panel.  

Elsewhere we find - a greedy miser is forced to  excrete gold coins into a cesspool.

The glutton is forced to vomit up his food. The slothful  man is visited in his bed by a demonic toad,  

and the vain woman is doomed to stare for eternity  at her own reflection, which we can make out in a  

demon's backside. She is being grabbed from behind  by another demon while a toad sits on her chest.  

She closes her eyes to avoid her reflection and the horror around her. I think her resemblance to Eve is undeniable.  

In the previous panel, birds fed humans, here they eat them. The owl, again makes his  

appearance. This time as the Prince of Hell, with  a cauldron for a crown, and jugs for shoes. 

It is sitting on a giant potty chair. Human bodies are  being consumed and excreted simultaneously, to go  

straight into the sewer where others are already  drowning in filth. In Bosch's day, the river running  

through the heart of Den Bosch was an open  sewer. Its stench was everywhere in the city.  

We can get an insight into Bosch's working  practice if we look at the infrared scan of this area.

We can see that originally Bosch sketched  an enormous toad here, hanging over the Prince of Hell.

Another - perhaps better - world is suggested  in the reflection in the Prince of Hell's crown.  

Behind the Prince of Hell, the crescent moon on  the head of a religious woman makes a reappearance.

The severed hand holding a dice is another  repeated image. It references the word of  

God we saw in the first panel - only now it has  been corrupted and is balancing a dice,  

as man plays with God's word. The overturned table is a likely reference to Christ and the moneylenders.  

One gambler is nailed to the table - by the right  hand he rolled the dice he lost his fortune on.  

On the corner of the table, a tally of souls is being  kept. This man is blindfolded and represents moral  

or spiritual blindness. There is a difference  between being blindfolded and being blind,  

as it suggests that the figure had the capability  of seeing the light but refused.

The Medieval figure "Synagogue" was a common symbolic  representation of spiritually blind Jews.  

Gambling leads to lust and more sin and the naked woman  with her eyes lowered is holding a candlestick and beer pitcher,

identifying her as a prostitute. In the Netherlands, prostitutes use candles to entice passers-by.

A medieval precursor to the red light district.  The dice on her head is the dice of a cheat  

as the opposite sides cannot add up to seven.  The man covering his eyes is bent over.  

A pose that connects the scene - in this case their  hunchbacks reference "omo incurvatis" in Se"  

a theological phrase describing a life lived inward  for oneself - rather than outward for God and others.  

Besides them, a hare carries his bleeding  victim on a pole as he sounds his horn.  

He has a pair of hounds, who have caught another  victim - maybe they were poachers? Hare coursing  

was illegal for the lower classes. "The hunted  becomes hunter" expresses the chaos of Hell. 

Where the normal relationships of  the world are turned upside down.  

Non-religious music was considered sinful, associating it with other sins of the flesh and spirit.  

Musical instruments often carried  erotic connotations in works of art of the period. 

A cacophonous choir is forced to sing  by a demonic choir master whose tongue is  

like a scale of notes. The music is written on a  victim's buttocks who is crushed by a giant lute.  

Some characters cover their ears as best they can,  to try to avoid the horrendous noise.

Others are  crushed, locked or impaled by the instruments. A man has been tied to the neck of a giant lute   

and is about to be set on by a snake-like monster.  A crucifixion is an unusual scene for Hell  

but here we have a figure crucified on the  strings of an enormous harp. To emphasise the  

crucifixion, a roasted toad is offered up to him in  a parody of the sponge of wine offering to Christ,  

when he was crucified. A demon beats a drum  while inside a man is trapped crying out in fear.  

Another man has a recorder jammed up his bottom,  while he is bearing the weight of a giant flute,  

echoing Christ carrying the cross. It is as if Hell is mocking Christianity.  

On top of the "Hurdy-Gurdy" is a blind beggar. One  more turn of the handle, and the lady playing the  

triangle will lose her head. The Hurdy-Gurdy was  associated with beggars, who were often blind -   

here, a stand-in for spiritual blindness. He is holding  a begging bowl in his other hand. Bosch gives us  

the minute detail we associate with the Northern  Renaissance artists, and we see a metal badge on  

a ribbon hanging off the bowl - which is a license  to beg - granted by nobles like Henry III. Beside him  

another man balancing an egg, is hunched up holding  a walking cane - another "Homo Incurvertus in Se".  

The trumpeter wears the Ottoman flag and  heralds Satan, who fell from heaven as a star.  

The most famous creation in Hell is the "Tree-man",  a perfect Boschian mix of realism, metaphor  

and fantasy. We have seen this figure  before in an earlier drawing by Bosch,  

except in the original we have a  Turkish flag flying out of his backside.  

The face is almost certainly a self-portrait  of Bosch. His look is strangely self-conscious,  

and stylistically out of keeping with  the other depictions of human faces. 

He could be there as a warning against vanity,  His torso is a broken egg, which doubles as a  

tavern in his backside. His head is topped with  bagpipes - another instrument for the infernal orchestra.

Bagpipes were a symbol of lust as they  resemble a scrotum and penis. Strange couples of  

mixed-species circle the bagpipe. A reference  to the circuit of lust on the previous panel.  

Taverns are places where men and women are lured  into sin, one man is sitting on an evil toad.  

Above them the Turkish flag from the drawing, is  now a bagpipe flag. Reminding us that the partaking  

of alcohol leads to sin. The tree-man is balanced  on two small boats with legs of decaying branches. 

