Hieronymus Bosch: Late Work 1904597440, 9781904597445

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HIERONYMUS BOSCH: LATE WORK

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HIERONYMUS BOSCH: LATE WORK

CHARLES D. CUTTLER

The Pindar Press London 2012

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Published by The Pindar Press 40 Narcissus Road London NW6 1TH

Copyright © 2012 The Pindar Press All rights reserved

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 904597 44 5

Printed by De Montford Publishing Ltd. (trading as De Montford Print) 30 Slater Street, Leicester LE3 5AS

This book is printed on acid-free paper

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Contents Preface

i

Introduction

1

I

Dante, Petrarch, Triumphs, and Bosch’s Haywain

19

II

The Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony

58

III

The Garden of Earthly Delights

102

IV

Animals, Birds and Demons

169

V

Saint John on Patmos

208

VI

The Tabletop of The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things and The Tree Man

234

Influences

259

VII

Epilogue

275

List of Illustrations

283

Bibliography

291

Index

303

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Publisher’s Note Charles Cuttler died in 2008 at the age of 94, leaving the manuscript of this study in draft form. Gail Zlatnik undertook final editing of the book and saw to the many necessary details involved in that process. The following individuals assisted in various important ways: Kim Carpenter, Eric Dean, Howard Horan, Betsey Kosier, Annette Niebuhr, Jacque Roethier, John Beldon Scott, Katherine Tachau, Rijn Templeton, and Abigail Yoder.

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Preface

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HIS book is the product of years of growth in my understanding of the art of Hieronymus Bosch. Immense numbers of publications on Bosch have appeared, ranging from the incredibly erudite to the ridiculous. The major part of what we know about Bosch (c. 1450–1516) we deduce from the art, literature, history, and social environment of Flanders and the Netherlands of his time and from his membership in the Confraternity of the Virgin in ’s-Hertogenbosch. But what he thought, what he said, and what his contemporaries said about him and his paintings have not been recorded. In this he was no different from most artists of the fifteenth century, all members of the artisan class, although Bosch married, by June 1481, an older member of the bourgeoisie, an unusual act. The paucity of useful documents, partially relieved by recent delving into the city’s archives, even its landfill, has produced different interpretations of his art: philosophical, sociological, metaphysical, physical, psychological, psychoanalytical, stylistic, iconographic, contextual, and more. A combination of iconology, contextualism, medieval hermeneutics, style, and scientific data, infrared reflectography, and dendrochronology, dominates my methodology. I see an ever-growing late-fifteenth-century artist living in the turbulent times of Gothic revivalism when his developing ideas of apocalyptic eschatology are more important than the humanistic ideas being introduced from Italy. My first scholarly involvement with Hieronymus Bosch came with my doctoral dissertation on the Devil’s temptations of Saint Anthony Abbot, founder of monasticism. Bosch’s concept of the theme seemed to accord with a basically medieval outlook, but his manner of expression contrasted with that of his contemporaries; for I found that Bosch’s work was unique. I continued beyond my initial immersion in the roiled waters of Bosch scholarship, intrigued by his mastery and methods, and by the problems of

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sources and meaning presented by his unique vision, to publish scholarly articles and reviews about his art. My long study has led to the basic purpose of this book: a deciphering of Bosch’s broadened emphasis on salvation for humanity. Three exceptional triptychs created in close succession late in his life demonstrate his mounting concern with the soul’s salvation. Forming the core of this book, they set themselves apart from other paintings by the active presence of Christ. They are the Haywain (two close examples in Spain), the Temptation of Saint Anthony in Lisbon (the best copy in Brussels), and, most enigmatic of all, the Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado, Madrid (no satisfactory copy). In the Haywain by means of a triumphal procession, Bosch castigates humanity’s delusion of acquiring worldly goods, symbolised by hay. Such selfish enrichment leads to Hell, thus ignoring possible salvation through Christ (of the Last Judgment), who is pessimistically reduced to a small figure in the distant sky. In the Saint Anthony triptych he advocates by emulation a way to Christ — both physically and symbolically present — an imitatio Christi, despite innumerable demonic deterrents that include, inter alia, temptations by the Deadly Sins, witchcraft and more. In the culmination of his art, the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych, a Paradise wing on the left follows a popular text, the Speculum salvationis, its use by Bosch discovered by me in 1972, then broadcast in lectures on three continents. The central panel presents a grand overview of a landscape with a fascinating multitude of active nude sinners of both sexes; they form a pessimistic allegory of the manifold commissions of sin that lead through Hell’s gateway to inevitable punishment in the dark infernal depths on the right wing. Yet the Garden triptych shows by unusual means that salvation is possible — through the implied presence of the Virgin Mary, patron of the Confraternity of the Virgin of ’s-Hertogenbosch, of which Bosch was a prominent member. Influenced by contemporary thought and imagery, Bosch refers to the concepts of the world grown old, the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday, and belief in the nearness of the ultimate cataclysm which will terminate humanity’s propensity to sin. Medieval hermeneutics influence his portrayals and truth to nature becomes exegesis in Bosch’s last and greatest work, painted between 1510 and 1516, the year he died, probably during an epidemic. Paradoxically, what can be ugly he transformed into beauty to illustrate spiritual values. Visual and literary evidence emphasise his main themes of salvation and apocalyptic warning.

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PREFACE

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The following pages occasionally bear the stamp of assistance, acknowledged where possible, from former students and friendly scholars in augmenting and refining my ideas. It is likely that some who have assisted me in the past are not named; to them I apologise for failure of memory. I am indebted in Belgium particularly to the late Frédéric Lyna, to Micheline Comblen-Sonkes, Dirk De Vos, Jacqueline Folie, Roger H. Marijnissen, and Roger van Schoutei; at home to John Cordell, Burton L. Dunbar, Walter S. Gibson, John Hand, the late Father Maurice B. McNamee, S.J., to the late Myra Orth, to Helena Ponseti, Tilde Sankovitch, Martha Steele, and Anne van Buren; above all to John Beldon Scott and Katherine Tachau. For technological help I am indebted to Don Madsen and, especially, to Gail Parson Zlatnik for editorial assistance. Others who have assisted me in one or another way are acknowledged in the notes. I am grateful to the University of Iowa for sabbatical leaves that permitted me to carry forward research in Europe, to the Belgian-American Educational Foundation and the Fulbright Foundation for their concurrent support, to the J. Paul Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, their staffs, and those of the libraries, American and European, who helped me. Last but not least is the incomparable supporter of my well-being, my wife, Betty Iverson Monroe. Whether acknowledged or not, I am solely responsible for what follows.

Charles D. Cuttler

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Introduction

A

CCORDING to the late popular astronomer Carl Sagan, contemporary opinion polls show that the majority of Americans believe extra-terrestrials have landed from UFOs; that ‘the demonic includes the crews of little green men who take unwilling passengers for a midnight ride and some wild sex, astrological influences, extrasensory perception, prayers, spoonbending, repressed memories, spiritualism, and channelling . . . as well as demons sensu strictu, devils, fairies, witches, spirits, Satan and his devotees’.1 Hollywood films and the sensationalising pulps on sale at supermarket checkout counters cater to such beliefs. A whole segment of society supports their publication. Clearly the world did not end on January 1, 2000, but elements of the religious right still believe it close at hand, and apocalyptic messages have appeared on the Internet. The fearful await the Antichrist as Satanism and witchcraft flourish. Bosch’s world was not so different. Apocalyptic eschatology was widespread, belief in witchcraft grew stronger every day. Our concerns with AIDS and other diseases, war, wayward comets, and the like are merely the contemporary counterparts of Bosch’s comets, plague, floods, earthquakes, war, and famines.2

1 So says the reviewer of Carl Sagan’s last book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, p. 28). Corroboration is found in the The New Yorker, Dec. 23–30, 2002, p. 88: ‘Now, after a long decline, Spiritualism has made a comeback. Every major network has put mediums on prime time, and cable is filled with tales of the paranormal. Last year a Gallup poll found that half of all Americans believe in E.S.P., more than forty percent believe in demonic possession and haunted houses, and about a third believe in astrology, clairvoyance, and ghosts’. 2 Contemporary reflections of these ideas were suggested earlier by Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium, Fairlawn, N.J., 1957. Also, C. W. Bynum and P. Freedman, eds.,

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As the creator of unique pictorial imagery, Hieronymus Bosch is avidly studied today by artists, art historians, designers, novelists, poets, collectors, and others. His Ship of Fools in the Louvre in Paris inspired Katherine Anne Porter’s novel of the same name and a children’s book, while his Garden of Earthly Delights triptych in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, with its myriad of aimlessly active slender nude males and females, has been the model for a jig-saw puzzle, and a recent quasi-philosophical-religious novel. His art fascinates today as it did in his own times. The enigmatic Garden triptych engages scholars whose differing interpretations range from description to deconstruction. Bosch’s soaring inventive genius incorporates so many aspects of his culture and times that it has produced an immense quantity and variety of literature: concepts of folklore, astrology, psychology, alchemy, socioeconomic influences, surrealism and more have been applied, rightly or wrongly, to Bosch and his art. His puzzling imagery has resulted in his being seen as a fantasist and a fabulist of occult, inexplicable forms, while a number of writers in our times have considered Bosch the first surrealist, and the most intriguing of all. Here, a basic theme, salvation of humanity’s soul, I treat in three unique important triptychs by this artist of ever-growing profundity: the Haywain, the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony, and the Garden of Earthly Delights. All three were created late in his life, close to his last years. They show his developed ideas of apocalyptic eschatology becoming increasingly divergent from the humanistic ideas introduced from Italy. Bosch’s visionary portrayals in a stylised naturalism come at a time of widespread pestilence and turbulence, of economic, social, and religious unrest in the prosperous Netherlandish society of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It was a fearful age; it believed in the rapidly approaching end of a declining world, in apocalyptic visions of Antichrist — for many he was already close at hand as the Roman pope — in witchcraft, alchemy, phrenology, divination, in prophetic folklore, magic, and astrology. Though increasingly this was an age of rational investigation and humanistic approach (as Erasmus, the Netherlands’ great humanist, a schoolboy in his teens in ’s-Hertogenbosch from 1515 to 1517, demonstrates), and despite increasing prosperity in the Lowlands, extreme Last Things, Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000, pp. 1–10. Related is M. Lilla, ‘The Lure of Syracuse’, The New York Review of Books, 48, 14 (2001), p. 82.

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pessimism was widespread. A natural outcome of belief in demons was fostered by the Church itself: Saint Thomas Aquinas said that all that happens visually can be done by demons.3 With the world in control by the Devil, what chance had the average mortal to achieve salvation? The great scholastics having set the stage, fear led to demonomania and the witchcraft delusion concretely expressed in a papal bull, Summis desiderantes . . . by Pope Innocent VIII, issued December 9, 1484: It has indeed lately come to our ears, not without afflicting us with bitter sorrow, that in some parts of Northern Germany, as well as in the provinces, . . . many persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation, and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells, conjurations and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offenses, have slain infants yet in the mother’s womb, have blasted the produce of earth . . . afflict and torment men and women . . . with terrible and piteous pains and sore diseases . . . hinder men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving . . . over and above this they blasphemously renounce that Faith which is theirs by the Sacrament of Baptism, and at the instigation of the Enemy of Mankind they do not shrink from committing the foulest abominations and filthiest excesses.4 Belief in Antichrist’s coming was widespread: Sebastian Brant’s immensely popular Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools) of 1494 devotes a whole chapter to him: . . . In th’ large ship Antichrist does sit, He’s sent a message out to man, False things he spreads where’er he can, Creeds, dogmas false in every way Now seem to grow from day to day . . . The time comes, that it comes is clear, The Antichrist is very near . . .5 Summa theologica, question 114, article 4. Malleus maleficarum, Trans. with an Introd. by . . . Montague Summers, [London], 1928, p. xliii (emphasis added). 5 The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant, Trans. into Rhyming Couplets with Introd. and Commentary, by Edwin Zeydel, New York, 1944 [Records of Civilization, Sources and 3 4

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The earlier popular medieval chiliastic tract of the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday was revived and printed to form popular reading in the late fifteenth century.6 Bubonic plague, scourge of late medieval and early modern Europe, is one sign: in 1348 it killed about a third of Europe’s population, recurring during Bosch’s lifetime and beyond. It reappeared in 1448–50 in France, Spain and Germany. Forty thousand are estimated to have died in Paris in 1466. In 1485 it struck Brussels and in the first decade of the next century came again in Holland, Germany, Italy and Spain, probably endemic in numerous localities before it disappeared in Europe several centuries later. People were also terrified that the world could end at any moment, particularly by the century’s close. The new printed astrological prognostications, horoscopes, calendars, and almanacs were avidly read. Johann Stoeffler’s almanac published at Ulm in 1499 predicted the world would end February 19, 1524, in a second deluge caused by sixteen conjunctions in Pisces.7 Belief in astrology was common then (and is still with us as today’s newspaper columns and the wife of a recent American president demonstrate). Eminent universities, such as Padua, had professors of the subject on their faculties, while leading physicians of the day were versed in stellar doctrines. Although the Italian humanist scholar Pico della Studies, 36], p. 334; Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff, Faksimile der Erstausgabe von 1494, mit einem Anhang enthaltend die Holzschnitte der folgenden Originalausgabe und solche locherschen Übersetzung, und einem Nachwort von Franz Schulz, Strasbourg, 1913 (Jahresgaben der Gesellschaft für elsässche Literatur, 1), pp. 280–81. Der endkrist sytzt im grossen schiff Und hat syn bottschaft vss gesandt Falscheit verkundt er/ durch all landt Falsch glouben/ vnd vil falscher ler Wachsen von tag zu tag ye mer . . . Die zyt kumt / es kumt die zyt Ich voercht der endkrist sy nit wyt. A typical prediction of the coming of Antichrist is that composed by John of Lübeck at Padua in 1474 and printed by Bartolomeus de Val de Zocolo. Antichrist is born at the mean conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, March 10 at 6:04, 57 minutes, 1504, the true conjunction occuring on June 9 at 11:58 p.m., the product of the impregnation of a deaf Jewish virgin and a demon (Lynn Thorndike, ‘Three Astrological Predictions’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 26, 1963, pp. 345ff.). 6 W. Heist, The Fifteen Signs before Doomsday, East Lansing, 1952. 7 Ludovicus Hain, Repertorium bibliographicum . . . , Stuttgart, Paris, 1826–1858, no. 15085; see Aby Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften, Die Erneurung der heidnischen Antike, Leipzig, 1932, 2, p. 509.

