The Triumph of Sin
 

Triptych of Garden of Earthly Delights (central panel - detail)
c. 1500
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Triptych of Garden of Earthly Delights.
Horses and Riders (central panel - detail)
c. 1500
Museo del Prado, Madrid

In the circular pool in the centre of the painting women are swimming, standing or disporting themselves. There are no men. Around the pool men riding horses and other fabulous animals, such as the gryphon-like creature seen in the centre here, form a continuous parade. This is the beginning of lust, the start of the Fall, and Bosch is noting the nature of sexual attraction. In this detail the men are all alert and self-conscious. At the top a woman is peering out of the pool with the temptress Eve's symbol of the apple, the Forbidden Fruit, perched on her head. Elsewhere other women arc preparing to leave the pool to come to the men rather than the men to them. It was the medieval belief that women were the eager receptive vessels of lust and the original cause of men's fall from grace. It is Bosch's most positive statement of the pleasure and pains of sexual attraction.

Triptych of Garden of Earthly Delights (central panel - detail)
c. 1500
Museo del Prado, Madrid

At first sight, the central panel confronts us with an idyll unique in Bosch's work: an extensive park-like landscape teeming with nude men and women who nibble at giant fruits, consort with birds and animals, frolic in the water and, above all, indulge in a variety of amorous sports overtly and without shame. A circle of male riders revolves like a great carousel around a pool of maidens in the centre and several figures soar about in the sky on delicate wings. This triptych is better preserved than most of Bosch's large altarpieces, and the carefree mood of the central panel is heightened by the clear and even lighting, the absence of shadows, and the bright, high-keyed colours. The pale bodies of the inhabitants, accented by an occasional black-skinned figure, gleam like rare flowers against the grass and foliage. Behind the gaily coloured fountains and pavilions of the background lake, a soft line of hills melts into the distance. The diminutive figures and the large, fanciful vegetable forms seem as harmless as the medieval ornament which undoubtedly inspired them, and when we stand before this picture, it is difficult not to agree with Fraenger's insistence that the nude lovers »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«. Indeed, we might be in the presence of the childhood of the world, the Golden Age described by Hesiod, when men and beasts dwelt in peace together and the earth yielded her fruit abundantly and without effort. Or to put it in more contemporary terms, Bosch's garden appears to be a sort of universal love-in.
Nevertheless, it must be denied that this crowd of naked lovers was intended as an apotheosis of innocent sexuality. The sexual act, which the twentieth century has learned to accept as a normal part of the human condition, was most often seen by the Middle Ages as proof of man's fall from the state of angels, at best a necessary evil, at worst a deadly sin. That Bosch and his patrons shared fully in this view we know, of course, from the contexts in which lovers appear in his other works, and is further confirmed by the fact that his garden, like the haywain, is situated between Eden and Hell, the origin of sin and its punishment. Hence, just as the »Haywain« depicts worldly gain or Avarice, so the »Garden of Earthly Delights« depicts the sensual life, more specifically the deadly sin of Lust.
Various aspects of this sin are acted out in a forthright fashion, by the couple enclosed in a bubble at the lower left, for example, or the pair near by concealed in a mussel shell; other figures seem to display perverted acts of love, such as the man plunged head first into the water and shielding his privy parts with his hands or, at lower right, the youth who thrusts some flowers into the rectum of his companion. Along with these fairly obvious representations, however, the carnal life is also alluded to in metaphorical or symbolic terms. The strawberries which figure so prominently in the landscape, for instance, probably symbolize the unsubstantial quality of fleshly pleasure; this was the conclusion of Siguenza who speaks of the »vanity and glory and transient taste of strawberries or the strawberry plant [whose] fragrance one can hardly smell when it passes«. The strawberry is thus analogous to the hay in the »Haywain«.
The »Garden of Earthly Delights« triptych has been carefully studied by Dirk Bax*, whose extensive knowledge of older Dutch literature has led him to identify many of the forms in the central panel - fruit, animals, the exotic mineral structures in the background - as erotic symbols inspired by the popular songs, sayings and slang expressions of Bosch's time. For example, many of the fruits nibbled and held by the lovers in the garden serve as metaphors of the sexual organs; the fish which appear twice in the foreground occur as phallic symbols in Old Netherlandish proverbs. The group of youths and maidens picking fruit in the right middleground also possesses erotic connotations: »to pluck fruit« (or flowers) was a euphemism for the sexual act. Most interesting, perhaps, are the large, hollow fruits and fruit peelings into which some of the figures have crept. Bax sees them as a play on the medieval Dutch word »schel« or »schil«, which signified both the »rind« of a fruit and »quarrel« or »controversy«. Thus, to be in a »schel« was to engage in a struggle with an opponent, and this included the more pleasant strife of love. Moreover, the empty rind itself signified worthlessness. Bosch could have chosen no more appropriate a symbol for sin, for it was, after all, a fruit that brought about the fall of Adam.
