Bosch and the Renaissance in Northern Europe

Garden of Earthly Delights, painted by Hieronymus Bosch around 1505, is a brilliant prelude to the Protestant Reformation.  This alla prima painting focuses mainly on the moral issues of the Catholic, as well as the corruption within the Church that lead to the ultimate divide. Using strategic symbolism, the audience is able to develop an understanding of the image that Bosch is really trying to paint. The left panel focuses on creation, while the right panel shows the torturous hell. The central panel, which is twice the size of the two outer panels, explains the bulk of the moral issues that gives rise to the corruption in the Church.

In the central panel, the rotting fruit explains the short-lived pleasures in life, which are “earthly delights” that cannot be taken to neither heaven nor hell. The exposure of several lovers to the world, without their knowledge, hints to the idea that private, lustful actions are still exposed in the end. Even though the left panel of creation appears to resemble the biblical perception, hell is filled with several symbolic images of sin. The seven deadly sins of the earth are punishable in hell: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.

The most significant image in the painting relates directly to the exposure of the Church’s corruption. In the bottom right corner of the right panel, there is a mother superior pig embracing a dying man. This signifies Bosch’s criticsm of the Church for extracting wills that benefited the monasteries.

Even though Bosch was a Catholic, he grew up in a small area of Holland where religious, political, economic, and social ideas were constantly clashing. Ideas concerning witchcraft, astrology and visions of the supernatural were openly accepted. The painting really stands out among the rest because of its unusual fragile and delicate style of the images. I find it extremely interesting because of the true meaning lying behind every image. It seems as though it is a puzzle exposing the Church, without actually being direct. Had Bosch been so bold as to paint a literal portrait of the corruption, he probably would have been deemed a heretic and executed. Ahead of his time, Bosch really opened the doors to the rest of the Reformation artists who also focused heavily on the corruptions of the Church.

2 comments September 23, 2009