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The Garden of Earthly Delights is Bosch’s most complex and enigmatic creation. For Falkenburg the overall theme of The Garden of Earthly Delights is the fate of humanity, as in The Haywain (P02052), although Bosch visualizes this concept very differently and in a much more explicit manner in the centre panel of that triptych than in The Garden of Earthly Delights. In order to analyse the work’s me
In the centre of a rectangular surface Bosch incised a circle in which he depicted this scene of Extracting the stone of madness. The resulting image is a mirror that offers a reflection of folly and human madness, located in a rural world remote from that of the nobility and urban life, hence the setting in the countryside in an open landscape. As found in miniature painting of the time, the arti
Two banderoles, one above and the other below the central circle, contain Latin texts from Deuteronomy (32: 28-29 and 20), warning against the wages of sin. The upper banderole, between the tondos of Death and the Last Judgment, reads: Gens absq[ue] [con]silio e[st] et sine prudentia // deutro[m]y 32 [um//] utina[m] sapere[n]t [et] i[n]telligere[n]t ac novissi[m]a p[ro]videre[n]t (For they are a n
The theme of this triptych is the advent of salvation -a message about the universality of Redemption. The Eucharistic meaning inherent in the theme of Saint Gregory’s Mass is also found in The Adoration of the Magi in the wheat stored in the upper part of the hut, above the figure of the Antichrist. Unusually, Bosch includes in his depiction of the Mass of Saint Gregory in semi-grisaille seven Pa
Bosch thus shows how man, irrespective of his social class or place of origin, is so possessed by the desire to enjoy and acquire material possessions that he allows himself to be deceived or seduced by the Devil. Thus the artist proposes that we should renounce earthly goods and the delights of the senses in order to avoid eternal damnation. The painting offers an exemplum of a different type to
Saint Anthony, whom the artist has been able to place in the immediate foreground of this panel by using a landscape format, closely resembles the saint depicted in the Saint Anthony triptych in Lisbon; he is wearing the same habit, the distinctive cape bearing the Tau cross and the customary rosary with a little bell. This large-scale figure, occupying most of the available space on the left of t
