Case Study: Hieronymus Bosch

The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1500-05, Oil on wood, Hieronymus Bosch

• Tantric painting - A Western version of art that represents the intersection of divine energy with earthly life
• Christian understanding and imagery

Analysis

General Symbolism

• Pink (warm, living, inner quality) - heavenly and inner influences
• Blue (cold, exterior, colour of corpses) - earthly and outer influences
• Elements combining the two colours represent an intersection of influences
• Birds represent heavenly influence, by both their actions and positions

Left Panel

• Divided into three realms: heaven, descent of the divine, earth

Spiral of birds moving through the mountain indicates that God penetrates everything. Mountain to the left represents heaven itself due to the large population of birds.

Blue mountains represent created material reality.
1) The far left mountain is populated with golden heavenly birds that have the coloration of the transcendent mountain of God to the left.
2) The middle one has less birds, representing the realm of angels. The nascent sprout at its crest suggests the preparation to birth the earthly realm. It also contains the seeds of temptation, hanging as pods with spikes on them.
3) Mountain on far right represents the realm of Earth. It lacks birds, indicating a waning divine presence. It is also divided into two, representing the duality of the earthly world. The crescent moon hanging from the branch indicates the passage from the angelic realm to an earthly one. The new moon represents the arrival of light.

Wild boars and porcupines are generally considered as negative symbols. This boar appears to oppose a malevolent weasel, indicating its positive nature. The boar surrounded by young represents motherhood and femininity.
The porcupine represents the capacity for defence, foreshadowing the defensive spines in the central panel.

The central fountain represents the flow of divine energy from the higher levels of heaven downwards towards the lower levels of earth. It is a chakra image - the top flower represents the throat chakra, elongated section represents the main body of the spine, the large round disc at the bottom represents the root chakra. The bedrock composed of gemstones, representing value and wisdom, is where the divine birds alight. Deep blue verses pink indicates the conjunction where pearly lies have made their appearance in the earthly matrix. Owl represents real wisdom and modesty.

Flooding by the water of consciousness - Water acts as a container for them, representing ideas. It shows the corrupted earthly thoughts flowing into the mind of man as he assumes his earthly incarnations. The lessons of the divine inevitably deteriorate as they interact with the material.
1) Divine white cranes in the far left with one spoonbill (black beak), which is a sinister symbol/ foreshadow.
2) Ducks represent a lower level of influence than birds, partly divine, partly earthly.
3) On the right, vermin spawn from the water, creeping towards a dark cavity which represents man's mind. One vermin is encapsulated in white, representing an evil thought that is disguised in a cloak of purity, the pearls represent lies. The rock is unusually shaped to look like a person's face, adopting the surrealist style. 

God, dressed in pink, supervises Adam and Eve in the earthly realm. He holds onto Eve, as if already aware of what is going to happen.

Far left: Cat making off with a vermin it killed. Birds try to keep the vermin at bay. The three-headed bird represents the holy Trinity. The pond is an indicator for the conscious and subconscious mind of man. It depicts the mixing of influences, corrupting the divine and raising of lower creatures into realms they do not belong in.
1) Corrupted spoonbill in the pond - represents forces of evil.
2) Duckbilled creature reading a book represents the corrupted influence of the intellect.

Middle Panel

• Divided into three sections: heaven and birth into the earthly sphere, the Tantric circle, earth

Angelic realm - The lake represents birth, life, death, and the influences that affect man. The river exits from the blue mountain in the background (birth) and enters the pink mountain in the background (death). The left pink mountain flows the river of divine influences while the right blue mountain flows the river of material and profane influences.
1) Left: Mountain where the struggle between good and evil takes place. The generative nature of divine influences are represented by the phallic and fallopian elements. Curled branches and thorny spines represent defensive elements, to be on guard against the profane.
2) Right: Flaccid appearance of the spherical base is penetrated by corrupted spiny elements, indicating a diseased and fallen state. The pink heavenly elements are pierced by sharp crystalline growths with lime green parrots perched on them. The parrots indicate the highest possible achievement for the material world. Ominous corrupted spoonbills appear on the spines. Apes appear at the bottom, representing the lowest possible state man can sink into. 