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Mirandola in his Disputationes adversus astrologium (epitomised and popularised by the Florentine reformer Savonarola about 1497) castigated astrological belief, it was widespread and had been for millennia. Rulers depended on divinations by their court astrologers, who themselves relied on the astrological treatises so numerous among incunabula, the earliest printed books. Even the author or authors of the notorious Malleus maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer, a handbook for witchhunting), German inquisitors Henricus Kramer and (?) Jacobus Sprenger, both cited in the 1484 bull of Innocent VIII (Kramer later lived in Bosch’s home town, ’s-Hertogenbosch), shared the common belief in the power of the stars.8 Christian resolution was achieved by asserting free will and God’s grace. Astrology was thus important in popular belief then and later (Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet are ‘star-crossed lovers’ while the constant choral refrain of the second act of Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo centres around the ‘stelle ingiuriose’). Bosch too believed in astrology, as in his Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony triptych;9 ardent belief seems a natural accompaniment to the pessimistic outlook of the age. Pessimism, dominant in late medieval thought, is usually expressed in Bosch’s art as human folly, conceived as basically evil. A supreme example is

The earliest edition of the bull was published at Speyer ca. 1485 by Peter Drach (HainCopinger 9238), the earliest dated edition at Nuremberg by Anton Koberger in 1494 (Hain-Copinger 9245), and by Johann Koelhoff at Cologne (Hain-Copinger 8244). Belief in astrology appears in numerous places in the exceedingly repetitious text. A sample: ‘In the first place, nobody denies that certain harms, and damages which actually and visibly affect men, animals, the fruits of earth, and which often come about by the influence of the stars, may yet often be brought about by demons, when God permits them to act’ (Sommers, Malleus maleficarum, p. 16). and ‘man is governed as to his body by the celestial bodies, as to his intellect by the angels, and as to his will by God . . .’ (ibid., p. 35). ‘The stars are a cause of human acts . . .; there are two reasons why devils molest men at certain phases of the Moon [devils operate through natural powers]. Therefore they study the aptitude of bodies for receiving an impression; and because Aristotle says, the brain is the most humid of all parts of the body, therefore it chiefly is subject to the operation of the Moon, which itself has the power to incite humours. Moreover, the animal forces are perfected in the brain, and therefore the devils disturb a man’s fancy according to certain phases of the Moon, when the brain is ripe for such influence’ (ibid. p. 40). It is suggested that Sprenger is no longer considered one of the Witches’ Hammer authors; G. Rooijakkers, et al., Duivelsbeelden. Een culturhistorische speurtocht door de Lage Landen, Baarn, 1994, p. 140, gives references to earlier literature. 9 Charles D. Cuttler, ‘The Lisbon Temptation of St. Anthony by Jerome Bosch’, Art Bulletin, 39, 2, 1957, 112ff; hereafter ‘Cuttler, 1957’; revised and updated in chapter 2. 8

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mordantly illustrated in the Death of the Miser (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). Unmistakable is the folly of the avaricious man on his deathbed, who reaches for the worldly goods proffered by a demonic ape at his bedside. Yet at the same time he is foolishly ambivalent about accepting the good offices of an angel, who points out the salvation attainable through the instrument of Christ’s sacrifice. Human folly is evident in other works by Bosch, for example, the Ship of Fools (Paris, Louvre),10 and, above all, the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych in Madrid, its theme a supreme demonstration of the concept of human folly carried to a Boschian conclusion on its right wing where sinners meet their fate in Hell. Yet Bosch repeats his belief that salvation of a foolish, evil world is nevertheless attainable through Christ’s sacrifice; this principle underlies the three triptychs in which Bosch’s Christ is, to my thinking, a unique reinforcing physical presence. Equally original, theologically these dramatic creations take place outside normal Christological narrative. Bosch was born about 1450 or 1453, in the prosperous Brabantine Netherlandish town of ’s-Hertogenbosch (in French, Bois-le-Duc), where a funeral mass for his soul took place on August 9, 1516. Three years after Bosch’s birth, or alternatively, the year in which he was born, the Ottoman Turks, having conquered the Balkans, took Constantinople, decisively ending the fiction of continuity of an eastern Christian Roman Empire. Europe’s sense of security would be challenged for several more centuries by the infidel, apocalyptic Turks, whose crescent symbol appears in several of Bosch’s works. By August 1456, Johann Gutenberg had printed his forty-two line Bible at Mainz, Germany, beginning the great revolution of printing with movable type, and decisively propelling Europe into a modern world: Gutenberg’s invention revolutionises the transmission of knowledge, its concepts of reality, and its repetition of facts. At the same time Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), working in the Netherlands and Germany for reform of the monastic institutions of the Church, stressed the virtues of poverty, chastity and obedience (he held that all human knowledge is conjecture, yet as a scientist anticipated Copernicus’ theory of the earth’s rotation). His efforts toward reform parallel those of the Devotio moderna, the Modern Devotion, the popular Dutch A. M. Morganstern, ‘The Rest of Bosch’s “Ship of Fools”’, Art Bulletin, 66, 1984, 295–302. 10

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religious movement of the Brethren of Common Life, which maintained one of the many monasteries and convents documented in and around ’s-Hertogenbosch in Bosch’s time.11 Columbus’s discovery of a new world established the basis for Spain’s subsequent wealth, responsible for abundant Flemish art sales for the next two centuries, while soon after 1492 the Portuguese found the southern route to India’s riches (but there is little acknowledgment of this in Bosch’s art). Symbol of a new spirit, Christian humanist Desiderius Erasmus popularised classical thought by publishing in 1500 his first collection of Adages, proverbs drawn from ancient authors with added comments, and in 1511 his Moriae Encomium (The Praise of Folly), became an immensely popular satirical criticism of his contemporary society. Erasmus hoped for a golden age, with knowledge as virtue, with a renewed life of morality and Christian piety that rejects medieval pessimism, yet he seems to have drawn a negative response from Bosch — to whom folly is sin. In 1517, the year after Bosch died, Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the castle church of Wittenberg, his response to a widespread desire for religious revival and reform. It set in motion the Reformation; it was also an answer to Italian Renaissance humanism penetrating northern Europe, accentuating what the great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga called ‘the waning of the Middle Ages’ (most recently, in a new translation of his text, renamed its ‘autumn’, for the ‘decline and death’ took several more centuries). During Bosch’s lifetime the Dukes of Burgundy ruled ’s-Hertogenbosch, northern Brabant’s leading city. Brabant was unified under the Burgundian Duke Philip the Good in 1433; his dynasty ended when Charles the Bold died in 1477 leaving an only child, Mary. The same year she chose to marry Archduke Maximilian of Austria, later Emperor Maximilian I, bringing as dowry the northern provinces of the Burgundian duchy. Mary’s son, Philip (the Handsome), born a year later, succeeded to the Burgundian possessions of his mother (†1482) under the guardianship of his father, Maximilian, who ruled with difficulty due to often rebellious yet increasingly prosperous Flemish towns long protective of their rights.

11 H. van Os, et al., The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe, trans. M. Hoyle, Princeton, N.J., 1994 (exhibition cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Nov. 1994–Feb. 1995).

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At sixteen Philip took over government of the Lowlands, and in 1496 made probably the most important dynastic marriage of all time — to Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. After the Spanish monarchs’ only son died, Philip and Joanna (later called ‘the Mad’) became heirs to Spain’s throne in 1502. But Philip himself soon died (1506) and his father resumed rule of the Netherlands. Philip’s son, Charles V, born in 1500, succeeded his grandfather (†1519), inheriting, thanks to Columbus, the greatest empire since Charlemagne; he is king of Spain and its New World possessions, Holy Roman Emperor, and territorial prince of the Netherlands. Imperial rule becomes Spanish rule after Bosch’s lifetime. The Lowlands continued to prosper from manufactures and trade in wool and other cloth, tapestry weaving, and purchases of Flemish and Dutch pictures, especially by Spanish merchants, officials and nobility. The largest collection of Bosch’s paintings was owned by the Spanish king Philip II, grandson of Philip the Handsome. Reduced by war, fires and damage, what survives is now divided between the Museo del Prado, Madrid, and Philip II’s vast palace-office-monastery of El Escorial, thirty-five miles away. ’S-Hertogenbosch was founded in the twelfth century. Its population in densely populated Holland is now about 80,000 although in Bosch’s time it sheltered roughly a quarter of that number, with 3,456 taxable households (haarden) recorded in 1496 when the other chief Brabantine towns, Antwerp, Brussels and Leuven, had 6,586, 5,750, and 3,069 respectively.12 A trade centre known for its linen and its manufacture of cutlery, church bells and organs, it was visited by Albrecht Dürer on his way to Charles V’s coronation at Aachen in 1519 (though Bosch’s work, then visible in SintJanskerk, is not mentioned in his diary). The town’s numerous ecclesiastical institutions were then under the very conservative direction of the diocese of Cologne, a fact of importance for consideration of Bosch’s religious outlook. At age fifteen, Erasmus lived at its famed Latin school from 1484 until about 1487, too young, one may believe, to influence Bosch. Late in the fifteenth century a printing press was set up in the town, though production was not large and soon ceased, probably because it was too difficult to obtain sufficient paper, as was the case in a number of the smaller Dutch and German towns. 12 L. Pirenne, ‘’s-Hertogenbosch ten tijde van Jheronimus Bosch/Het leef-en werkmilieu van Jeroen Bosch’, Jheronimus Bosch Bijdragen, bij gelegenheit van de herdenkingstentoonstelling te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1967, pp. 42–47, provides information on the town.

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The town seems to have had more religious institutions than was usual for its size. It probably had a painters’ guild though its records have not survived. Its chambers of rhetoric — literary groups — attest to an active intellectual life, and were undoubtedly influential as sponsors of morality plays; there were like groups in Antwerp. Bosch’s portrayal of unusual themes in an unusual manner, even in rendering standard religious imagery, might have had some relationship to these literary groups, as is likely later with Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Antwerp’s chambers of rhetoric. Our knowledge of Bosch’s life is far from complete; it was only fairly recently discovered that he had young assistants, ‘knechten’.13 Existing documents inform only partially of his activities and relationships.14 Bosch was trained by his artist family, his brothers, Goossen and Jan, his father, Anthonius van Aken, three of his uncles, and his grandfather, Jan van Aken, were all documented artists, the grandfather coming it seems from Aachen by way of Nijmegen about 1423. The house where Bosch was born was also the family shop, located on the main square of ’s-Hertogenbosch. Sometime between 1477 and 1481 he married a wealthy woman, several years older than he, Aleid van de Meervene, of the upper bourgeoisie (an uncommon occurrence for a painter) from nearby Oirschot. Thereby he became one of the richest citizens of ’s-Hertogenbosch, and owner with Aleid of an estate at Oirschot; they lived in her inherited house, also on the marketplace. He became a member of the Illustre Lieve Vrouw Broederschap, the Brotherhood of Our Lady, also called the Zwanenbroederschap, the Swan Brotherhood, as ‘Jeroen die maelre’ (Jerome the painter), and is first

P. Gerlach, O.F.M. Cap., ‘Jeronimus van Aken alias Bosch en de Onze Lieve VrouweBroderschap’, Jheronimus Bosch Bijdragen, bij gelegenheid van de herdenkingtentoonstelling te ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1967, 54, and note 141 (‘Item gegeven Jheronimus knechten schilder van den drie schilden te makenen . . .’). 14 R. H. Marijnissen, assisted by P. Ruyffelaere, Hieronymus Bosch, The Complete Works, Antwerp, 1987, pp. 11–14, cites thirty-three documents in which Bosch and his wife are mentioned and refers to others of earlier date concerning his father and grandfather; also J. Koldeweij, ‘Hieronymus Bosch and His City’. J. Koldeweij, P. Vandenbroeck, B. Vermet with M. Hsink, Hieronymus Bosch, The Complete Paintings and Drawings, Ghent/Amsterdam, Rotterdam, 2001, pp. 20–84; and G. C. M. van Dijck, Op Zoek Narr Jheronimus Van Aken Alias Bosch, De Feiten, familie, vrienden en opdrachtgevers ca. 1400–ca. 1635, Zaltbommel, ’s-Hertogenbosch, 2001. Also E. Vink, ‘Hieronymus Bosch’s Life in ’s-Hertogenbosch’, Hieronymus Bosch, New Insights Into His Life and Work, ed. J. Koldeweij, B. Vermet with B. van Kooij, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2001, pp. 19–23. 13

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mentioned in its accounts in 1480. The brotherhood was a religious confraternity dedicated to the Virgin Mary (Sint-Janskerk then owned a famed, highly venerated image of her); the art historian Erwin Panofsky called the brotherhood ‘furiously respectable’. A large part of the local membership was clerical, with prominent ecclesiastics and burghers of the town also members, as were also a number of the Brabantine duchy’s nobility: Hendrik III of Nassau, later friend and counsellor of Charles V, probably the first recorded owner and perhaps the commissioner of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights triptych, and Don Diego de Guevara, a prominent court official, son of Felipe de Guevara, became members in 1498–99.15 For the confraternity Bosch executed some recorded commissions for its chapel in Sint-Janskerk with the help of his ‘knechten’.16 He made six paintings for the church — all now disappeared. He is cited in the confraternity register of 1509–10 as ‘Jheronimus van Aken, scilder, die hem scrift Bosch’ (Jerome of Aachen, painter, who signs himself Bosch); it is from the confraternity records that we know of his funeral mass on August 9, 1516. The paintings of Bosch studied here consistently convey their meaning of the salvation to be gained through belief in Christ and his saints. Equally important for our response to his art is the just relationship of shapes, the According to Paul Vandenbroeck, Hieronymus Bosch tussen volksleven en stadscultuur, Berchem, 1987, p. 166, n. 1216, citing G. C. M. van Dijck, De Bossche optimaten, Geschiedenis van de illustere Lieve Vroubroederschap te ’s Hertogenbosch, 1318–1973, Tilburg, 1973, p. 444, et seq. There were other prominent non-resident laity: between 1489 and 1500 two knights, Frederik van Egmond and Jan Back; Victor van der Moelen, steward of the Duke of Brabant, 1495–96; Juan Velez de Guevara, 1498/99 (Vandenbroeck, p. 165, again quoting van Dijk). Also, ‘De Nassauers van Breda en Jeroen Bosch, “Tuin der lusten” ’, and ‘Hendrik III van Nassau, Heer van Breda, veldheer, diplomat en mecenas’, pp. 171–186, of two previously printed articles (1969, 1971) by P. Gerlach Jheronimus Bosch, opstellen over leven en werk door Drs. P. Gerlach, O.F. M. Cap. samenstelling en redactie drs. P.M. le Blanc, ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Hague, 1988. Vandenbroeck’s conclusions are summarised in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, Macmillan, London, N.Y., 1996, 4, pp. 445–454, and in Koldeweij, et. al. 16 Alart du Hameel (died ca. 1509), architect, sculptor and engraver, a confraternity member who also married into the upper bourgeoisie, produced engravings with the words ‘bosche’ and ‘hameel’ added in the sky area. Because they may refer only to the town of ’s Hertogenbosch, the engravings are thought to reflect the art of our painter, which indeed they do in the print of the War Elephant, with grotesque and exaggerated figures crowding the work. Another version of the War Elephant, issued around mid-century as from the print shop of Hieronymus Cock, is labelled a Bosch invention and was still being printed in the seventeenth century. For reproductions of these works, see F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450–1700, Amsterdam, n.d., vol. 6, 15 ff. 15

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harmony or contrast between them based on his feeling for forms — large and small, rough and smooth, heavy or light; of line — thick and thin, curved and straight, weak and firm; the varied play of brushwork; and the equally impressive subtle play of colour wonderfully balanced — all appeal immediately to the senses, to persuade and delight over and beyond the message of his particular subject. In late work, the Garden triptych for one, figures are often slender to the point of emaciation, except where he depicts people like gluttons. In contrast Adam and Eve are almost ethereal with their slender arms, legs and bodies; obviously they have not gorged in Eden. His saints are universally slim, certainly not overweight. The well-fed are frequently individuals we may suspect of sinful self-indulgence. Virtue seems to demand emaciation, which he expresses by figural elongation and attenuation especially in his later works. His naked Christ Child of the Prado Epiphany is so slight as to be almost emaciated, touchingly frail and unreal simultaneously. This late style seems an intentional gothicising renewal of Flemish style of the later 1450s and 1460s, of Rogier van der Weyden’s ‘style of the long lines’ epitomised by Dirk Bouts. Relationships with Bouts and thus Rogier are discoverable in some of Bosch’s pictures, with possible borrowings of landscape motifs, notable in the Berlin museum’s Saint John on Patmos, and the Earthly Paradise polyptych in Venice’s Palazzo Ducale. His tales are told in settings of astonishing clarity. Bosch creates a spatial unity that surpasses many earlier painters’ treatments of land, water, air and sky: his later work displays a unified conception of continuous recession of the landscape setting. It is not inconceivable that he influenced his younger contemporary Joachim Patinir, also known for a painted Temptation of Saint Anthony, (a transformed Judgment of Paris) in a magnificent world landscape, and the man Dürer called a good landscape painter.17 But where and how Bosch learned to do this, there is no way to know; what he created for those who follow is couched in the most effective artistry of his era. No town or confraternity documents help to identify existing works that can be considered authentic. No portraits by him are known, though the Patinir’s innovative use of a classical theme and his relationship to Bosch is discussed in my text, Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel, . . ., New York, 1968, pp. 424–426, and repeated in the revisions of 1973 and 1991 (hereafter Cuttler, NP) (apparently ignored by Larry Silver, ‘God in the Details: Bosch and Judgment[s]’, Art Bulletin, 83, 4, Dec., 2001, pp. 628–660). 17