In the first place, it is significant that Bosch conceived his image of carnal delight as a great park or garden-like landscape. The garden had functioned for centuries as a setting for lovers and love-making. The most famous medieval love garden was the one described in the »Romance of the Rose«, a long allegorical poem of the thirteenth century; translated into many languages including Dutch, it also inspired numerous imitations in later literature and art. These love gardens invariably contain beautiful flowers, sweetly singing birds and a fountain in the centre around which the lovers gather to stroll or sing, as can be seen in many tapestries and engravings of Bosch's day. That Bosch was familiar with this tradition cannot be doubted. An abbreviated love garden appears in an engraving by his associate Alart du Hameel, and Bosch himself employed similar elements in one of his earlier images of Lust, on the Prado »Tabletop«. In the »Garden of Earthly Delights«, of course, he incorporated much more of its traditional iconography, including the fountain and pavilions which dominate the lake in the background. These curiously wrought, glittering forms are, in fact, hardly more fantastic than the fountains and buildings, constructed of gold, coral, crystal and other precious materials, which are described in many literary »Gardens of Love«.
Although the »Garden of Earthly Delights« thus owes much to the conventional love gardens, the inhabitants of the latter generally behave much more discreetly; very seldom do they frisk about naked or make love in the water. Nevertheless, the association of love and love-making with water was firmly established by Bosch's day. In scenes of the »labours of the months«, May, the time of love, was illustrated by lovers embracing in a tub of water. Even representations of the Fountain (or Pool) of Youth frequently received an erotic twist. While Bosch does not, strictly speaking, show a Fountain of Youth, as no one is being rejuvenated, this or similar prints may have inspired the outdoor water sports of the »Garden of Earthly Delights«.
To the Garden of Love and the Bath of Venus can be added a third major theme in the »Garden of Earthly Delights«. The background lake is given over to mixed bathing, but in the middle section the sexes are carefully segregated. The circular pool is occupied only by women, while the men ride around it on the backs of animals of different species. The antics of the acrobatic riders, one somersaulting on the back of his mount, suggest that they are excited by the presence of the women, one of whom is already climbing out of the water. By this means, of course, Bosch shows the sexual attraction between men and women, and it is not without significance that the pool and cavalcade occupy the centre of the garden, as the source and initial stage of the activity elsewhere. To the medieval moralists, who were not very chivalrous about such matters, it was woman who took the initiative in leading man into sin and lechery, following the precedent set by Eve. The power of woman was often represented by placing her within a circle of male admirers. But on Bosch's painting men are riding instead of dancing. Animals traditionally symbolized the lower or animal appetites of mankind and personifications of the Sins were often depicted on the backs of various beasts: the act of riding, finally, was commonly employed as a metaphor for the sexual act.
For his image of sensual pleasure, Bosch thus fused together several erotic themes of the Middle Ages within the framework of the Garden of Love, just as Brant employed the ship to unify his diatribes on human folly. Bosch was not the only artist, however, to use the traditional love garden to symbolize Lust. In a manuscript of St Augustine's »City of God«, the saint's condemnation of the lascivious customs of ancient Rome was often illustrated with pictures of nudes dancing in a garden.
In the final analysis, the meaning of the »Garden of Earthly Delights« is not inconsistent with Bosch's other moralizing subjects. Like the »Ship of Fools«, the »Death of the Miser« and the »Haywain«, it, too, provides a mirror wherein we may see reflected the folly of man. Nevertheless, we may still find it difficult to accept the fact that these carefree lovers are guilty of the deadly sin of Lust. Like Fraenger, we may object that Bosch can hardly have intended to condemn what he painted with such visually enchanting forms and colours. Medieval man, however, was more suspicious of material beauty. He was taught that sin presents itself under the most alluring aspects, and that behind physical loveliness and agreeable sensations often lurked death and damnation. The visible world, in short, was not unlike those little ivory carvings popular in Bosch's day which display a pair of embracing lovers or a voluptuous female nude, but when turned around reveal a rotting corpse. What Bosch shows us, in other words, is a false paradise whose transient beauty leads men to ruin and damnation, a motif common in medieval literature. We encounter it, for example, in the legend of theVenusberg, the underground kindgdom of love where Tannhauser was detained at the peril of his soul. In the second part added by Jean de Meun to the »Romance of the Rose«, the garden of the rose is explicitly and unfavourably compared with the true garden of Heaven. The garden of Heaven is everlasting, but in the garden of the lovers, the »dances will reach their end and dancers fail«; everything will crumble and decay, for Death lies in wait for all. A similar thought was frequently expressed in sixteenth-century representations of pleasant gardens where lovers enjoy themselves, unaware that Death stalks them from behind.
To return to Bosch's version of this venerable theme, Bax has plausibly suggested that the hairy couple visible in the mouth of the cave in the lower right-hand corner of the garden represent Adam and Eveaftertheir expulsion from Eden, when, according to apocryphal accounts, they took refuge in a cave and dressed in animal skins. The head of the man behind Adam is that of Noah, who re-founded the human race after the Flood. Indeed, the full implications of the »Garden of Earthly Delights« are understood only when we turn to the Garden of Eden and the other scenes of the triptych.