The hell scene of this triptych is as unusual in presentation as the Eden scene is traditional, demonstrating all of the master’s skills of painting and designing unusual torments. A flaming sky lights up the windows of a furnace in which can be seen figures engaged in demonic activity. Arms and legs protrude from a lake colored by the glow and heat of the sky. In the foreground are the sinners just received into Hell. Stripped bare, they are submitting passively to their individual punishments. Unusual in this scene is the construction work underway in the middle of the setting as if it were necessary to construct more torture chambers for the expected influx of sinners already crowding in from the fracas at the hay-wagon. This altarpiece contains some symbolism of an obscure nature, but there is not the overwhelming amount to be found in the Earthly Delights and the large Saint Anthony. Even Fränger is in agreement with the other writers that this triptych depicts the stigma of the Original Sin under which man is born and by which his course is set through life to its dénouement in Hell. The cryptic symbolism does not obscure the main theme, fairly direct in presentation, so there is naturally more unanimity of opinion concerning the message of this altarpiece.
Such is not the case with The Garden of Earthly Delights. The Eden panel of this painting is not a setting for several traditional events concerning Adam and Eve. They are seen only once, Adam sitting and Eve kneeling on either side of the Lord. The group is placed on a lawn between two pools, from which crawl hybrid animals engaged in bizarre activities. A fountain in the center or the middle pool and a rock structure in the upper background appear to have become organic and grown to their odd conformations. There is an entire apple grove behind the Creator and Created, but no tree seems to be distinguished as the Tree of Life – this must be the palm-like tree to the side of Adam. Its leaves are shaped like coins, their weight causing the tendrils to sway in awkward heaviness. The forbidden fruit must be the enlarged berries which droop from the vine curling about the trunk.
The central scene seems to be set in the same kind of landscape, but its plants have rigidified like minerals and its mineral structures grown like plants.
30. The Crowning with Thorns, oil on panel, 73.7 × 58.7, National Gallery, London
31. The Crowning with Thorns, c. 1510–1515, oil on panel, 163 × 191 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Valencia
This land is overwhelmed with human and animal beings, fairly normal in their appearances although abnormal in their relative sizes. The humans are well-proportioned nudes that diminish in size according to the laws of perspective, but the animals, although appearing to be normal when seen separately, are not always related to the humans in size-sometimes entirely dwarfing them. Nor are their colors or activities proper to their biological requirements. The activities of the humans, as they eat upon outsized fruits, or engage in erotic play, have caused writers from the time of Father Joseph de Seguença to believe this to be a testament to the deadly sin of lust, or “luxuria.” In the words of a modern historian: “Yet, in the belief of the Middle Ages, all sins and vices are interwoven and one derives from the other. Therefore, it is not only ‘luxuria’ which is depicted here but all the sins brought forth by this vice and all the vices which cause ‘luxuria.’ This is quite evident in the right wing which, in a horrifying inferno, presents the punishment of all kinds of sins.” (Philip, 12)
The hell scene of this altarpiece is Bosch’s diabolic masterpiece. Throughout its far reaches sinners are being tortured in a night-lit landscape that is so marvelously painted as to be a work of genius. This scene is dominated by a wondrous egg-tree monster that floats upon the inky water on two boat feet from which tree-trunk legs are sprouting. The body of this creature is a cracked – open egg-shell that serves as a tavern interior its occupants must have reached by a ladder from the water below. Attached to the top of the egg is a hat on which a procession of nudes paired with demons parades around a large pink bagpipe, symbolic of lust. Around and below the egg-man are areas of Hell where sinners of various professions (knights, monks, musicians, gamblers, etc.) undergo excruciatingly appropriate tortures in a visualization unequaled in art history for its inventiveness. Comparing these two triptychs, Fränger saw at least five arguments which would oppose the association of the two in the Hay-Wain’s obvious theme of creation: sinful-life: hell. “First of all, there is the basic difference in breaks and coherences,” said the historian. In the Hay-Wain, a break in continuity occurs between the Garden of Eden panel and the middle panel, and there is decided coherence between the center scene and Hell. This can be seen in the fact that the hybrid creatures pulling the wagon into Hell from the middle panel are obviously minions of Satan; their parade continues with no break into Hell. In the Earthly Delights, no such separation exists between the Garden of Eden panel and the central one, but a continuity of landscape from one into the other. This difference in continuities in the two works indicated to Fränger that Bosch intended a different idea in the two, and it should not be assumed that just because the scene following the Garden in the Hay-Wain represents wickedness, the corresponding scene of the Delights automatically does the same.
As his second argument, Fränger pointed out that the nude creatures disporting themselves in the central panel of Earthly Delights are not doing so in what has appeared to all others besides him to be wanton display, but, they “are peacefully frolicking about the tranquil garden in vegetative innocence, at one with animals and plants, and the sexuality that inspires them appears to be pure joy, pure bliss”. Thirdly, Fränger argued that although the hell scene is divided into areas of torture for sinners among the knights, the religious orders, the musicians, and the gamblers, “not a single adept of carnal love” is being tortured.
If Bosch were holding up the sin of lust to reproach, asked Fränger, would he not in a logical sequence conclude with its punishment in Hell? In the case of the Hay-Wain, the greedy are not only to be found in their state of eternal damnation in Hell – but also, the demons of Hell swarm into the world of the central panel to assist in drawing the wagon all the faster in its fateful course. Here again, the writer refuted one of the parallelisms that had been too closely drawn. The author cited the situation in the Paradise panels for his fourth argument: the Eden of the Earthly Delights contains no sign of conflict as in that of the other triptych. Not only is there evidence of the primal conflict in the Hay-Wain’s rout of the wicked angels from Heaven (transformed as they are by Bosch’s inventiveness into those marvelous insect forms but also, testimony to Original Sin in the fact that Adam and Eve are being expelled by threat of the “fiery sword”. In the Earthly Delights, on the other hand, this scholar observed that Adam, Eve, and the Lord (in the form of the Son – a medieval transposition) are beheld in a moment of cosmic unity.
Fränger suggested later that the three are forming “a closed circuit, a complex of magical energy” by the physical contact between them. Adam’s feet touch the Creator’s, who in turn holds the hand of Eve. That is “himself (Christ) the image of God, he is the transmitter of this image to the two beings he has created, standing between them as their coeval”. This fact indicated to Fränger a positive and good estate, with no presentiment of the ultimate “fall.”
Continuing his line of defense, the historian suggested that since the children of Adam and Eve were born after the expulsion, it followed that the original pair were the only people in “Paradise.” Thus, the humans abounding there must represent their progeny, had Adam and Eve not fallen from grace.
Since the dogma of Original Sin and the Expulsion cannot be ignored if there were children, however, here is “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”.
Such a promise, Fränger believed, inhered in the symbolism contained on the outside of the triptych, seen when the volets are closed. This was his final argument, and to him, the most compelling. Almost covering the surface of both wings is the crystal sphere, containing a flat disk which cuts through its center (This idea of the aspect of the universe Bosch had taken