Struggle between good and evil with temptation playing a major role.
1) Left: angelic forces of good, with divine forces emphasised by the living tree branch and the bird.
2) Right: A blue armoured serpent dangles a cherry of temptation, riding a winged fish who first appeared in the pool of corruption in the left panel. 

Left: pink spray of leaves is surmounted by a pearl. The white crane at the apex above the cherry symbolises the triumph of divinity over temptation. This mountain represents the descent of divine energy from heaven and the departure of souls from heaven for birth into the material world. Human beings emerge from the base and almost immediately begin to encounter the distractions of the material life.
Right: This mountain represents a return of souls to heaven. The blue elements bound to the pink structure suggest a rightful subordination of the lower to the higher. 

Central fountain/ fountain of man: represents the movement of divine energy into the material world. It represents the man and how he is affected by both earthly and divine influences. The upper parts are dominated by birds but the pink of divinity has been altered to a dull glowing red. The base reveals human beings engaged in lustful activity.

A bird holds a cherry over a group of figures coming out of the pink blossom, representing the divine nature of temptation and that it is put in front of man as a choice. The two figures below sheltered from this influence by a white shroud of protection.

The wheel of life represents the metaphysical realm of the inner spiritual life of man. The central pool represents human consciousness. It is populated by virgins and watched over with divine cranes. 

Temptations exists, with cherries representing temptations of the soul. The presence of Africans illustrates the duality of human nature and material existence. The African lady is crowned with a peacock to emphasise her higher status. 

1) Right: Earthly temptations of the blue fruit tempts even the man on the white horse (purity).
2) Left: A man is forced to his knees under the weight of the golden shell of spiritual temptations, while the hanged man of the Tarot dangles from a tree, the pink fruits of divine influences are beyond reach.
3) Middle: A man leads an ominous perversion of the divine, with a helpless rabbit.

1) Left: The goat represents the full transformation of the unicorn into a satanic animal. White spoonbills perched on its back and under it is a weasel.
2) Right: The divine porcupine is isolated in a diseased bubble, suggesting its powerlessness. The red cherry symbolises the temptations of the soul. All the holy animals in the processional (griffin, stag, boar) are equally subordinate to these evils. 

1) Left: The divine has been turned into a pink hog with blue testicles, symbolising the ultimate degeneration of divine being to the lowest possible level, a mockery. Sacred cranes are also not immune, with their feathers stained black.
2) Right: The camel carries the blue shell of materialism and its burden of earthly concerns back to the divine.

The blue fish representing lower influences and materiality is upside down and dead, unable to swallow its pink and holier prey. It is carried by three riders representing the holy Trinity, surmounted by the holy figure of the rabbit.

1) Left: The rider on a white boar sports a white crane with outspread hands, representing the triumphant, transcendent moment of human union with the divine. The is the lack of symbolic evidence of lower influences.

The nakedness and the absence of man-made artefacts emphasises Bosch's preoccupation with the predominance of the sensory world as a distraction from the divine influence. This absence also suggests that this world is a conceptual representation of Earth and its activities. 

Flock of birds representing the powerful divine influences are completely sidelines by the chaos that confronts them. Their huge sizes imply that they are not real agents of divinity, but the product of man's concepts of Gods. Large objects mean that its the product of the imagination.
Bottom left corner shows a man embracing an owl, representing those who believe that intelligence alone is enough, secularism, a failure to believe in God.

The couple is protected by divine influences (pink egg and white crane). They represent the sacred union of man and woman under God. They attempt to remove the blue fruit of temptation from a crowd of hungry gluttons. 

1) Background: A tree-stump temple with barren leaves and branches offers temptations to an all-too-willing crowd that does not understand the degenerate nature of their worship. The oversized bird represents a specific religion.
2) Foreground: The temple is decorated with intricate gems of finer thought. The entrance is adorned with pearls, representing lies. 

The owl of wisdom presides over an extraordinary human geometry. Temptations both spiritual and material abound in the form of cherries and blue flowers. The sharp spines may denote spiritual suffering taking place inside the subject, not on public display. The figure resembles both Buddhist and Hindu multi-limbed deities. It also resembles da Vinci's Vitruvian man.

The protection of those under divine influence (pink spheres) are easily subverted. One figure is dominated by error that he carries the weight of both spiritual and earthly temptation on his back, another drinks from a blue gourd of earthly concerns. Lady in the bottom right is holding onto a cherry, contemplating her submission to spiritual temptations while her companion's pink sphere is already riddled with blue lines of the material world. 