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man in red on the left wing of the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony triptych may be a self-portrait, and a mid-sixteenth-century drawing in the Recueil d’Arras (Fig. 3–12), a collection of portraits (Arras, Bibliothèque de la Ville, fol. 275), and an early-seventeenth-century Galle engraving may also show him. Apparently he had no children, no sons or daughters to follow in his footsteps. Because he was a member of the special group of ‘sworn brothers’ of his confraternity, possibly his childless marriage to Aleid van de Meervene, the older wealthy woman of the upper bourgeoisie, may have been arranged for her protection. When he died, all the property she brought to the marriage returned to her and did not descend to his family, contrary to the time’s normal take-all by the husband. Without doubt family members participated in his shop’s production. That he had a shop means his assistants did more than just grind colours and prepare his panels (customarily painted in the frame at this time) after they were made, possibly by his nephew Jan, a carpenter-framemaker, whom records cite as a woodworker. A signature — ‘jheronimus bosch’ in Gothic letters — is seen on over twenty pictures but fewer than seven are generally accepted as authentic.18 Others were most likely signed by his shop or his many imitators after he died in 1516. What is quite contradictory about signatures seen on both good and poor works is Latin use for the given name and Gothic script for letters. Bosch was patronised by the Burgundian court, which had humanistic interests, for one commission, recorded but never completed. This does not mean that either he or the court was indifferent to religious practice, as can be implied by over-accentuating his social position as a wealthy burgher.19 Philip the Handsome’s Burgundian court was little varied from that of his Hapsburg father, Emperor Maximilian I. In 1504 Maximilian created the first northern poet laureate, Conrad Celtis, a leading member of the German See note 13, P. Gerlach, op. cit., pp. 39–54. Vandenbroeck, Jheronimus Bosch; Vandenbroeck, ‘Jheronimus Bosch zogenaamde “Tuin der Lusten”’, I, Jaarboeek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 1989, pp. 2–210; II, ‘De Graal of het Valse Liefdesparadis’, 1990, pp. 9–192: Keith Moxey, The Practice of Theory, Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History, Ithaca and London, 1994, 112–114; for Bosch’s position as a wealthy bourgeois, see B. Blondé and H. Vleighe, ‘The Social Status of Hieronymus Bosch’, Burlington Magazine, 131, 1989, pp. 699–700; also Margaret Sullivan, ‘Bruegel’s Misanthrope: Renaissance Art for a Humanist Audience’, Artibus et Historiae, 26, 1992, pp. 143–162. 18 19

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humanists; they, however, like the court that patronised them, were Christian and Catholic. The two courts were in close contact in ’s-Hertogenbosch for several months from September 1504 to March 1505, not the first time the town was host to such illustrious visitors; La Toison d’Or, the Order of the Golden Fleece, founded by Burgundian Duke Philip the Good on January 10, 1429/30, met there in 1481, when Philip the Handsome was three. Such events would normally provide painters with a visible source of pageantry to accompany the numerous religious processions. No reliable answer outside his confraternity has been found for the commissioning of Bosch’s major works. In 1504 he began a never completed Last Judgment triptych, nine feet high by eleven feet wide, to have a Paradise and the Inferno on the wings. No one has identified it with certainty. He was paid thirty-six pounds, a sum then only equal to a carpenter’s wages for a month. This is his sole documented commission from a patron; it came from Philip the Handsome. Only that one payment was made toward it, in 1504, and Philip died two years later. We can only guess what it was like and how much was completed, if any more than the frame and panels. Petrus van Os, secretary of the confraternity, has been suggested by Pater Gerlach as the donor represented in the Brussels Crucifixion,20 the Prado Epiphany (Adoration of the Magi) carries the coats of arms of Peter Bronkhorst and Agnes Boschuysse,21 and the Yale panel carries the coat of arms of the Bergh family.22 Hendrik III of Nassau may indeed have been the commissioner of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, as many now believe. The evidence of Hendrik’s membership in ’s-Hertogenbosch’s Confraternity of the Virgin (to which, as we have said, Bosch and his wife belonged, she earlier than he), argues in favour of Hendrik’s commission for the work, even before he inherited his title and lands in 1504 from his uncle, Count Engelbert of Nassau. After Hendrik’s death at Breda in 1538 his wife, Mencia de Mendoza, commissioned a copy of the Haywain triptych to take back to Spain with her; its fate is unknown but the Bosch copy trade was by then in full swing despite rising fashion for a stylistically different mannerist art. Gibson, Hieronymus Bosch, An Annotated Bibliography, Boston, 1983, D129. It should be mentioned that coats of arms on pictures could be added later to a picture if it changed hands. 21 Gibson, E65. 22 Gibson, E115. 20

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Two seemingly opposing conceptions, often pointed out, have governed past interpretations of Bosch’s work: that he was a ‘faizeur de dyables’, a maker of devils, painting for sheer delight in creating fantastic imagery; and that he was a serious moraliser in paint.23 The latter position is taken especially by Spanish writers, who after the sixteenth century could see both originals and numerous copies on canvas of Bosch’s work in royal and princely Spanish collections, some still there today. A vast number of scholars have written on Bosch’s art in the last hundred and fifty years, for it lends itself to many interpretations. The studies of greatest validity are rooted in the models in painting, in manuscript illumination available to Bosch by inheritance from his painter-father, uncles and grandfather, in the great wealth of images newly created since roughly the mid-fifteenth century by the engraver’s burin, and in woodcuts illustrating texts pouring from printing presses. Bosch responded to these resources with an unprecedented pictorial vision. A recent publication on Hieronymus Bosch advertises itself as ‘containing nearly all works by Bosch that have been proven authentic’. In truth, nothing is proven, though an elastic core of works is considered as from his hand. According to written sources of the sixteenth century, only five works can be attributed to Bosch.24 Since then others have been added to his oeuvre catalogue; a basic listing was published by Charles de Tolnay in 1937, with a more recent restatement in 1965.25 Many works attributed to Bosch have been altered by attempts to repair the damage of four centuries of existence; in the long roster of mishaps, not the least of them are the attempts to bring a damaged work back to its original condition. This can lead to an enormous amount of change: reinforcement of outlines, filling of lacunae, restoration of highlights,

For an excellent introduction, see Gibson, ‘Introduction: A Critical History’, pp. xix–xxxiv. 24 J. Folie, ‘Les oeuvres authentifiées des primitifs flamands’, Bulletin de l’Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique, 6, 1963, pp. 233–240. 25 Charles de Tolnay, Hieronymus Bosch, Basel, 1937; 1965, 1966 in English; Marijnissen and Ruyffelaere. They accept twenty-four works (seven triptychs, seven panels from triptychs, and ten single panels, assumed not to be from dismembered triptychs), and six works whose attribution to Bosch have been disputed. Many more works are attributed to Bosch, for most of these see Gerd Unverfehrt, Hieronymus Bosch, Die Rezeption seiner Kunst im frühem 16. Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1980, who accepts twenty-five works of Tolnay’s original forty-one as by Bosch, and considers sixteen more as close to the master (p. 26 f.). 23

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re-creation of missing shading where guidelines may be absent or when no reinforcement or repair was needed, or other variations disguising the original surface. Close examination of a panel’s surface can reveal overpainting that obscures a crackle pattern created by long decades of expansion and contraction of the panel and, in consequence, the paint layers on top of it. Overpainting fills the tiny cracks, causing visual changes never intended by the painter. X-ray, infrared images, and infrared reflectograms of paintings can bring out information hidden below the paint layers, like the preparatory underdrawing on the normally white gessoed and well-aged oak panel. But information of this kind, precious as it is, can be troubling, for not all works attributed to Bosch show the same style of underdrawing. It warns that such information is only one element and it must be used with caution; for example, it has even been concluded that Bosch employed several styles of drawing in some of the attributed pictures. Was he ambidextrous, or did shop assistants, trained in his manner, also contribute to the underdrawing?26 Scientific analysis in the conservation laboratory can determine by microscopic analysis the authenticity of a painting’s pigments and media. The latest technical tool, autoradiography, reveals not only the presence and concentration of pigments but also the way in which they are applied. Again, only partial progress to determine the original intent, the artist’s hand, is made with these techniques. We can estimate the age of a work from dendrochronology, like infrared reflectography a recent technical aid. Dendrochronology counts tree rings to tell the age of the heartwood planks of oak wood from which a panel is made (Baltic oak panels were the standard paint support in the Netherlands of Bosch’s period; paintings on canvas exist but none are accepted as from his hand).27 Recent investigations by Peter Klein, a wood biologist at Hamburg University, has resulted in dates for many works; however, these 26 Bosch’s underdrawings in the Lisbon and Garden triptychs differ in nature from other attributed works. See R. van Schoute, M. del Carmen Garrido, and J. M. Cabrera, ‘Le dessin sous-jacent chez Jerome Bosch’, Le dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, Colloque 5, 29–30 Sept.–Oct. 1, 1983, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1985, pp. 211–215; Carmen Garrido and Roger van Schoute, Bosch at the Museo del Prado, Technical Study, Madrid, 2001; also Roger van Schoute, Monique Verboomen, Jérôme Bosch, Tournai, 2000 (includes a ‘critical catalogue’ illustrating attributed and doubtful works often given to Bosch). 27 D. Wolfthal, The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting: 1400–1530, Cambridge, New York, 1989, p. 16, n. 34.

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dates (which reflect a curing time before painting, for Baltic oak panels of roughly eight years) apply only to the original use. Painters, including Bosch, reused older, seasoned works that were no longer in favour or had damaged surfaces (by candle fire or the like) because of their stability, scraping off the original painted surface. So the result of dendrochronological examination gives us only the first date of use, leaving uncertain the date of the painted image we now see (and its underdrawing, visible thanks to infrared reflectography). Thus scientific evidence along with many visual examinations can support a conclusion of relative authenticity. Many works attributed to Bosch have been examined by these newest methods. Add to this the knowledge gained by thorough study of the motifs the artist employed and how he combined them into a whole in his religious pictures and moral allegories. What part was played by his education, his clerical knowledge, his awareness of the literature of his time, of popular moralizing works such as the Ship of Fools, knowledge of witchcraft, or the popular tract the Ars moriendi (The Art of Dying Well), and many other facets of contemporary religion, or his own religious outlook? First and foremost, however, are the works themselves. It is important to emphasize that Bosch was not only an artful individual able to combine skillfully disparate elements from the art and science of his day, but also a man with a moral message who, happily for the world, found his outlet in ever-challenging complex paintings, above all his Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. They also reveal his skill with a brush as in his superb rendering, colour, and variety of natural forms. Bosch used an innovative technique of painting different from that of his contemporaries, as Carel van Mander told in 1604: His treatment of draperies differs from that of earlier artists who painted many wrinkles and folds. His technique was sure and clever and he painted alla prima. This is why his paintings remained unchanged, and why they are in beautiful condition. As other old masters had done, he made his drawing of subjects on the white ground of his panel, over which he painted a transparent layer in a colour, or in a shade, more or less like flesh. Frequently he used the ground for part of the painting.28 28 Carel van Mander, Dutch and Flemish Painters, trans. from the Schilderboeck and introduction by C. Van de Wall, New York, 1936, p. 65; also, H. Miedema, Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, tr. H. D. Cook-Radmore, Doornspijk, 1996, fols. 216v., 217r.

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But the religious meaning of his work did not differ in basic spirit and fervour from his predecessors; artists needed to be able to read, thereby able to avoid unacceptable errors of interpretation of a universal Christian creed. As a sworn member of his religious confraternity, Bosch clearly was aware of the implication of his religion for, one can believe, he incorporated in his outlook medieval hermeneutics. Hermeneutics, derived from Aristotle’s logical treatise Peri Hermenias (About Interpretation), strictly speaking designates an interpretive method or methodology, an ‘interpretive practice’. It is a method of understanding the meaning of an image or object with both creator and viewer, or recipient, sharing that understanding. One is not alone in seeing Bosch as an exceedingly complex artist, often with baffling motifs, incorporating in his art images sometimes traceable to illuminated manuscripts and prints, as well as paintings, which furnished elements for his unique combinations of natural and unnatural beings and forms. The most exciting of his artistically reasoned pictures are without doubt program paintings. For these he may have had a consultant, a cleric, if he was not one himself, to dictate how he would treat the subject matter of a complex commissioned picture. As infrared reflectograms of the Lisbon picture of Saint Anthony show, he made radical changes on the central panel.29 Its earlier, hidden architectural drawing (no architectural drawing by Bosch exists on paper) on the centre panel is little related to the theme of the picture visible today. Usually, differences between what we now see and the underdrawing clearly indicate the artist as program designer. (A proposed grand master of a cult of free love as commissioner of his Garden triptych dictating to the painter lacks credibility; this cannot be believed or proved).30 Bosch, one can be certain, was never a follower nor a mere illustrator. The chapters to follow touch on the above where they contribute to religious content, pertinent social behaviour, custom, costume and history. Also a discussion of the authenticity of two attributed works, in chapter 6, and the study of his motifs and their meanings is intended to create greater understanding of Bosch’s objectives. What follows lays stress on the three triptychs painted late in his career: the Haywain, the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony and the Garden of Schoute and Verboomen, Jérôme Bosch, p. 206 f. For the latest and most telling review of Wilhelm Fraenger’s ‘grand master’ theory (in Hieronymus Bosch, 10th ed., Basel, 1994; first English ed., New York, Putnam, 1983), see W. S. Gibson, Speculum, 72, 4 (Oct., 1997), 1171–1173. 29 30

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Earthly Delights. All three are governed by the concept that salvation is available to men and women ultimately through the instrumentality of Christ’s sacrifice. In them the actual presence of Christ is uniquely not only a component of narrative but also both a specific message and a paradigm of the source of salvation. The apocalyptic spirit of Bosch’s era, found in an art that increased in subtlety, majesty and strength as he aged, is exemplified in these three works created in chronological progression, each more profound than the last. Subsequent chapters examine the part played by animals, birds, and demons. Bosch filled his garden with innumerable birds not only because they were useful reminders of sinful humanity’s impending fate, but possibly to satisfy a patron or to enrich his apocalyptic themes by their variety. Here, new evidence, emphasizing his main themes of salvation and apocalyptic exegesis is further explained to indicate their meaning, usage and development in his art. Next, a discussion of the painting of Saint John on Patmos in Berlin examines the thematic background and sources of the saint’s vision of the apocalyptic Virgin and Child; its formal comparisons indicate Bosch’s contribution to the theme. The problems of the creator and date of the painted Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins in the Prado Museum, and the Vienna Tree Man drawing, when closely examined, create understanding of what one can think of as coming directly from Bosch’s own hand. Chapter 7, ‘Influences’, considers Bosch’s time and place and his relation to Italy and to northern humanism, with conclusions about his training and his outlook. An epilogue discusses Bosch’s posthumous influence.

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Dante, Petrarch, Triumphs and Bosch’s Haywain

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HE first of the three unique triptychs considered here is strongly rooted in the life around Hieronymus Bosch. No artist before him depicted the subject of its central panel. Though the painting is of his world, his intention was not its duplication despite an intense naturalism. Even the exterior is unusual (Fig. 1–1a). Instead of the norm of standing saints on each panel we see what seems to be a gray-haired pedlar, probably symbolising physically and spiritually impoverished humanity, a hole at the knee of his trousers. He makes his way through a landscape busy with disparate activities.1 A small dog with a spiked collar harasses him, but is kept at bay by a long pole. In the left middle ground robbers have tied a man to a tree; one has already made off with his pants and what may be his purse. In the middle ground (right), a couple dance energetically to a bagpiper, then considered by many a sinful act. A gibbet with a crowd below crowns a hill in the background of this forbidding, sinful world. Opened (Figs. 1–1b, c, d), the left wing of the triptych shows, in descending order, God in majesty supervising the Fall of the Rebel Angels, transformed into a loathsome swarm of winged demons and flying insects to signify evil’s entrance into the world. Immediately below, Eve is created from the side of sleeping Adam by a crowned God the Father. Below them the tempting Serpent offers an apple to Adam (Eve already has one in her hand), showing the second way in which evil entered the world. At the bottom of V. G. Tuttle, ‘Bosch’s Image of Poverty’, Art Bulletin, 63, 1 (March, 1981), 88–95. W. S. Gibson, Hieronymus Bosch, An Annotated Bibliography, Boston, 1983, E289. 1

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l−la. H. Bosch (?), Haywain, exterior, ca. 1495–1500? Panel, 57⅝ x 44¼ in. (147 x 112 cm) (closed); 52⅜ x 39⅜ in. (133 x 100 cm) (center); 57 x 22⅛ in. (147 x 56 cm) (each wing). Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

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l−lb. H. Bosch (?), Haywain, interior, left wing. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

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l−lc. H. Bosch (?), Haywain, interior, central panel. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

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l−ld. H. Bosch (?), Haywain, interior, right wing. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

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1−2. Triumph of Love, Trionfi of Petrarch, Florence, 1457, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Fonds italien, no. 545, f. 11v.

1−3. Triumphs of Petrarch, ca. 1470−1500. Florentine engraving, 8⅞ x 10⅝ in. (20.4 x 27.1 cm). Albertina Museum, Vienna.

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1−4. Lorenzo Costa, Triumph of Death, 1488−89. Fresco, Bentivoglio Chapel, S. Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna.

25

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1−5. L’Église Triumphant, Le chemin de paradis, 1473–74. French illumination, 10¾ x 7 11/16 in. (27.3 x 19.5 cm). Free Library of Philadelphia, MS. Lewis E 110, folios 40v, 41r. Library photo.

