Garden Of Earthly Delights, The

Hiëronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Garden of Earthly Delights, painting by Hiëronymus Bosch completed c. 1490–1500, which is representative of Bosch at his mature best. It depicts the earthly paradise with the creation of woman, the first temptation, and the Fall.

Bosch’s work is full of fantastical beasts, surreal landscapes, and the depiction of the evils of humankind. He was born into a family of artists in the Dutch town of ’s-Hertogenbosch, from where he takes his name, and spent most of his life there. In 1481 he married a lady 25 years his senior; it was a propitious move on the artist’s behalf for, by the time of his death, he was among the richest and most respected of ’s-Hertogenbosch’s residents. A sign of the artist’s elevated social position was his membership in The Brotherhood of Our Lady, a conservative religious group that was also responsible for his early commissioned work.

The extraordinary The Garden of Earthly Delights is a large triptych that depicts Bosch’s account of the world, with the Garden of Eden on the left, hell on the right, and the human world of fickle love moving toward depravity in the centre. The perspective and landscape of the left and central panel match, suggestive of a progression toward sin from one to the other, while the right-hand panel of hell is structured separately and abounds with depictions of humankind’s most despicable acts.

Bosch’s vision was highly fantastical with a strong moral message that made his work very popular during his time. His style was widely imitated, and his influence on Pieter Bruegel the Elder was particularly apparent. The imaginative quality of his work was to have a significant effect on the development of Surrealism in the 20th century.