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Biographical Information:
Bosch was born and spent his entire life in the Flemish provincial town of s'Hertogenbosch. This little town was as remote geographically from centers of art activity such as Antwerp and Haarlem as was his work stylistically isolated from those of his contemporaries. His weird and fantastic creatures, strange iconography, and archaic style have been explained as resulting from his adherence to one of the many heretic Protestant sects then flourishing in the Netherlands. These sects were basically fundamentalist and as such very much concerned with the Last Judgment, eternal damnation, and the all-pervading demons of evil. Their opposition to the Roman Church also made them oppose the standard Christian iconographical and dogmatic imagery. Hence Bosch created 'standard ' Christian painting and, while doing so, abandoned the contemporary style for such painting.
Bosch's paintings belonged to the "Late Gothic" style which was known as the northern counterpart of the Early Renaissance. His paintings appeal to our interest in the world of dreams. As no other painter before him in the North, Bosch succeeded in integrating figures and landscapes - not in a static, easily comprehensible fashion but in a dynamically moving, ever-changing series of relationships. The "Garden of Earthly Delights" illustrates this achievement.
The triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights", circa 1500, consists of three panels, of which only the left one has a clearly recognizable subject: the Garden of Eden, wherein God introduces Adam to the newly created Eve. The right panel, a nightmarish scene of burning ruins and fantastic instruments of torture, represents Hell. The center panel shows countless nude men and women, some openly engaged in love-making. There is no doubt that the delights in the "garden" are those of carnal desire. Bosch was a stern moralist who intended his pictures to be visual sermons, every detail packed with didactic meaning. Unconsciously, however, he must have been taken by the sensuous appeal of the world of flesh then the images he created tend to celebrate what they are meant to condemn.
Bosch remains an enigma. His fantastic world teems with life of every sort and abounds with movement and color. The strange mind that created all this continues to attract the eye and interest of the observer. He ranks among the great masters of painting.
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