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1−6. La loy de Grace, Le chemin de paradis, 1473–74. French illumination, 10¾ x 7 11/16 in. (27.3 x 19.5 mm.). Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, Brussels, Ms IV 823, insert after folio 103.

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the panel a cherub with flaming sword has already expelled a repentant Adam from Eden as Eve looks toward the gaily coloured central panel. There, a large hay wagon, symbolising earthly goods, leads a procession of a whole world attracted to it, headed by Church and State. Some fight to grab what they can as the wagon rolls by. Atop the load of hay, at left, an angel in prayer looks up to a small, distant Christ of the Last Judgment showing his wounds: two pairs of lovers and a lute player are silhouetted by a large bush while a flanking plain-coloured demon dances at the right to the music of his elongated nose flute. Varied groups fill the foreground. Humans metamorphosing into demons at the front of the wagon pull it toward the right wing where — in Hell — demonic masons build a tower of humankind’s misdeeds. An awesome fiery landscape forms the right wing panel’s background. The triptych’s formal organisation is based on Last Judgment triptychs but it imitates none. Bosch’s artistic maturity is evident here, in the variety and richness of tones, his superb draftsmanship, and the originality without parallel of his conception. There are two high-quality versions of the Haywain triptych, both in Spain, one in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, the other in El Escorial, the vast monastery-palace-office of Philip II, high up on the window wall of his bedroom. There is a tapestry in Madrid of the subject, and copies of lesser quality have been known to exist. Which is the original painting, which the copy, and where were they made? There are no clear-cut answers, disagreement between scholars being common. Gerd Unverfehrt resolved the problem to his satisfaction by concluding that both copied a lost original.2 But when were they copied, where, 2 The argument — original/copy, both copies, one by Bosch/one not — has been going on for many years: Gibson, p. 202; also J. Folie, ‘Les oeuvres authentifiées des primitifs flamands’, Bulletin de l’Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique, 6, 1963, 239f.; J. K. Steppe, ‘Jheronimus Bosch, bijdrage tot de historische en ikonographische studie van zijn werk’, Jheronimus Bosch, Nordbrabantsmuseum, ’s-Hertogenbosch, exhib. cat., 1976, 2, 14. G. Unverfehrt, Hieronymus Bosch, die Rezeption seiner Kunst in frühen 16. Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1980, pp. 18 ff., 85–89, cat. nos. 1, 30, is an extensive examiner of the question. P. Vandenbroek (Le Dessin sous-jacent, colloque 4. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1981, 111 ff.) after close scrutiny said that the Prado Haywain version ‘est un original’; this may still be questioned. Also see L. F. Jacobs, ‘The Triptychs of Hieronymus Bosch’, Sixteenth Century Journal, The Journal of Early Modern Studies, 31, 4 (Winter 2000), pp. 1009–1041; Carmen Garrido and Roger van Schoute, Bosch at the Museum del Prado, Madrid, Museo del Prado/Aldeasa, 2001 (unique technical study, excellent colour illustrations; includes, inter alia, detailed studies of documents, infrared reflectograms, dendrochronology).

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and by whom? The back of the Prado picture is now cradled, of oak planed down to a thin sheet supporting the paint layers. The reverse of the Escorial picture shows four vertical pieces joined by butterfly keys, much in the Flemish manner. Narrow unpainted borders in both works, visible because of warping of the panels, confirm that both versions are on oak, suggesting that they were painted in the Netherlands (Spanish pictures were seldom painted on hardwoods).3 The early sixteenth century is probably the time of their creation, as their earliest mention (see below) suggests. Not only are the triptychs no longer in their original frames but there is damage and repaint. The Escorial picture is especially a repaint victim; in the upper righthand corner of its central panel, paint slops over to cover part of a narrow gold fillet at the inner edge of the frame. In the Prado version, saponification — increasing transparency of the oil medium with age — has caused underdrawing lines to re-appear; we see that the reins and harness of the horses were originally planned to be higher up on their necks. Recent examination through x-rays and infrareds shows other changes of position; for example, the long staff lying on the ground in the foreground is drawn below its position in the visible paint layer. But, more important, the drawing styles are quite different from that revealed by the x-rays and infrareds of such an unquestionable Bosch work as the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony, though the technique of the application of paint is similar. Both Spanish triptychs, it seems, are close copies of a relatively close date. Dendrochronological evidence is now at hand to say definitively what the relationship may be; the earliest treefelling date for the Prado picture is 1508, for the Escorial version 1496.4 We are dealing now with two pictures, in subject and style obviously like that of Hieronymus Bosch, probably made in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century; as scholarly opinion, Philip II’s ownership, the oak of the panels J. Marette, Connaissance des primitifs par l’étude du bois, Paris, 1961, pp. 67–69. Pine and poplar were the normal Spanish supports; even Juan de Flandes used softwoods for his panel pictures made in Spain from 1505. 4 Roger van Schoute and Maria del Carmen Garrido Perez reported on examination of the Prado panel by infrared reflectography at the eighth ‘Underdrawing in Painting’ conference held at Louvain-la-Neuve on Sept. 10, 1989. This comment is partially based on that report and on Carmen Garrido and Roger Van Schoute, 120–157. See Peter Klein, ‘Dendrochronological Analysis of Works by Hieronymus Bosch and His Followers’, Hieronymus Bosch, New Insights into His Life and Work, ed. Jos Koldeweij, Bernard Vermet with Barbara van Kooij, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam, Ludion, 2001, pp. 121–131. 3

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and the Escorial picture’s method of assembly lead us to believe. Bosch’s own hand, however, cannot be determined from existing physical evidence, for his style could and would be closely imitated by his shop and ardent followers.5 So it seems Unverfehrt’s conclusions can neither be accepted nor rejected. The Haywain is Bosch’s first departure from his inherited Flemish norms to express his own artistic concepts. Now they are seemingly at variance with his family traditions, insufficient to express the intensification of escatology in the literature and religious practices expressed, for one, by Gerard Groote, the creator of the Devotio moderna, and spread by his followers. New wine needed new bottles, it seems, to express, in Bosch’s case, the world’s intensified sense of transience in hoping for salvation by living a life of direct emulation of Christ. The influence on Bosch’s imagination of Italian triumphal processions has been asserted yet never demonstrated with specific evidence. Sources, such as Dante and Petrarch, were already available in the North in written and printed form. The processional character of the Haywain, and Italian influences, visual and literary, cannot be doubted in the Haywain, an early example of Bosch’s expression in paint of apocalyptic exegesis, as shall be seen. Nor should numerous regal and church processions in Bosch’s own town be forgotten. Possibly as early as 1549 (or as late as 1586), Ambrosio de Morales considered the Haywain a wagon of vanity and nothingness, de nonada. In 1604 Fray José de Sigüenza, a Spanish Hieronymite, related the two triptychs’ subject to Isaiah 46, ‘All flesh is grass and all the goodness thereof is of the flower of the fields’, and also to Psalm 103:15, ‘As for man his days are of grass, as the flower of the field so he flourishes’.6 Centuries later, but building on Sigüenza, Charles de Tolnay related the works to a Flemish proverb which compares the world to a haystack; each man plucks from it what he can. But Louis Lebeer related the central panel to Bartholomeus de

5 A. M. Salazar, ‘El Bosco y Ambrosio de Morales’, Archivo español de arte, 28, 110, 1955, 117–138; the Morales text was translated by J. Snyder, Bosch in Perspective, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1973, pp. 31–33. Unverfehrt (pp. 240, 253) dates the panels as ca. 1500 (Escorial) and ca. 1520 (Prado): effective felling dates are 1496, 1508. 6 C. de Tolnay, Hieronymus Bosch, Bâle, 1937, pp. 26, 63, 78; Baden-Baden, 1965; English translation of Sigüenza with 1965 additions, New York, 1966, pp. 24, 403 f.; for allusion to Trionfi without elaboration, see p. 355.

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Momper’s etching of 1559, Al Hoy, ‘Everything is hay’.7 These have been the dominant interpretations of the paintings, though Carl Justi in 1889 and Herbert von Einem in 1975 thought they were related to Italian paintings of triumphal processions, the trionfi.8 Depictions of the triumph arose in Italy in two distinct manners: one is medieval, the other leads to the Renaissance; one emphasises the procession in a Christian guise, the second takes a classical form, neither being mutually exclusive. After 1300, in canto 29 of the Purgatorio, Dante presented the theme as a Triumph of the Church, a mystical procession preceded by seven candlesticks symbolising the books of the Old Testament, after which come four beasts symbolising the Four Gospels, each with six wings filled with eyes; between these figures a two-wheeled triumphal cart pulled by a griffin represents the dual nature of Christ. The three Theological Virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity, dance about the wheels on one side, and on the other dance the Cardinal Virtues, Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude. Seven old men follow; two symbolise the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul while four symbolise the minor Epistles. The procession terminates in the seventh old man, who symbolises the apocalyptic Revelation of Saint John. Canto 29’s imagery, of major importance for future triumphs in literature and art, is reinforced by images in canto 10 of oxen drawing the cart of the Ark, accompanied by seven choirs, King David, and the Emperor Trajan with the poor widow clinging to his bridle, imploring justice be acknowledged. The regal figures exemplify humility.9 Roughly contemporary with Dante are the Giottesque frescoes over the tomb of Saint Francis in the lower church at Assisi; allegories of Chastity,

7 For de Momper’s etching, see L. Lebeer ‘Het hooi en de hooiwagen in den beeldende kunsten’, Gentsche bijdragen, 5, 1938, 141–155; J. Grauls, ‘Het hooi en de hooiwagen in den bildenden kunsten: Taalkundige toelichting bij het hooi en de hooiwagen’, Gentsche bijdragen, 5, 1938, 156–175. For development of the triumphal wagon (religious and secular), P. Vandenbroeck, ‘Jheronimus Bosch’ “Hooiwagen”: enkele bijkomende gegevens’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 1987, 107–142. 8 C. Justi, ‘Die Werk des Hieronymus Bosch in Spanien’, Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlungen, 10, 1889, 132; Snyder, 1973, 44–66, translates excerpts: H. von Einem, ‘Zur Deutung des Heuwagentriptychon von Hieronymus Bosch’, Nachrichten der Akademie der wissenschaften in Göttingen, I, Philologisch-Historisch Klasse, no. 4, 1975, 81–98 (unexplained influence of Dante); Gibson: E 147. 9 P. Milano, ed., The Portable Dante, New York, 1947, pp. 338–343; p. 237, lines 56–78 (Lawrence Binyon verse translation).

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Poverty, and Obedience, they have been called triumphs,10 though static and not processional in nature, like Francesco Traini’s Triumph of Death in the Campo Santo, Pisa, made sometime before 1350.11 Arrested motion characterises Traini’s painted encounter of the living and the dead. Inevitably Death prevails. That is also the message of the Triumph of Death with a skeleton Death on horseback swinging a giant scythe, in a fresco of about 1445 from the Palazzo Sclafani, Palermo, now in the Galleria nazionale della Sicilia, Palermo.12 Death’s victory over life is nowhere in doubt; in the North it takes the like form of a skeleton, occasionally with a scythe.13 The concept surely was known to Bosch, for examples are widespread. After Dante, Francesco Petrarch (1304–74) gives the greatest impetus to the literary notion of a triumph as a procession. His poems, I Trionfi, begun perhaps as early as 1338, were still incomplete when he died in 1374. Petrarch also drew his concept, one may believe, from the triumphal processions and pageants of such classical writers as Ovid and Lactantius. He created in terza rima Italian a long allegorical poem of the soul’s progress from youthful carnality to a search for salvation and eternal life. His triumphs, in order of succession, are Love, Chastity, Death, Time, Fame, and Eternity, or Divinity. The intellectual force of Dante and Petrarch together were enough to move the age in the direction of the triumphal procession; for the Renaissance it becomes the ideal integrator of the conflicting values of the worldly and the heavenly, of earthly renown and spiritual reward (here too Bosch is in opposition; reconciliation of such conflict is not his aim). By the fifteenth century the revival of antiquity recreates the imperial procession honouring the gods or the emperors, or the emperors as gods; examples include Andrea Mantegna’s fifteenth-century Triumph of Caesar; the woodcut Triumph of Caesar by Benedetto Bordon and Jacobus Argentoratensis (Jacob of Strasbourg) of 1504; and the later early-sixteenth10 Prince d’Essling, Pétrarque, ses études d’art, son influence sur les artistes, . . . L’illustration des ses écrits, Paris, 1902, p. 107. 11 Illustrated in M. Burleigh, ‘The Triumph of Death in Palermo’, Marsyas, 15, 1970–72, figs. 8, 9. 12 Burleigh, pp. 47–57, figs. 1–3. 13 For concern with Death see P. Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (London: British Museum Press, 1996); reviewed, Speculum, A Journal of Medieval Studies, 73, 3 (July, 1998), 809–81; also M. Camille, Master of Death: The Lifeless Art of Pierre Remiet, Illuminator (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996): reviewed, Speculum, A Journal of Medieval Studies, 73, 2 (April, 1998), 482–85.

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century northern Triumph of Maximilian I by Dürer and others, also in woodcut. The gods are handsomely honoured in a Petrarch manuscript, illuminated about 1480 by the Paduan Master of the Vatican Homer, with triumphant Cupid in a chariot as Jupiter, and other gods subject to his rule marching before him.14 Revived earlier in other illustrations of Petrarch’s poems, the classical triumph is in time united with distinctly Christian motifs in the triumphal carts (like farm wagons rather than chariots), facing each other on the reverse of Piero della Francesca’s portraits of the Count and Countess (later Duke and Duchess) of Urbino, Federigo da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza. Painted about 1472/74,15 the Cardinal Virtues of Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, and Temperance sit at the front of his cart pulled by horses. The Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity (both sets of virtues are inspired by Dante) are seated on her cart pulled by the Petrarchan unicorns of Chastity, thereby uniting both Dante and Petrarch in one work and at the same time further honouring the virtuous rulers approaching each other in unity. Dante’s Commedia received outstanding illustration in Botticelli’s drawings, though Petrarch’s verses have at least as strong an appeal to judge from the number of preserved Italian works of art Petrarch inspired. As early as 1379 a miniature attributed to Altichiero illustrates a Triumph of Glory (i.e., Fame). Frontally presented, she rides in a chariot pulled by two horses bearing trumpeters facing right and left; the artist’s inspiration may have been either an actual quadriga or reliefs. (The manuscript is not Petrarch’s I Trionfi but his De viris illustribus).16

14 A. Martindale, The Triumphs of Caesar, by Andrea Mantegna, London, 1979; J. M. Massing, ‘The Triumph of Caesar by Bendedetto Bordon and Jacobus Argentoratensis: Its Iconography and Influence’, Print Quarterly, 7, 1990, 2–21; F. Schestag, ‘Kaiser Maximilians I. Triumph’, Jahrbuch der kunsthistorisches Sammlungen der Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 1, Vienna, 1883, 154–181; S. Appelbaum, The Triumph of Maximilian I, New York, 1964, illustrated by Dürer and others; not created before 1522; Triumph of Love, Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, MS W 755, fol. 1v.; illustrated in L. Randall, Illuminated Manuscripts, Masterpieces in Miniature: Highlights from the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 1984, pl. 32. 15 C. E. Gilbert, ‘New Evidence for the Date of Piero della Francesca’s Count and Countess of Urbino’, Marsyas, 1, 1941, 41–51. 16 D’Essling, p. 24, Fig. 125; Petrarch, De viris illustribus, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 6069F, folio 1r; D. Schorr (‘Some Notes on the Iconography of Petrarch’s Triumph of Fame’, Art Bulletin, 20, 1938, 103). Boccaccio’s Amorosa Visione of 1342 may have been influential in the representation. For a possible Giottesque source in a Gloria

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By 1441 the order of the Italian triumphs — Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Divinity — was well established, judging from Matteo de’ Pasti’s letter from Venice to Piero de’ Medici: I have got the instructions for the Triumph of Fame but I do not know if you want the woman in a simple dress or in a cloak as I would like her to be. The rest I know: there are to be four elephants pulling her chariot; but please tell me if you want only young men and ladies in her train or also famous old men. Gombrich remarks that the painter knew how to appeal to Piero with his ‘qualms about including old men in his picture’.17 But they are heroes of antiquity and the Old Testament who make their mark in the late medieval romances to become popular participants in the triumphs; undoubtedly so by the following year, 1442, when the Florentine painter Apollonio di Giovanni illuminates an example of I Trionfi, now in Florence.18 He and his shop represented Petrarchan triumphs in manuscripts, birth salvers, and wedding chests. Sufficient preserved examples allow us to conclude that in the 1440s Apollonio and his shop were at the forefront of triumph iconography, leading by several decades the general enrichment of Petrarchan iconography. For example, Petrarch cites only Samson and Delilah overcome by Love (Fig.1–2) but by the 1440s artists add Aristotle Mondana, C. Gilbert, ‘The Fresco by Giotto in Milan’, Arte Lombarda, 47/48, 1977, 31–72; S. Charney, ‘Artistic Representations of Petrarch’s Triumphus Famae ’; E. Nyholm, ‘A Comparison of the Petrarchan Configuration of the Trionfi and Their Interpretation in Renaissance Art’; B. Dodge, ‘Petrarch and the Arts’, K. Eisenbichler and A. Iannucci, eds., Petrarch’s Triumphs: Allegory and Spectacle, University of Toronto Italian Studies 4, Ottawa, 1990, pp. 177–182; 223–233; 235–255. 17 Matteo de’ Pasti’s letter was published with, it seems, a mistaken concept of Matteo’s intent (E. H. Gombrich, ‘The Early Medici as Patrons of Art’, Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, London, 1966, p. 47). The old men referred to are famous old men (omeni famosi vechi); de’ Pasti was already aware of what was standard for such a triumph, the famous old men obviously a regular feature already of triumph iconography. 18 Petrarch, I Trionfi, Florence, Bibliotheca Laurenziana, MS Palace 72; E. Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni, Oxford, 1974, pp. 11, 14, cat. no. 2, pls. 11–13, 16–19, 21–23; d'Essling, p. 159. According to G. Carandente (I Trionfi nel primo Rinascimento, E.R.A., 1963, p. 46, and note 101, and p. 48) the earliest illuminated triumph, a Triumph of Death attributed to Stefano da Verona, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Codex monacensis it. 81, dates from 1414, twenty-seven years before de’ Pasti’s letter and Apollonio’s 1442 paintings.

