"Garden of Earthly Delights", ca. 1490, by Hieronymus Bosch, detail of center panel from triptych (Prado Museum)
Painting on the cusp of the medieval and Renaissance worlds, Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516) continues to fascinate us with the fantastic imagery and densely symbolic messages of his compositions. Though little is known about his background, this Netherlandish painter seems both to express the spiritual dilemmas of his generation and to exist in a timeless world of his own.
His most famous painting, Garden of Earthly Delights, has been interpreted in myriads of ways, none of them conclusive or mutually exclusive. So have many of his other works, which offer countless imaginative perspectives on human foibles and temptations, and, more rarely, hint at the possibility of salvation.
The 500th anniversary of his death was marked this year with two major international exhibitions, one in his hometown of Hertogenbosch, another at the Prado. Yet even after new examinations and research, many of his masterpieces remain as perplexing as they probably appeared to their original viewers.
Art historian Aneta Georgevskia-Shine discusses ways of approaching this unique artist whose collected works reveal worlds that his contemporaries thought unimaginable.
World Art History Certificate elective: Earn 1/2 credit
Other Connections
Interested in a guided tour of Eden? Get a fascinating, close-up look at Bosch’s most famous painting in a high-res, interactive version of The Garden of Earthly Delights co-created by NTR, the Dutch public broadcasting service. It offers what a recent New Yorker blog post describes as a “magnificently intimate view of its intricate, freaky glory.”