The boats or "Skiffs" suggest he is ferrying  souls across the river. It is made clearer in his  

original drawing. This puts the painting more along  the lines of a "Last Judgment". Bosch's own painting  

of that subject follows a similar structure  to The Garden of Earthly Delights. The world  

burns in the background as souls are being sent  across the river to be judged in the foreground.  

And both paintings use similar iconography. On one  of his legs, a slipped bandage reveals a leper sore.  

i don't think anything in this painting is  without meaning and that we are seeing anti-Jewish  

sentiment here. A possible interpretation of this  is that he represents the Antichrist, as Bosch  

has previously painted this sore on the leg of a  figure in THIS painting. Identified as the Jewish antichrist.

It was a common belief - but not in the  scriptures - that the Antichrist would be covered  

in leper sores, and that he will be of Jewish  origin. Below him Hell is literally frozen over.  

A man balancing on a giant ice skate will soon  collide with another in the icy water. A demon - bow  

and arrows at the ready - but strangely with no arms  to fire them, is giving chase to the human figures.  

The horse skull is like all skulls in paintings.  It is a "Memento Mori", to remind us that one day  

we will die. The message is clear - "life  is short, but eternity would last forever".  

Below the skull a demon gleefully rings the bell,  whose clappers have been replaced by a naked man.

Out of the skull's eye a devil is reeling in a  key. The key has always puzzled me, as we are so  

used to seeing keys as representing the keys  to Heaven - a Medieval interpretation was that  

God gave Satan the keys to the bottomless pit,  and this is where that comes from. Theologically  

it is ambiguous, but aesthetically it makes  sense, as immediately above it new souls are  

ushered into Hell. The key is there to remind  us that the gates of Hell have been opened.

The lamp here is extremely prominent. I think this  section is reserved for the soldiers that arrested  

Christ holding lanterns and carrying weapons.  They are being burned alive in the lantern as  

punishment. The leader, whose flag bears the Devil's  toad holds a chalice. While next to it we see a  

wafer, a clear reference to the body and blood of  Christ. He is being eaten alive on a large disc,  

which in turn resembles the one in the first  panel. The soldiers are being skewered by demons.  

The character in white with a stereotypical big  nose is behind them climbing a ladder, and could  

be Judas about to hang himself. The ominous looking  ears are a war machine, crushing people in its wake.  

Like the blind metaphors throughout Hell, the knife  cutting through the ears would reference deafness  

to the word of God. But the similarity to the male  sexual organ is also unmistakable. The knife holds  

a symbol that looks like a letter "M" or "B" which  has confused historians for centuries. The truth  

is pretty mundane: Den Bosch was known throughout  Europe for its manufacture of knives, and in the  

1990s archaeologists found a knife dated to the  15th century which has the same shape and mark  

used here by Bosch. Even ordinary household  implements are turning on us. Cities in Europe  

were tinderboxes and fires were common. This is  the climax of the painting - a realistic portrayal  

of a city on fire - that may well have been based  on Bosch's childhood memories. The hostile army  

is seizing the city, led by a horned demon. We see  people trying to escape the fire using ladders  

or jumping into the dirty waters of the canal to  certain death. Crowds of people are being pushed  

down to the riverbank to be transported across the  icy river to be judged and punished. This is a Hell  

that the Medieval mind would have understood  on so many levels. Death was all around them.

Finally a tiny detail. At the apex of the volcano  we can just make out two figures fighting.  

One, a demon in black and one, a human in  white - this is the fight that Bosch's  

contemporaries would have seen as a lifelong  battle. The fight between good and evil.

Bosch's inclusion in Henry III's collection would  have boosted his reputation, and his infamy  

spread throughout Europe. We know the painting was  popular as so many copies of it were commissioned.  

Some in Bosch's lifetime and some even by his own workshop. Paintings were an expensive investment so  

it must have been extremely well known to have  been copied so much. There were also tapestries  

made of it after Bosch's death. Henry III died  in 1538 and the painting was inherited by his  

nephew William, who was a Protestant reformer and  therefore an enemy of the state. His property was  

confiscated by the Catholic Duke of Alba, who  brought The Garden of Earthly Delights to Spain.  

It was soon sold to King Philip II, a keen  collector of Bosch - known as El Bosco in Spain.  

Philip owned many of Bosch's paintings and it is  the reason why spain has such a large collection.  

Philip was a staunch Catholic, defender  of the faith, and a leading figure of the  

Catholic Counter-Reformation. He also used a  ruthless Spanish inquisition in order to keep  

his subjects in line - and root out heretical  thought. It is difficult as modern viewers  

to look at this painting and not see it as  surrealism or a product of the subconscious,  

not see it as a sexual utopia, a critique  of Religion or even a psychedelic romp.  

It is why so many bizarre theories have emerged. But whatever its true meaning is - and will never know,  

just by virtue of being in the Royal collection  of the deeply conservative Philip II, it is  

clear that The Garden of Earthly Delights was a  reflection of the religious thinking of the day.  

Philip kept it in the Escorial, the monastery  that doubled as his royal residence,  

where it was known as "El modrono", or the  strawberry. It stayed at Escorial for  

over 300 years, until it was moved to the Prado  museum in 1939, along with other works by Bosch.

This film is only one approach to the painting.  It is difficult to ascribe meaning to all the specific elements.

However, I decided to take the approach that viewers in Henry III's court might have:

To treat it as an intellectual puzzle with a moralistic streak,. A painting that is there to create a conversation.

If you have theories or ideas I'd love to hear about them in the comments.