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and Phyllis (or Campaspe), later Virgil and the Roman princess, Hercules and Iole (or Omphale): elaboration spreads to other triumphs, Fame, for example overcoming the Three Fates.19 The motive power for triumphal carts is also soon fixed iconographically. Love’s cart — only Love has a cart in the Trionfi — following Petrarch’s text is always pulled by white horses. Chastity’s cart is normally pulled by unicorns, as on the reverse of Battista Sforza’s portrait by Piero, the unicorn having long association with the Virgin. (In medieval bestiaries, we recall, the unicorn lays its head in the lap of a virgin after which it is readily captured.) Death’s cart is pulled either by black water buffalo or black oxen.20 Fame shows more variety. Matteo de’ Pasti speaks of four elephants, but two are common; water buffalo and even horses are used on occasion. Time invariably has stags pull its chariot. The Four Evangelists pull Divinity’s cart, usually advancing toward the spectator with saints and church dignitaries on either side or following behind the heavy cart. On it is the Gnadenstuhl, the Throne of Mercy, with God the Father holding Christ on the cross before Him. There are exceptions: elephants can occasionally pull Divinity’s cart; sometimes the Evangelists themselves rather than their symbols pull the cart. Now and then the action is parallel to the picture plane, a compositional difference that imparts a sense of hierarchy ultimately like a frieze, deriving from the classical triumph. When triumph engravings become available by the 1440s the conventions are well established, as in a series from Florence; a summation shows

L. S. Malke, ‘Die Ausbreitung des verschollenes Urbildzyklus der Petrarchtrionfi durch Cassonipaare in Florenz unter Beruchtsichtigung des Gloriatriumphs,’ dissertation, Berlin, Freien Universität, 1972, notes 167–170. For triumph iconography in Siena, see Burton B. Fredericksen, The Cassone Paintings of Francesco di Giorgio, J. Paul Getty Museum, publication no. 4, Malibu, 1969. 20 Vasari said Piero di Cosimo — the southern parallel to Bosch: both were interested in the strange, the different and the double image — was one of the first to give carnival-time masquerades the character of triumphs. For the carnival of 1511 he mentions the cart of the Triumph of Death, drawn by black buffalo and painted with white death-heads and crossbones (for the belief that the relationship of buffalo to the theme of Death has an Eastern origin, see L. White, Jr., ‘Indic Elements in the Iconography of Petrarch’s Trionfo della Morte’, Speculum, 49, 2, 1974, 201–221). A gigantic Death figure at the top had a scythe in its hands while many figures stepped out of tombs to surround the cart, others rode bony horses, etc. Despite Vasari, Piero was rather late in the field: Apollonio di Giovanni was several generations earlier. 19

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all the triumphs in a single plate (Fig. 1–3).21 A second series of Florentine engravings about a decade later also spreads the iconography.22 Petrarchan triumphs illustrate Venetian books by 1488.23 Outside of Florence, painters adopt the Petrarchan triumphs, as in Lorenzo Costa’s paintings of 1488–89 in the Bentivoglio Chapel, S. Giacomo, Bologna; in his Triumph of Death two skeletons ride on the backs of the water buffalo pulling its cart, with a pope and regal figures included in the entourage (Fig. 1–4).24 Note that Church and State also ride behind in Bosch’s triptych. Petrarch’s triumphs arrive in the North as early as 1399 when Pierre de Beaumetz, a tapestry maker, delivers to the Duke of Burgundy three panels of a Story of Fame for three thousand gold écus.25 Not too far distant in time is an illumination from a Trésor des histoires of about 1415,26 showing Scipio Africanus on a triumphal journey. The Roman statesman is seated in a rectangular straight-sided wagon pulled by two horses, one with a rider; three men follow on foot. In the same work Pompey is shown borne in triumph on his throne, placed in a box carried by surrounding horsemen; 21 A. M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving, London, 1938, I, 2: pl. 18 (Love); pl. 19 (Chastity); pl. 20 (Death); pl. 21 (Fame); pl. 22 (Time); pl. 23 (Divinity); pl. 24 (all). For the Vienna triumphs see Mark J. Zucker, ‘The Madonna of Loretto: A Newly Discovered Work by the Master of the Vienna Passion’, Print Quarterly, 6, 2 (June, 1989), 149–160, esp. 150, 150 and fig. 71. 22 Hind, I, 3, pl. 191 (Love); pl. 192 (Chastity); pl. 193 (Death); pl. 194 (Fame); pl. 195 (Time); pl. 196 (Divinity). 23 The woodcuts of the editio princips were printed by Bernardinus Rizus in 1488 (it had decorative black ground borders around the cuts, possibly in homage to the subject and its author; the motif was also used by Plasiis in the 1490 edition). A similar work was printed by Capcasa in 1490/93; A. M. Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, New York, 1963, vol. 2, p. 484, figs. 250, 251 (Dover reprint ed.). 24 D’Essling, p. 150, fig., p. 151. 25 The ‘Tapiz de Fama’ in three pieces in the 1420 inventory of Philip the Good may have been the same work (d’Essling, p. 123). In 1402 the duchess Isabeau de Bavière bought a tapestry of Fame, part of a three-piece series: ‘la première ou est Atrempence et Prudence (11 aulnes de long et 4 de lé), la seconde ou sont Hardiement, Largesse, et Espérans (10 aulnes 1/2), et la troisieme d’une reine appelée la Renommée (3 aulnes 1/2 de long et 4 de lé)’, d’Essling, p. 123. A two-piece set of Fame, of different size from the preceding owned by Charles VI, was sold or otherwise dispersed by the English between 1422 and 1435 after they took Paris. Charles VI also owned several tapestries of the God and Goddess of Love that could have been related to Petrarchan triumphs. 26 M. Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Boucicaut Master, London, 1968, p. 54.

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nothing suggests a classical or Italian model.27 Equally un-Italian is an illustrated Epîstre Othéa manuscript of about 1410 of Christine de Pizan.28 Though her text may be influenced by Italy, her Death figure is not a traditional skeleton. Instead, a wild-haired female Fate, Atropos-Mors, with six-foot arrows in hand, flies over an assembled humanity characterised by six figures, among them a pope, king, bishop, and merchant prince, in manner reminiscent of northern church-portal sculpture.29 However, the North generally adhered to the traditional symbolic skeleton. Research has uncovered no Petrarchan Italian or northern early fifteenth-century triumph models for illuminators. Apparently no text or model of the triumphs was known or even suggested by subsequent works of the first half of the fifteenth century. Instead, Petrarch’s triumphs seem a late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century phenomenon in French literature.30 Tapestries for royalty were probably made on Petrarchan models: what they may have looked like is not known, but given the popularity of northern tapestry art, Bosch was probably acquainted with examples.

No triumphal cart carries a throne nor do the accompanying allegorical figures appear to suggest Italian inspiration, M. Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries, New York, 1974, pp. 23 ff. There may have been an Italian model for this imagery; e.g., the Darmstadt Codex, State Library, Darmstadt, Codex 101 (Padua, ca. 1400), Petrarch, De viris illustribus, folios 9r, 53v (T. Mommsen, ‘Petrarch and the Decoration of the Sala Virorum in Padua’, Art Bulletin, 34, 2, 1952, figs. 17, 29). Also see Gilbert’s article, note 15. 28 According to Meiss, there is another version of slightly earlier date. Limbourgs, fig. 62. 29 Atropos appears again in an early-fifteenth-century miniature as an old woman with a scythe in hand, a coffin over her shoulder (Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, MS 10176–78; folio 112); Meiss, Limbourgs, fig. 121. The manuscript is possibly from Arras: this version’s illuminations of de Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de vie humaine are some of the most striking works of pre-Eyckian realism. A century later Atropos still wields a scythe with the coffin again over her shoulder in a tapestry of the Triumph of Death over Chastity, Burrell Collection, Glasgow, nos. 46–128, there thought to be early-sixteenth-century Brussels work. 30 The Italian De viris illustribus of 1379 of Petrarch with a Gloria scene was probably not available to French manuscript painters; it was then in the Visconti library in Milan (E. Pellegrin, Manuscrits de Pétrarque dans les bibliothèques de France, Padua, 1966, p. 374) (the late Myra D. Orth kindly brought this book to my attention). Nevertheless, late-fourteenthcentury translations of Petrarch’s works are preserved; e.g., the De remediis utriusque fortunae was translated as early as 1378 (as Des remèdes l’une et l’autre fortune ), E. Pellegrin, p. 365. 27

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Not until the third quarter of the century in France do iconographically distinct religious triumphs appear. One such, Le chemin de paradis, known in four manuscript versions, was written in 1457 by Jean Germain, bishop of Nevers, later bishop of Chalons-sur-Saône. Five double-page drawings of a triumphal procession in the Brussels and Philadelphia versions are models for tapestry: Les deux pans de la tapisserie chrétienne (if ever woven, no example exists).31 Philadelphia’s (second) drawing, ff. 40v–41r, shows the Church Triumphant (Fig. 1–5): Comme les tres estats Clerge noblese et peuple en unite de foy font lesglise militant. At the four corners of a building on wheels the Four Fathers of the Church lay hands to the wheels.32 Dante’s model from canto 29 of the Purgatorio seems to have been in the author’s mind. The building’s open side shows common people at the left, then Christ on the Cross, identified as the fountain of grace; on his left are the monarch and members of his court. Farther to the right the seated pope, flanked by bishops, a cardinal, and court members, faces out to the spectator. A wagon tongue extends to the right of the building and continues on the next inserted drawing, La loy de Nature. Philosophers and patriarchs — Plato, Plotinus, Hermes Trismegistus, Adam, Job, and Enoch — walk in front of a wild man riding on a goat with a lighted lantern in one hand, a blank shield in the other, to symbolise natural law. The wagon tongue motif leads to the next insert. Labelled La loy de moyse, Moses, mounted on a curious four-legged beast, part donkey, part eagle, holds the tablets of the Law. Eight prophets walk before him. The sixth insert depicts La loy de Grace. Now the twelve apostles walk before the Church, a crowned female figure holding a chalice, riding a 31 Y. Lacaze, ‘Un representant de la polémique antimusulmane au XV e siècle. Jean Germain, évêque de Nevers et de Chalons-sur-Saone, 1400?–1461. Sa vie, son oeuvre’, École nationale de Chartes, Position de thèse, Paris, 1958, pp. 67–75: two mss. are illustrated: Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, MS IV 823, 1473–74; and the Philadephia Free Library, MS Lewis E 210. See M. Wittek, ed., Cinq années d'acquisitions, Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, 1975, no. 40, pp. 81–85; Katharina Smeyers, ‘Un cortége de triomphe chrétien, Jean Germain’, Le chemin de paradis, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Ms. IV 823; Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts, vols. 11–12, Low Countries Series 8, ed. B. Cardon, Uitgeverij Peeters, Leuven, 2002, n.p. 32 Jerome at left front wears a cardinal’s hat, Ambrose at the far rear wheel wears a bishop’s mitre, Gregory at the near front has a papal tiara; also mitred is Augustine at the far front wheel. Jerome’s wheel is labelled ‘Ystoire’, Ambrose’s ‘Alegorie’, Gregory’s ‘Tropologie’, and Augustine’s wheel ‘Anagogie’. Vandenbroeck (see note 15) illustrates the initial wagon (his

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fantastic creature whose four different heads and legs are parts of the symbols of the Four Evangelists (Fig. 1–6).33 Jean Germain’s artist relies only partially on Dante; the combinations of forms in drawings after the first are religious parallels more in the spirit of drollery amalgams, often cited as antecedents for fantastic forms in Bosch’s paintings. Northern drawings for triumph tapestries, certain in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, become more numerous in succeeding decades. The four copies of Jean Germain’s manuscript provide models concurrent with the earlier years of Bosch’s career. Whether he knew any of them is unknown. But the image of the Church riding on the fantastic union of the Evangelist’s symbols demonstrates that his artistic thought, creating fantastic combinations to our modern eyes, was not foreign to his time, no matter how idiosyncratic its expression. Here is one parallel to his ideas in these models for tapestries. Another is the relation to medieval hermeneutics of the labelling of each wheel turned by the Fathers of the Church in the first miniature, an echo of the methodology of the Parisian schools’ exposition of Scripture according to the four senses, literal-historical, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical. It will be evident Bosch was equally aware of the senses. (A second type of triumph tapestry is contemporaneous with Bosch’s maturity yet has no apparent influence on him: in this variant Petrarchan figures stand triumphantly on recumbent victims).34 fig. 1) but omits discussion and illustration of the subsequent illustrations of the text, important for this study. 33 The last insert follows Philadelphia, folio 170: Comme les saints peres en declarant le Credo ou symbol des apotres fait en iherusalem en divers temps ant compose plusiers symbols. Five groups of bishops symbolise the Councils of the Church. 34 Six drawings of standing figures with sketchy settings, in an early sixteenth-century French manuscript with translated Petrarchan text, could also have been models for tapestry (Arsenal Library, Paris [Pellegrin, pp. 422–424]). For the relationship of drawings to tapestry, see J. Muylle, (‘Big fishes eat little fishes by Pieter Bruegel after Hieronymus Bosch [?]: A Question of Interpretation’, Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, colloque 5, 29 September –1 October 1983, ed. R. van Schoute and D. Hollanders-Favart, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1985, 129–143, pls. 44–49b). The Three Fates stand on recumbent Chastity against a millefleur background in a Flemish tapestry in London; both drawings and tapestry may date from the first quarter of the sixteenth century (G. Wingfield Digby and W. Hefford, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Tapestry Collection, Medieval and Renaissance, London, 1980, no. 26, pp. 39 ff., pls. 45a, b); G. Delmarcel, ‘Text and Image: Some Notes on the Tituli of Flemish “Triumph of Petrarch” Tapestries’, Textile History, 20 (2), 1989, pp. 321–329, adds further examples, and information on French connections with updated bibliography; an appendix [pp. 327–329] gives Latin and French verses of the Petrarchan triumphs).