Right Panel

• Divided into three sections: hell, purgatory, earth

The perversion of God's authority by man's authority. The hand of God (first appeared in the left panel) is severed and stabbed with a knife and pinned to a blue shield of materialism and earthly influences. Dice at the fingertips suggests man's play with God's words. Pregnant Virgin Mary is now a lizard with a corrupted area of temptation on her belly, her blue arms suggesting negative influences. Eve appears as a drunkard and gambler. The heart of Christ, one of the holiest symbol of Christianity, is skewered on a sword by a toad. Man in the foreground is attacked by an imp dressed in black studded with pearls of lies. The rabbit carries a harvest of human flesh hanging from his pike. 

Armoured creature is pretending to be from God's Army of Angels. He has a blue tail and is pierced by an arrow, representing violence done to the living word and spirit of God. Man is embraced by a porcine num, offering him a kiss of false religious assurance. The toad symbol on the robe of the man behind represents a quality that ought to be divine but has instead been usurped by the earthly and the material. 

Mockery of divine justice. The lute is stamped with the toad symbol. One man is pinned onto the instruments of justice, another is flayed alive by its string, and one is crushed beneath it. The pink creature pretends to be God, lashing out musical letter of the law (white string of pearls) onto the bottom of the crushed man. The red man playing the giant flute is also stamped with the toad mark. 

The Queen of earthly evil is seated on a golden throne and gluttonously swallows her subjects and defecates them into a cesspool beneath her. She sports a long pink trail, a false indication of divine qualities. She has the head of a bird, symbol of perverted divinity. She wears green jugs as shoes, indicating that the best she can attain is the lowest part of herself - vanity. Eve is stained with the badge of toad. This image is a commentary on the vanity of royalty and their usurpation of authority, simultaneously commenting on how our ego rules our inner universe, consuming all that is good in us. 

The spoonbill carrying a bow studded with pearly lies is a symbol of evil. The figures enter a race to divine judgment, skating between the forces of good and evil.

Head of a bird, body of an angel, wings of a moth (death) and limbs of a demon. It represents all aspects of heaven, mortality, heavenly judgment and hell. 

A place where old friends meet and feast, a prelude and a purgatorial version of the last meal of the condemned. The massive face of witness probably represents a self-portrait. Our inner attitude determines how we are judged. 

Wheel of judgment, where the dead march around in a circle to the tune of divine bagpipes. The nun cloaked in bogus white investment of purity reveals her earthliness from the blue that peeks out from beneath. 

Depiction of hell, where the vermin are depicted as human beings instead of reptiles (left panel). Hell represents the destruction of everything we know. 

The ears represent the penetration and division of the material world by the profane. The knife divides. The arrow represents the wooden branch of a tree, now dead and turned into a weapon. The ears can no longer hear the word of God. Them being cut off strips them of their living qualities.

Symbolism

The Use of Colours

• Pink - divinity, generative power, a higher order
• Blue - earth, material manifestation of the universe, a lower field, malevolent forces
• Ocher - mind, intelligence, awareness, consciousness (earth tone is used to represent the mind because the painting is about the word of God, manifesting in consciousness, which is the ground of being)
• Lime green - good, the best one can achieve under a set of circumstances
• White - purity, holiness, lies, evil cloaks itself in a disguise of good
• Red - lust, passion, temptation, sexuality
• Grey - objectivity

The Use of Objects

• Mountains - realms
• Moon - waxing/ new moon - movement towards positive influence, waning/ old moon - movement towards lower influences
• Water - mind, influences, area of transformation, essential core of divinity
• Thorns and spikes - defensive qualities, protection
• Pearls - lies
• Fruits - temptation, lust
• Birds - heavenly influences, OR deterioration, lies
• Fish - lower level of influence, creatures that have fallen under the influence
• Vines and trees - divinity, messengers of God, divine protection, dominance of influence
• Butterfly - death, resurrection, rebirth
• Oversized objects - imaginary, fictional, fantasy
• Arrows - communication, information

Resources:

Van Laer, L. (2013). The Garden of Earthly Delights. Retrieved October 5, 2015, from http://www.esotericbosch.com/Garden.htm