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Manuscript illuminations of the triumphs parallel the variety in French tapestries in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Here too Italian works were not slavishly followed. For example, a French metrical paraphrase and commentary on Petrarch’s text by Bernardo Illicino in an early-sixteenth-century illustrated Rouen manuscript shows a distant Italian model in its Triumph of Fame over Death (Fig. 1–7).35 Death is bent back by the blast from Fame’s trumpet, its chariot an ordinary cart for hauling. Those of Death’s victims who have been resurrected by Fame’s trumpet stand shoulder deep in neatly cut rectangular slots in the ground; other victims are strewn about in unresurrected piles. This, at variance with Italian examples, seems to borrow from northern Last Judgment and Resurrection scenes. It accentuates in indigenous fashion the underlying religious quality of Petrarch’s poetry. Far more compatible with Bosch’s art is a series of tapestries in Vienna (Figs. 1–8, 1–9, 1–10). Dante’s Purgatorio plays a part in its accompanying figures. However, the tapestries follow Petrarchan order, though not his text; in it, we recall, two white horses pull Cupid’s chariot, the only triumphal cart A Triumph of Love, also a tapestry with standing figures, was purchased by Isabel la Católica at Medina del Campo in 1504 from Brussels tapestry-maker Matys de Guirla (van Giere): ‘Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos’, La epoca, 4, 1874, 459ff.; F. J. Sánchez Canton, Libros, tapices, y cuadros que coleccion Isabel la Católica, Madrid, 1950, pp. 95, 132. The queen’s tapestries entered the collection of the dukes of Infantado at Guadalajara after her death (J. Asselberghs, Chefs-d’oeuvres de la tapisserie flamande, Onzième exposition du château de Culan, 1971, 13, no. 4, exhib. cat., Aspecten van de Laatgotiek in Brabant, Louvain, 1971, pp. 600ff., no. T/2, pl. T/2) . Standing figure tapestries in the Detroit Institute of Arts (Eros) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (Time, Youth, and Eternity), are possibly French; Eros, regrettably only a fragment, is a blindfolded, half-nude, heroic Cupid in a landscape standing on a recumbent figure. Youth and Eternity’s accompanying text speaks of a triumph, but the images do not correspond to Petrarchan types. Time seems more like a Triumph of Hercules, and Eternity is clearly a Christian Coronation of the Virgin (G. Souchal, Masterpieces of Tapestry, from the Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhib. cat., 1973, nos. 64–67). Early-sixteenth-century stained glass panels in the small church of Érvy-le-Châtel near Troyes show frontally placed figures of the triumphs uniquely standing on tiny wheeled platforms instead of on allegorical figures (d’Essling, figs. 237, 240; pp. 201–206). 35 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS fr. 594, fol. 178v.; the manuscript was made for Louis XII; d’Essling, figs. 237–240; Pellegrin, pp. 437–439; partially related but later is the Triumph of Death, Paris, Arsenal MS 6480, fol. 57, the work of Godefroy le Batave, M.D. Orth, ‘The Triumph of Petrarch Illuminated by Godefroy le Batave (Arsenal MS 6480)’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6, 104 (December), 1984, 199, fig. 7.

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he created. As in Italy we see a multiplication of carts, but the northern designer’s changes are unlike anything Italian; in the Triumph of Love (Fig. 1–8) a pair of goats follow two sirens, while two doves replace Petrarch’s two white horses. Urania, identified by name, leads holding a harp. Volupté, seated on the front of the cart, pours perfume from a bottle. Nude Cupid, blindfolded and winged, has clawed feet, obviously connoting evil.36 He holds a bow in his left hand and arrows in his right. Oysivité (Sloth), grasps the spokes of the right rear wheel, helping it to roll over eight recumbent figures: Jason, Hercules, Paris, Helen, Solomon, Herodias, Pyramis, and Thisbe, an impressive conquest (Sloth’s grasping the wheel may echo Jean Germain’s drawings). Two unidentified women and a man follow behind the left wheel of the chariot. In the right distance an open landscape with houses and figures recalls the background of many a Flemish panel picture, strongly suggesting a Lowlands origin for designer and weavers. Unicorns in the Chastity scene pull a chariot led by Vestalle, the Vestal Virgin, with columns and Renaissance decorations on the chariot. The chariots differ from Italian versions, as do the identified figures: Deiphile, mother of Diomedes, and Claudia appear in this Chastity triumph (but not in Petrarch’s text), as Temperance and Abstinence help turn the wheels. Now Cupid is under the chariot wheels; the surrounding figures are Hippo, Lucretia, Hippolytus, and Phedra. Pandora leads the procession in Death’s triumph over Chastity. She holds a box from which writhing snakes escape, à la the iconography of Saint John the Evangelist’s cup. She too is not found in Italian triumphs. The skeleton figure of Death replaces the Three Fates (Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos) who stand under Gothic-arched ornamentation on a wagon pulled by oxen. Viellesse (Old Age) helps to turn the wheels as the cart rolls over recumbent Chastity while Innocence, a young man on the wagon’s front far side, holds up a surgeon’s urine bottle (!). The Triumph of Fame over Death shows the Fates now crushed under the cart wheels (Fig. 1–9). Elephants pull the cart. Fame, winged and wearing a feather skirt (clearly a gift from the New World, thereby dating the tapestries as after 1492), blows a long-stemmed four-belled trumpet. She

36 Blind Cupid, labeled Amor, with bow and arrows and talons, wearing a string of hearts in a fresco, S. Francesco, Assisi, labeled Amor, is ancestor to a like figure in the Viennese tapestry of the Triumph of Love (E. Panofsky, ‘Blind Cupid’, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, New York, Evanston, 1962, pp. 115f., figs. 88, 89).

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trumpets the glory of crowned Emperor Charlemagne, prominently placed at the front of the chariot, holding up the imperial orb and sword. His appearance is unusual. Famous figures surround the cart: Aristotle, Alexander, Homer, Plato, Cicero, and Virgil. Four unidentified men at the upper left are apparently only spectators. Time, old and bearded, runs over Fame and her fabulous trumpet. Turned backwards on his chariot, he holds a clock. Close to his head is a circular form edged by zodiacal signs that recall the snake swallowing its tail in Saturn scenes, with which this representation has similarities. In Italian works Time occasionally holds an hourglass while leaning on a stick or crutch (in an early Italian engraving of six triumphs on a single plate [Fig. 1–3] a female Time holds up an armillary sphere). Around the chariot are Noah, Nestor, Methusaleh, and Adam. In the Triumph of Eternity over Time symbols of the Evangelists (angel, bull, eagle, and winged lion) pull the cart to the right (Fig. 1–10). Little more than the cart’s wheels are visible, for the space is filled with angel heads and clouds out of which emerges the Trinity in the form of the Gnadenstuhl, the Throne of Mercy. God the Father wears a tiara; the whole image rests on a globe on the cart. Marching alongside are the Church Fathers: Ambrose and Augustine flank the front wheels, Jerome in cardinal’s attire is at the right rear wheel, and Gregory, tiara-crowned, follows behind the left rear wheel. Only Jerome is shown in dress and is positioned as in the Chemin de paradis drawing (Fig. 1–5). The previously conquered figures again succumb beneath the wheels of Divinity’s chariot; Cupid, Chastity, the Three Fates symbolising Death, Fame, and Time all pass in review, so to speak, for the grande finale. These tapestries may date to or shortly before the first decade of the sixteenth century. (Baldass thought of them as early sixteenth century and attributed them to Tours.37)

L. Baldass, Katalog der Gobelinsammlung, Austellung im Belvedereschlosse in Wien, 1920, p. 13. Scheicher thought they might have been made in France, that the Claudia named in the Triumph of Chastity referred to Claudia, queen of France (1499–1524). She married Francis I in 1514 but was not crowned queen until 1517, a decade too late for these tapestries which Scheicher herself dated 1508–10: E. Scheicher, ‘Die “Trionfi”, Eine Tapisserienfolge des Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien’, Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, 67, N.F. 31, 1971, 8–46. F. Salet rejects attribution to a French atelier: (‘La Tenture des Triomphes du Musée de Vienne’, Bulletin monumental, 131–1, 1973, 59–61); citing age and costume as inappropriate to her thesis. Furthermore, Claudia’s emblem, ‘un vol de cynge, ou même un cygne entier . . .’ is absent (M. J. Chapée, Description 37

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Another version of the series is found in England, three of one set at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, four of another at Hampton Court Palace, attributed to Brussels manufacture. Bearing dates between 1500 and 1510, the Hampton Court Palace Triumph of Chastity actually has two dates, 1507 and 1510.38 Their costumes show more manneristic detail, while Jacob van Oostsanen’s 1507 woodcuts of the Life of the Virgin show similarly styled female bonnets.39 The Viennese tapestries seem earlier in design than the first decade of the sixteenth century when compared with contemporaneous proto-Mannerist Flemish painting because of their less ample space and less crowded character. In terms of costume they are roughly of like date in manufacture with the English tapestries and so may reflect an updated model. The contrast in quality of conception and even execution between the Vienna tapestries and the Brussels series in England may be responsible for the attribution to French workshops. In these years of the early sixteenth century, Brussels and Tournai upheld a standard of quality the Vienna works do not meet. historique et critique, I e du Livre des Prières de la Reine Claude de France, II e d’un Chansonnier, manuscrit du XVI e siècle ayant appartenu a Grolier, par MM. Henry Expert et Lortic, Paris, Librairie Lortic, 1897, p. 5. (My grateful thanks to Myra D. Orth for her generous assistance in furnishing this reference.) The emblem is not seen, as would normally be the case for a living person so honoured. H. Göbel, Wandteppiche, I, Die Niederlände, II, Leipzig, 1923, pls. 72, 73, 75 (Triumphs of Love, Death, and Divinity, respectively), considered the Vienna tapestries to be of northern French manufacture of the beginning of the sixteenth century. A. Bennett (Five Centuries of Tapestry from the Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco, 1976, exhib. cat., no. 17, pp. 86ff.) dated a San Francisco fragment of the Triumph of Fame over Death as part of another series. It includes the Triumph of Fame over Death example in Brussels, Musées royaux d’art et d’histoire, with examples from this same later series in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Hyde Collection, Glen Falls, N.Y.; all these are dated as ca. 1500–1510. Digby, pp. 37–39, no. 25, pl. 42, discusses a fragment of a Triumph of Eternity over Time, and dates it as early-sixteenth-century French or Flemish; he also puts the Victoria and Albert fragment in the Brussels-Metropolitan Museum group along with a fragment of Virgil from a Triumph of Fame tapestry in the Seattle Museum of Art. Apparently unaware of the San Francisco and Glen Falls fragments, he considers the non-Viennese tapestries inferior, and the Brussels example particularly coarse (as does Scheicher). Crick-Kunziger’s opinion of a Flemish origin (Bruges) is cited in Musées royaux d’art et d’histoire, Catalogue des tapisseries, Brussels, 1956, no. 22, pl. 30. 38 Digby, nos. 22–24, pp. 36–38, Pls. 36–41, 42 A–B, 43 A–B. 39 F. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, V, Amsterdam, n.d., no. 84, pp. 141–142. Similar female headdresses appear in Gerard David’s 1509 Virgin and Child with Saints, Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts.

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G. van Ysselsteyn suggested Emperor Maximilian I as the commissioner of the Vienna series, a credible hypothesis,40 though he was incorrect in saying that Charlemagne has no connection with the Petrarchan text; he is referred to obliquely in part 2 of the Triumph of Fame. Charlemagne was held in high esteem: he appears in Tournai tapestries of the fifteenth century, earlier the Limbourg Brothers showed Charlemagne in the Belles Heures, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and one remembers Dürer’s later portrait for the Nuremberg town hall. Maximilian, ‘the last knight’, was very much attached to his Habsburg and Burgundian past. One can believe he would have commissioned a tapestry series that put his ancestor Charlemagne in a prominent position, as he appears in the Vienna Triumph of Fame. Maximilian, we know, began projects that demanded more money than he had at his disposal at the time; economising constantly, quite likely he ordered these tapestries from a less expensive centre than Brussels or Tournai. The tapestries have always been close to the Hapsburg court, so far as I know. They may have come directly to him from a less popular and less costly centre — Bruges as Crick-Kuntziger thought, Ghent, Louvain, Audenarde, or Enghien (there were thousands of tapestry workers nearby in the first third of the sixteenth century), from which towns it is known that tapestries also came, though their products have been impossible to identify. A Flemish source seems most reasonable; Maximilian certainly would not have patronised a French atelier such as Tours, occasionally proposed as the source of the tapestries (lately by Scheicher). Maximilian’s opposition to France is too well known; furthermore, the best tapestry workers were his own Flemish subjects. It is not unlikely that this was a relatively early commission by Maximilian, probably before 1500. The last word should be that of André Chastel: ‘On ne plus parler d’ateliers français, parisiens, ou des “bords de la Loire”. Les premiers avait cessé, les autres n’ont jamais existé. . . . La fabrication est presque toujours flamande. . . .’41 What then relates these images to the central panel of Bosch’s Haywain triptych? Specific motifs in Bosch’s painting clearly parallel the Italian

40 G. van Ysselsteyn, Tapestry, the Most Expensive Industry of the 15th and 16th Centuries, a renewed research into technic [sic], origin and iconography, The Hague/Brussels, 1969, pp. 68–70, 41 André Chastel, L’art français, temps modernes, 1430–1620, Paris, 1994, p. 21.

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1–7. Triumph of Fame over Death, Triomphe de Pétrarque, Rouen, ca. 1500–10, 13⅜ x 10¼ in. (34 x 26 cm). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms. Fr. 594, fol. 178v.

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1–8 (left, top). Triumph of Love, ca. 1500–10. Flemish tapestry, 14¼ x 19 ft. (4.31 x 5.80 m). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gobelin Collection, Vienna. 1–9 (left, bottom). Triumph of Fame over Death, ca. 1500–10. Flemish tapestry, 13⅝ x 17⅞ ft. (4.14 x 5.42 m). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gobelin Collection, Vienna. 1–10 (above). Triumph of Eternity over Time, ca. 1500–10. Flemish tapestry, 13⅝ x 17⅞ ft. (4.14 x 5.42 m). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gobelin Collection, Vienna.

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1−11. Keeping Secrets, from Brant’s Das Narrenschiff, 1494, chap. 51, Bergmann von Olpe, Basel. Woodcut, 8⅝ x 6⅛ in. (22 x 15.5 cm).

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1−12. H. Bosch (?), Haywain, right wing, interior, foreground detail. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

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Petrarchan triumphs. Others may have been inspired by northern transformations of the Petrarchan forms. For example, the group in Bosch’s central panel at lower left is related to the Italian Triumph of Love, with knowledge of it possibly derived from Florentine prints. A man lies on his back, his knees drawn up and his head almost in the lap of a nun holding a baby (her headdress is like that of the women in the right foreground serving the fat monk). A parallel image is Apollonio di Giovanni’s shop portrayal of Samson and Delilah on three different birth salvers: transmission to Bosch could have come by way of prints or manuscript illumination, for the Samson and Delilah theme was popular in the North,42 so much so that Bosch’s figure group’s origin cannot be attributed to a single source. The southern Samson and Delilah group with a stretched-out, drunken nude Samson on his side differs from our clothed northern Samson turned over on his back, knees drawn up and arms outstretched (Bosch will use the pose again for the nude figure on axis one third of the way up the central panel of the Garden triptych), and Delilah is instead a sinful nun with hands joined in prayer but a baby is cradled in her arms. The colour symbolism of her pinkish red dress is undoubtedly intended to mark out a religious who has consorted with a man and borne a child, sinful behaviour that Bosch seems to equate with the action of the drunken Samson. In front of him lies an empty bowl while another bowl is close at hand, both of them mementos of the folly of drunkenness. Clothed Samson is also found in the North in the Narrenschiff illustration to chapter 51, ‘Keeping Secrets’ (Fig. 1–11),43 reminding us that Bosch knew its popular text, having used it in another context.44 The folly of Samson with Delilah expresses the theme of female dominance, which also characterises the Aristotle and Phyllis theme (another symbol of folly, in this

See Callmann, pls. 103–106: also d’Essling, fig. 117, identified as a manuscript of triumphs, dated 1456 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ital. 545: also Pellegrin, pp. 323–325), shows Samson and Delilah, and Phyllis riding Aristotle. 43 Zeydel, The Ship of Fools, p. 180, no. 51. Not found in S. L. Smith, The Power of Women: A Topos In Medieval Art and Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). 44 Ch. D. Cuttler, ‘Bosch and the Narrenschiff : A Problem in Relationships’, Art Bulletin, 51, 1969, pp. 272–276. 42

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case of the wise man): Aristotle ridden by Phyllis is well known from the Housebook Master’s print 45 with southern counterparts in Italian prints (Fig. 1–3), birth salvers and illuminations.46 There is no direct borrowing of their concepts in Bosch’s painting, but in several other groups Bosch seems to treat female dominance as not only folly but also sinful behaviour. This belief is visible in the groups close to the wagon wheels: the woman restrained by a monk from striking a man on the ground with her fist, and the homicidal woman to the left who attacks with a knife the ‘dancing’ cripple, and the man in front of the rear wheel about to have his throat cut for his hay. Savage dominance of one figure over another extends even to murder. It carries the folly of dominance of women over men to greater consequence than the Aristotle and Phyllis theme Bosch rejected: the theme of Samson and Delilah, both biblical and named by Petrarch, best expresses for him the consequences of sinful sexual behaviour and excessive drink. Dante and Petrarch influenced Bosch through the triumphs either by text or by images like those in the Germain tapestry designs in which the church fathers turn the wheels, as in Dante. The Vienna tapestry group shows Petrarchan multiplication of carts overrunning figures of antiquity, the turning wheels there reflected in Bosch in the haywain itself. Particularly evident is the similar motif of the man on his knees about to be run over by the front wheel. Clearly traceable to the concept of the Triumph of Death (cf. Fig. 1–4) are Bosch’s figures following the wagon — pope, emperor, princes, and followers — though a specific influence of Lorenzo Costa’s picture, also Petrarchan, seems doubtful: it lacks a clear path of transmission. The small frontal figure of Christ centrally placed in the sky above the procession and the strongly symmetrical arrangement of the figures on top of the hay wagon were probably based in whole or in part on the Triumph of Divinity theme seen in manuscripts and tapestries, with the added impression on the painter of the influence of the Triumph of Love. And Bosch’s hay cart itself, pulled by demons half-human, half-animal, shows knowledge of its antecedents adapted to Christian and imperial aspirations, as in Jean Germain’s treatise drawings and the Vienna Triumph of Fame tapestry. 45 J. C. Hutchison, ‘The Housebook Master and the Folly of the Wise Man’, Art Bulletin, 48, 1966, pp. 73–78. 46 Callmann, pls. 105–106.

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The fantastic combination of animals seen in the Germain drawings, La loy de moyse and La loy de Grace (Fig. 1–6), could have worked on Bosch’s imagination if they or others like them were known to him. The fantasy of the Germain combinations seems in keeping with Bosch’s basic outlook. One can make a like claim for the more unusual forms in the Vienna tapestries. What is certain is that Bosch’s acceptance of Italian triumph figures is far from slavish; though they can ultimately be derived from Italy, Bosch transformed triumph into sin. French manuscript illuminations and tapestries such as examples in the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art (see note 34) also transform Petrarch-influenced forms, but not so radically as does Bosch, who superimposed on the classicising spirit an emphatic Christianising moral fervour. My search for an illuminated manuscript of Petrarch’s triumphs in Flemish library catalogues to serve as a Boschian model was not successful; an illuminated manuscript in Bruges, dated 1470, contains various of Petrarch’s religious and moralising writings, but no illustrated triumphs.47 To judge from the evident paucity of his triumph manuscripts they were apparently not popular at the Burgundian court of our period — though this does not mean ignorance of them, as the Viennese, London and Hampton Court tapestries show. No triumph tapestries appear in the court records and inventories of tapestries owned by Maximilian or Philip the Handsome, despite named Flemish tapestry workers, possibly paid only for repairs. Not all the ideas in the Haywain, even its central panel, were inspired by reaction to Dante’s Commedia or to Petrarch’s triumphs. No direct transference by Bosch follows a reading of Petrarch’s triumphs. But they seem responsible for the figures overrun by the wheels of the successive carts and the avaricious groups in front of Bosch’s cart: the hay cart itself, in addition to being a Petrarchan echo, can also be suggested by floats in Netherlandish 47 Bruges, Grand Seminary 113/78. Made for Jan Crabbe, abbot of the Dunes monastery near Bruges, the model for the manuscript was Italian. Exhibited hors catalogue in the 1994 Bruges Hans Memling exhibition, it was published in the 1981 Bruges exhibition catalogue, Vlaamse kunst op perkament, pp. 181–82 (I thank Dirk De Vos for this information). Its single miniature has been attributed to the Bruges Master of Mary of York (L. M. J. Delaissé, La miniature flamande, le mécenat de Philippe le Bon, Brussels, Amsterdam, 1959, no. 166, p. 134). For Jan Crabbe see A. Arnould and J. M. Massing, Splendours of Flanders, Late Medieval Art in Cambridge Collections, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 1991, pp. 204–219.

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processions, as well as models for drawings like those of Jean Germain’s tapestries; its imagery includes the concept of Church and State, rolling wheels, and a parallel to the Gnadenstuhl, the Throne of Mercy of the Vienna tapestries. To Bosch’s other northern traditions, such as the Hell scenes in famous manuscripts like the Hours of Catherine of Cleves or the Vision of Tondalus, now in the Getty collection, we owe the drama of his Hell panel, also the popular idea of building a tower in Hell and other acts of demons and condemned sinners, except for one decisive motif: inspired by Dante’s Divina Commedia, Bosch’s four-legged creature (Fig. 1–12) in the foreground of the Hell panel, closest to the viewer, translates into paint the terrifying metamorphosis described so vividly in the Inferno, canto 25, lines 50–80, particularly lines 70–77: The two heads were by now to one comprest, When there before our eyes two forms begin To mix in one where neither could be traced. Two arms were made where the four hands had been; The belly and legs and with the thighs Became such members as were never seen. Each former aspect was annulled, and lo, The unnatural image seemed neither and both . . .48 In this fashion Bosch shows, as in no other of his paintings, knowledge of the great medieval religious traditions of Italy. By not rejecting the sins and follies that continuously entice both men and women, Bosch points with pessimism to humanity’s obvious disregard for salvation. Chapter 47 of the Narrenschiff, the Ship of Fools, is also relatMilano, pp. 133–134. Von Einem refers to Dante’s influence on the right wing (which, curiously he calls a prelude to Hell, despite unworldly activities and the flames in the background). He only refers to Botticelli’s drawings for the Inferno (see K. Clark, The Drawings by Sandro Botticelli for Dante’s Divine Comedy, New York, London, 1976, esp. Inferno 25: also Royal Academy of Arts, exhibition catalogue, London, March 17–June 10, 2001). Botticelli’s drawings show combat between nude men and demons; however, Bosch’s foremost figure is a transformation, conceptually unlike anything by the Italian artist, and his sinners in Hell are merely escorted. Von Einem considers that Bosch could have known the classically nude Botticelli drawings: they were published in 1481 in nineteen engravings by Niklas Lorenz of Breslau (von Einem, p. 97, and n. 68), but Bosch’s foreground figure is formally sui generis. 48

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ed to the desire for worldly goods represented by the hay cart, and sinful gluttons may be symbolised, among many, by the fat monk in the lower right-hand corner, drink in hand, who has nuns do his work while he turns from the vision of Christ in the sky above, an obvious rejection of the message which a proper Christian should heed. The appeal of worldly goods instead of Christian salvation is also seen in Bosch’s Death of the Miser (National Gallery, Washington, D.C. — Fig. 4–7). Though a wing panel, not a central image like the Haywain scene, it too shows the consequences of falling prey to temptation in a single example of Avarice, a danger awaiting those of even high station who disregard the message of salvation through Christ’s sacrifice. The triumph is Bosch’s vehicle, literally and figuratively, in which the sins show the ways the human race falls away from the possibility of achieving eternal salvation: in the Haywain’s pictorial encyclopedia Avarice dominates, but other sins are readily identified. Anger is personified in the woman with a knife attacking a cripple; Pride can be found in the notables following the wagon; we find Luxuria in the amatory actions atop the load; there is Gluttony in drink; and Avarice fills the monk’s sack; with Envy it even attempts to steal hay from those who have it. Sloth is present in the drunk on his back, suggesting that Bosch was not laboriously trying to mark out all the sins. A sufficiency of sinful activity may, however, give that impression. Further, reflection of the method of hermeneutical progression of the senses from the literal onward seems allied to Bosch’s illustration of sins. Drawing his ideas from the vast repertory of forms and concepts available, he was aware of the dominant currents of his day, expressing in emphatic Christian terms the need for salvation in the face of the ultimate cataclysm: the terrible consequence of disregarding the message is emphasised by figures metamorphising into a demonic horde pulling the wagon to Hell. Underlying Bosch’s formal concepts is his reaction to the classical triumph, for he has conceived his painting as an apocalyptic anti-triumph. Worldly goods — their pursuit honoured by the worldly and religious powers following the wagon who acquiesce in their pursuit — are shown to be worthless in the final summing up; for Christ is attired, significantly, as the Christ of the Last Judgment. Humanity disregards its true goal: the attainment of salvation. Unseen by humans and demons alike, only the angel atop the wagonload of the world’s goods is aware of the figure high in the

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sky. Here, in the first of his three triptychs illustrating the way to salvation, is Bosch’s most virulent pessimism; it even omits the Virgin Mary, patron of his confraternity, an essential element in any Last Judgment. In retrospect the pedlar on the exterior was meant by Bosch to be the perfect introduction to the opened triptych: like Dante, though he has no Virgil, he is on a search that will take him, symbol for all humanity, through a sinful, heedless world with physical dangers on the exterior and spiritual dangers on the interior. Unless they are countered by a Christian life, Antichrist and the Apocalypse leading to Hell’s torments will reign. The Devil can be conquered only by faith in the Christ of the imminent Last Judgment in the sky above.

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The Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony

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U lux astrorum, tu decus astrigerum’, sang medieval monks in praise of monasticism’s legendary founder, Saint Anthony Abbot: ‘Anachoreta potens, pastor, patriarcha, magister . . .’ In adoration and reverence the laity was equally fervent when at the close of the medieval period Saint Anthony achieved his apogee in art, literature, and the popular mind.1

1 Born at Coma, Egypt, in 251, Anthony was the pious son of rich Christians. Their death when he was about eighteen or twenty left him wealthy, but he gave his money away to lead a life of piety (following Matthew 19:21). Devilish temptations in the form of evil thoughts, lusts, and desires of all kinds soon disturbed him, the Devil even assuming the most seductive feminine form to shake his resolve, but without success. Anthony left his village to live in the tombs nearby, and there underwent the famous temptation so frequently depicted in art and literature. According to Caxton’s translation of the Vitae patrum, he arranged with a kinsman that ‘in certayn dayes he sholde sende hym for to lyve for the sustenacyon of his lyfe’ after which he shut the door upon the world without. ‘And the devylles came in grete multytude. whyche brake upp the doore/ And bete hym soo moche that he had loste his voyce and his herynge/ And he beynge lefte so sore hurte and wounded/ that the payne of his woundes surmounted all tormentes of mankynde’. Fortunately his kinsman returned, found the saint unconscious and ‘toke hym on his necke and bare hym unto his house’. Anthony revived after nightfall when all were asleep except his kinsman, and asked that he be carried back to the tomb. Again alone, after prayer he dared the Devil to do his worst: ‘And Incontinent was made a grete tempeste. that the hous was broken on al sydes/ And therin entred a innumerable multytude of devyles in divers formes/ Some in lykenesse of bulles. and other of lyons. of dragons, of wulves. of addres. of Serpentes & scorpyons. and the other in dyverse formes, as of liepardes/ tygres. & beres. eche of hem cried after his nature’. But Anthony mocked them, confident in his faith, and they were powerless against

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In Bosch’s message supporting humanity’s endeavour to lead a Christian life and achieve salvation, the cult of saints plays an important part, reflecting their growing thaumaturgic importance in late medieval times. Saints Christopher, Egidius, Jerome — as penitent and in prayer — both Saints John — the Baptist and the Evangelist — Saint Peter, and female Saints Agnes and Mary Magdalen appear in paintings by him, his shop, and his close followers. Most numerous in preservation of all Bosch’s work are his pictures of Saint Anthony Abbot, fourth-century founder of western monasticism and patron saint of the Hospital Order of Saint Anthony Abbot. By 1477 its 192 hospitals extended from England to Italy and from Hungary to Acre in Palestine. Awareness of Anthony’s life and temptations, subsequently embellished in literature and art, was due not so much to the high monastic ideal he represented as to the efforts of the Hospital Order. Its attempts to cure the endemic gangrenous disease known as Saint Anthony’s fire (ignis saceri; probably ergotism) resulted in Anthony’s elevation to the position of a sainted protector, along with Saints Roch and Sebastian, against the plague and other medieval ills. As a result Anthony passed from the monastic realm to that of thaumaturgy and popular acclaim as a plague saint.

him. ‘Wherefore our lord whyche levyth not his servauntes in dangeour/ Seenge the vyctorye of his goode knyghte saynt Anthonye/ came for to vysyte hym/ Descendynge as a lyghte in to his habytacyon/ After whyche lyghte receyved. all his paynes and soores were heelyd/ And his hous whyche was al to broken was Incontynent made agayne/ Saynt Anthonye knewe thenne that god was come to comforte him/ And began to crye/ O my god/ O good Jhesus where wert thou whan I was thus scorged all this daye Why earnest thou not atte begynnynge for to heele my woundes and scores/ The voyce ansueryd/ Anthonye I was here/ But I taryed thy vyctorye/ And now bi cause thou haste strongly foughten. I shall alwaye helpe the/ And shall make thy name by renommed thorugh oute all the worlde/ The whyche voyce herde. He arros up and was more stronge and constaunte to praye god thanne he was to fore/ And he was atte that tyme .xxxv. yere olde’ (St. Jerome, Vitas [sic] patrum. , . translated out of Frensshe into Englysshe by William Caxton, Westminster, Wynkyn de Worde, 1495, fol. xxxiii v–xxxiv r). The details of Anthony’s life were first recounted in St. Athanasius’ Vita antonii. They became widely known when the Evagrian translation into Latin two centuries later was incorporated into the Vitae patrum, and available to all through Jean de Vignai’s translation of Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea, where the Athanasian account appears in abbreviated form. The translation appeared by 1348 and was extremely popular among the laity. For further details see C. D. Cuttler, ‘Some Grünewald Sources’, Art Quarterly, 19, 2, 1956, pp. 102–103.

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Bosch continually repeated the theme of salvation of a foolish, evil world through Christ’s sacrifice. This is the subject of the exterior grisailles of Bosch’s Temptation of Saint Anthony triptych (Fig. 2–1): the Taking of Christ and the Carrying of the Cross are equated with the interior scenes of Anthony’s temptations. Anthony’s elevation to a position close to that of Christ had been suggested in earlier northern illuminations of an enthroned saint impervious to demonic assault, but here it receives concrete expression.2 Anthony, as we know from Saint Athanasius’ Neoplatonic account of his life, represents a type, the heroic, most-elevated soul, tempted more strongly than ordinary mortals, yet resistant to the fiercest attack upon his belief. It is in keeping with the spirit of late medieval symbolism that Anthony should be identified with Christ in an irrationality characteristic of symbolically oriented thinking, a ‘short-cut’ of the sort described by Huizinga.3 Bosch’s sensitivity to the dominant aspects of his age resulted in their most lucid exposition in the Lisbon triptych. Moralising in intent, its motives drawn from many sources, it is a pictorial attack upon popular superstitions. The inner left wing of the Lisbon triptych (Fig. 2–2) is an introduction to the scenes of the central panel and right wing. In the centre of the wing the unconscious Anthony is carried across a bridge by a layman and two monks. Saint Athanasius’ Vita antonii mentions only a single bearer, but Bax has shown that the source for Bosch’s scene is probably a Dutch version of the Legenda aurea printed at Gouda in 1478 by Gheraert Leeu.4 If there is a compositional relationship in the left wing to the central panel, Bosch has departed further from the Athanasian account in the left wing by representing an unconscious Anthony being returned to his tomb-cell (shown in the central panel) after his beating by demons. According to Saint Athanasius, Anthony was unconscious on his return to the village and conscious when brought back to his cell.

2 British Library, Yates Thompson 3, Hours of Jean Dunois, fol. 265v; Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, MS 2004, fol. 232v; Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, MS 214, fol. 163v; N.Y., Morgan Library, MS 74, fol. 187r, etc. 3 J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, London, 1924, p. 184. 4 D. Bax, Ontcijfering van Jeroen Bosch, The Hague, 1949, pp. 6, 8, n.6. It relates that ‘sijn broederen’ (his brothers) brought him back to the village after his initial demonic beating.

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2−1. H. Bosch, Temptation of Saint Anthony, exterior wings, ca. 1500–05. Panel, 51⅞ x 20⅞ in. (131.7 x 53 cm) (each wing). Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

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2−2. H. Bosch, Temptation of Saint Anthony, interior wings. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

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2−3. H. Bosch, Temptation of Saint Anthony, interior, central panel, 51⅞ x 46⅞ in. (131.5 x 119 cm). Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

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2−4. Master of Mary of Burgundy, Events from the life of Saint Anthony, Voustre Demeure Hours, ca. 1490−95. Illumination, 5⅛ x 3 13/16 in. (13 x 9.7 cm). Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, MS E 14 Tesoro (Vit. 25-5), folio 191r.

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2−5. H. Bosch, Temptation of Saint Anthony, interior, left wing, detail, skater. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

2−6. H. Bosch, Temptation of Saint Anthony, central panel, detail, Saint Anthony blessing. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

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Anthony’s elevation and beating by demons is seen in the sky above. One demon dives under his cloak in a manner found earlier in the Madrid book of hours (ca. 1480–95) by the Master of Mary of Burgundy (Fig. 2–4).5 Hands raised in prayer (Fig. 2–2), Anthony is bent backwards over the upturned belly of an outstretched, winged toad.6 A fox-headed demon emerges from under his cloak and beats him with a branch.7 A twin-tailed, armoured merman rides an open-mouthed fish to attack the saint with another fish for a lance. Now mermaids were equated in the Physiologus of Theobaldus with lying men who speak fair but do evil deeds, thereby destroying men’s souls.8 And this figure is a close parallel to the goading soldier on the exterior grisaille of the Taking of Christ scene. The parallel is not accidental. Further attack comes from a winged catfish carrying a boat on its back. In the boat are a diving fish, a naked man, seen from behind bent double with his head between his legs, and several tiny men who man the ship. One climbs the rigging to repair the broken mast. Another naked man in a trailing dory stands on his head to augment the erotic aura already created by the other naked figure.9 The boat and its contents have been convincingly related by Bax to illustrations of the whale in English thirteenth-century bestiaries.10 Bosch, however, is not merely repeating an interesting artistic form but is reinterpreting it in relation to the black art of witchcraft. The key is found in the inverted figures.11 The antecedent cited by Charles de Tolnay, Hieronymus Bosch, Basel, 1937, pl. 127, (revised, 1965, English ed., 1966), is a highly Italianate early fifteenth-century Paris book of hours (British Library, MS Add. 29433, fol. 89). Bosch, however, is clearly following the established line of Antonite iconography seen closer to his own day in the art of the Master of Mary of Burgundy (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS E XIV Tesoro Vit. 25–5, fol. 191; photo Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid); also in Otto Paecht, The Master of Mary of Burgundy, London, 1948, pl. 22b. 6 The toad obviously would have had demonic associations in art and literature (Gustav Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Leipzig, 1869, 1, p. 346). 7 Bax’s explanation (pp. 33f.) of the two dry branches underneath the toad as symbolic of dissolute revelers seems unconvincing, as is his conception of the fox head as a dog head. In the painting of the Seven Deadly Sins in the Prado, a fox-headed demon holds a mirror for a primping woman in the scene of Superbia, or Vainglory, Tolnay, pl. 4. The fox also appears in the Ancren riwle (Francis Gasquet, ed., The Nun’s Rule Being the Ancren riwle . . ., London, 1926, p. 148) as a symbol of cupidity. 8 See note 64, p. 88. 9 Bax (pp. 34f.) overaccentuates the erotic aura. 10 Bax, pp. 35, 38 n. 76; fig. 105. 5

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Below the aerial temptation a kneeling man lifts his arrow-pierced forehead to the scene above. Grass grows over his back; he is rooted in earth, which to Bosch meant being rooted in sin. The woman in the window at the left of this strange structure is a prostitute waiting for customers. That popular moral treatise, the Somme le roi, tells us that prostitution is the ninth branch of the sin of avarice.12 A strange quartet approaches this sinful structure, led on by a mitred figure who gestures with a three-fingered hand to direct his equally strange followers. One, a fat bird in a monk’s gown, may satirise monkish sins.13 Another is a stag-headed figure dressed in a red cloak, in itself insufficient evidence for considering this figure to be a castigated cardinal.14 Close to Bosch’s own day and thus pertinent is the characterisation found on folio 19v of the Ovide moralisé printed at Bruges in 1484 by Colard Mansion; ‘le cerf cornu cest le diable plain dorgueil’.15 The mitred figure symbolises heresy and heretical belief, a branch of the deadly sin of Pride, according to the Somme le roi 16 (to which sin the stag is also related, as in Mansion’s Ovide moralisé). Behind and to the left of Anthony and his bearers is the fantastic form of a head with wings (a demonic face at the base of one), growing from the For a detailed analysis of this group, the group in the middle zone below, and the aerial riders on the right wing, see Charles D. Cuttler, ‘Witchcraft in a Work by Bosch’, Art Quarterly, 20, 1957, pp. 129–140. 12 W. Nelson Francis, ed., The Book of Virtues and Vices. A Fourteenth-Century English Translation of the Somme le Roi of Lorens d’Orleans, Edited from the Three Extant Manuscripts, Early English Text Society, original series, no. 217, p. 41. 13 See Bax, pp. 24–25. He interprets this bird as symbolic of excesssive drinking and gossiping. But the citation of similar works by followers and imitators is far from being convincing proof of their meaning in Bosch’s art. 14 Bax, p. 25. In the moralising tales of the fourteenth-century Franciscan, Nicole Bozon, an elaborate parallel is drawn between a rutting stag and a lecherous man (Lucy Toulmin Smith and Paul Meyer, Les contes moralisés. Publiés pour la première fois d’après les manuscrits de Londres et de Cheltenham, Société des anciens textes français, 1884, pp. 56–57). 15 Hain-Copinger 12164. Other equally curious motifs are present in the Ovid and are of a nature which would have had a ready appeal to Bosch: grotesque animals with human heads, tritons conceived as fish blowing on trumpets, Neptune as the devil of the sea, and the tritons as ‘gengleurs, les avant parliers et les adulateurs et les flateurs’. Similar birds and animals are seen with Diana the huntress with these birds and animals in A. J. J. Delen, ‘L’illustration du livre en Belgique’, in Histoire du livre et de l’imprimerie en Belgique des origins à nos jours, Brussels, 1930, 2, p. 96. 16 Francis, p. 15. The book was particularly popular in Holland, where five editions were printed before 1500 (Delen, p. xxxi). 11

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posterior of a high-booted horse. Armless and without torso, it blows on a bagpipe through a long, thin tube. A jay is perched on its tail. Equally enigmatic is the arrow piercing the haunch, and the sword in its flank like a blade in a scabbard. Bagpipes blown by fantastic creatures are commonplace in drollery illustrations in fifteenth-century manuscripts, while demonic associations with this idea can be found in a Hell scene in a Cité de Dieu manuscript in Brussels, where a demon blows on the pipes.17 The curious piercing motif, frequently found in Bosch’s paintings, has a parallel in astrological manuscripts of Albumasar in the figure of the third dean of Libra (from the Persian Sphaera). One such manuscript of the early fourteenth century (British Museum, MS Sloan 3983) apparently served as a model for Flemish astrological manuscripts of the early fifteenth century; quite possibly it was known to Bosch.18 Above this figure appears a scorpion-tailed fish with a church tower on its back. A round shield at its side suggests wheels, though its motive power is furnished by grasshopper legs. Another fish disappears into its mouth, suggesting that it illustrates the Flemish proverb so well known from the work of Pieter Bruegel: ‘The big fish eat the little fish’. Bax interpreted this creature in relation to its parts; the grasshopper or locust (only the legs are present) as symbolic of hypocrisy.19 But the scorpion also has the connotation of lust.20 By such a fragmented approach Bosch’s figure cannot be properly understood; detailed analysis of the several meanings of constituent parts is not sufficient to explain the whole. The correct interpretation may be indicated by the action of swallowing a fish while at the same time greedily eyeing the apparently edible ball dangling from the pole held by the little man riding at the base of the tower on the creature’s back. The ball used as a steering device calls to mind the method employed by Alexander in the popular medieval account of his voyage into the upper air, his ‘vehicle’ (often a cage) borne up by griffins. If the Boschian model in the Prado Seven Deadly Sins Bibliothèque royale, MS 9006, fol. 265v., a work in the Guillbert de Mets manner of ca. 1420–1435; illus. in Camille Gaspar et Frédéric Lyna, Les principaux manuscrits à peintures de la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique des origins à nos jours. 2, Paris, Société française de reproductions de manuscrits à peintures, 1945, pp. 40–45, pl. 125b. 18 Illus. in Warburg, fig. 177; also cf. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, p. 107. 19 Bax, pp. 19–20, 29, 149–150. 20 Gasquet, p. 148. 17

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panel be allowed, then Envy is the sin characterised by this creature. There a dog with bones at his feet eyes with greed the bone in the hand of a man leaning on the half door.21 Bosch seemingly had both Greed and Envy in mind in designing this fantastic form. By adding a church tower to the creature’s back, he has alluded to the rapacity of the Church. Probably the motif was suggested by illuminations of battle scenes in various fifteenth-century manuscrits de luxe, such as the Grandes chroniques de France or Livy’s Histoire romaine, in which elephants carry armoured howdahs on their backs.22 The tail in this creature’s mouth recalls an elephant’s trunk to further suggest that beast as part of the artist’s inspiration. According to medieval lore, the elephant was ‘notoriously sluggish in sexual matters’ and thus came to be associated with Chastity.23 One is therefore not unduly astonished to find the elephant with a tower on its back considered a symbol of the Virgin.24 The Physiologus says the female elephant cannot conceive unless she first plucks the mandrake from outside the gate of Paradise, then eats and offers it to her mate to awaken his sexual desires. The moral of the tale presents the elephant as ‘the prototype of the ideal Christian spouse who will mate without sexual appetite, solely for the sake of offspring’.25 Bosch’s unvirtuous creature, however, symbolizes the very opposite of such chaste behaviour as it advances down the path toward a dwelling of contraindication, a house of prostitution. It is clear that in this sinful world Christian virtues are transformed everywhere into their opposites. In the background of the left wing lies a bay dotted with sunken ships, past which sails a ship that has yet to meet the fate of the others. A flaming beacon stands high on the rocks to the right, while a cross is seen in the plain below. This scene has been interpreted as related to the Netherlandish Tolnay, pl. 5a. According to Wm. S. Heckscher (‘Bernini’s Elephant and Obelisk’, Art Bulletin, 29, 1947, p. 158, and n. 20) the elephant entered the West through Alexander’s victory over King Porus, aided by his war elephants with towers on their backs. The relationship between the mahout steering Bosch’s creature à la Alexander is striking. 23 Heckscher, p. 176, and n. 109. 24 Cf. ibid., p. 161, n. 31. For a relationship between elephant, castle, and Dame Church in the accounts of Olivier de la Marche, cf. ibid., p. 167, n. 55. The Turk, suggested in Bosch by the crescent on the staff of the three-fingered mitred man, is one of the attackers of the Fortress of Faith in the illumination of Alphonsus de Spina’s Fortalitum fidei, Brussels, Bibl. roy. MS 9524, ca. 1470–85. 25 Heckscher, p. 173. 21 22

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proverb, ‘A wreck in the water serves as a beacon’, with the flaming beacon assumed to be false and the work of the Devil in contrast to the true beacon of the cross: one hesitates to accept this explanation because of the insignificance of the cross in relation to the beacon.26 The evil trio beneath the bridge 27 is approached by a funnel-crowned, sleepy-eyed bird on skates (Fig. 2–5). A missive is spiked on its beak, with an inscription that can be read as ‘oisuif ’, with a reversed ‘f ’ for ‘oisuy’, variants of the modern French oisif, an idler, that is, ‘Sloth’.28 In truth this is a lazy bird who prefers skating on thin ice to walking. He slides into sin and sinful company as did the granddaughter described in the Revelations of Saint Birgitta: ‘I slide ayene int-to synne as he that slideth vpon yse; for my wille was colde and wolde not aryse and flee froo tho thinges that delited me’.29 Birgitta’s Revelations was popular reading in the late fifteenth

Bax, pp. 30–31. The identification of the middle figure as a bear (Bax, p. 13) is not convincing; the figure looks more like a clerk. Their position under the bridge may have been suggested by the story told in the Malleus maleficarum (Summers, p. 133) of the exorcised devil who had remained within a man even though he had taken the Host at mass. When finally expelled, the demon obligingly explained how he had stayed in the man despite the swallowing of the Host. At the crucial moment he had hidden under the man’s tongue: ‘anyone may hide under a bridge while a holy man is crossing as long as he does not pause in his walk’. 28 J. M. Massing (‘Sicut erat in diebus Antonii’: The devils under the bridge in The Tribulations of St. Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch in Lisbon’, Sight & Insight, Essays in Art and Culture in Honour of E. H. Gombrich at Eighty-Five, ed. J. Onians, London, 1994, 108–127) conceives the aerial temptation as an effort by the demons to punish the saint for sins committed before becoming a hermit, according to the Athanasian account, and the letter reader under the bridge as well as the skater’s letter (believed by Massing to read ‘Protio’, an abbreviated ‘Protestatio’, as proposed by Bax, see below) refers to false accusations, pp. 115ff.). However, according to the Athanasian account cited by Massing (p. 113) Anthony was lifted upward by guides who kept him from harm, not by demons. No guides are visible in Bosch’s portrayal of the aerial assault but the demons are unmistakable. Tolnay, p. 30, interpreted this figure as a castigation of the sale of indulgences; Jacques Combe (Hieronymus Bosch, trans., E. Duncan, Paris, 1946, p. 35) turned the inscription upside down and read ‘Grasso, a clear allusion to the trafficking in indulgences, to the paid-for right of eating meat in Lent and to the corrupt divines who wax fat on such offerings’. To paint such an inscription Bosch would have had to turn his large panel upside down, which is rather unlikely. Nor is it likely that he was trying to confuse the viewer by writing, as Bax believes (p. 10), an abbreviated protestatio (protio) in mirror-writing as a sort of hypocritical picketing of the saint. Massing is the latest to attempt an explanation and, as indicated above, falls back on Bax. 26 27

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century, several translations having been printed in the Netherlands.30 Bosch points out how men and women slide into sin by refusing to exercise their freedom of will to resist the Devil. But there is more to this image, an overtone of the Five Senses: Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, said there is nothing in our intellect which is not first in our senses. According to medieval belief, when conquered by the Sins they become a passageway, an opening to sinful behaviour, that enables the Devil to enter the human body and lead men and women astray. 31 The inscription on the beak when more closely examined is not, however, ‘oisif ’ but ‘odorus’, Latin for ‘smell’, ‘odor’ (the final ‘s’ like an ‘f ’, characteristic usage into the eighteenth century).32 Here is a key to his meaning Bosch offers the viewer as in no other work. The presence of the four other Senses confirms the reading: Touch is represented by skating; Hearing is portrayed by the listening rats; the reader they flank represents Sight; while Taste is symbolised by the large bird on the gigantic egg at lower left, who swallows one of the young birds poking their heads out of the egg. This large-beaked featherless bird with teeth is close in type to the woodcock, well known for its maternal devotion.33 Devouring one of its own 29 William P. Cumming, ed., The Revelations of Saint Birgitta, Edited From the FifteenthCentury MS. in the Garrett Collection in the Library of Princeton University . . . , Early English Text Society, original series, no. 178, p. 114. 30 At Antwerp in 1489 and 1491 by Gheraert Leeu (Campbell, Annales. . . , nos. 380, 382). 31 The sin of Sloth became more important to our period; cf., M. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins, An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature, E. Lansing, Mich., 1952, pp. 216, 455. Sloth is similarly considered on the Continent; Albrecht Dürer’s engraving The Temptation of the Idler, or The Dream of the Doctor (B.76, 1498–99, Cuttler, NP, p. 332, fig. 429, . . . ‘sloth begets lewdness and causes the idler to succumb to the temptations of luxury’, according to the medieval moralising treatise La Somme le Roi) . 32 I am grateful to Prof. Katherine Tachau for her help in re-reading the inscription, correcting my 1957 reading. (Roger Marijnissen illustrated the inscription in his book of 1987: however, his black and white illustration, p. 159, must reproduce that of the Brussels museum copy, which makes no sense. His colour plate, p. 177, shows the Lisbon original inscribed as above, in itself indicating the primacy of the Lisbon work in Bosch’s oeuvre of the Temptations of St. Anthony). 33 L. Charbonneau-Lassay, Le bestiaire du Christ, Bruges, 1940, p. 606. Bax’s interpretation of this figure (p. 18) as a glutton who makes himself poor by his gluttony is unconvincing, though his suggestion of the figure as a devilish inversion of the Christian pelican symbol is ingenious. It is in keeping with the present writer’s conception of Boschian

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offspring as they hatch, it is in a position of importance equal to that of the sleepy, slothful ‘odorus’ skater. The bird is given added meaning: Bosch piles on the counterimage of Saturn devouring his own child, that popular theme of classical origin, represented in medieval astrological manuscripts and found as late as Goya’s famous painting Saturn Devouring One of His Children.34 Late medieval thought allied the planets and the Deadly Sins. Saturn, the slowest of the planets in describing its orbit, was allied, as here, with Sloth.35 Bosch reinforces his portrayal of Sloth by his unique rendering of the sin augmented by the Five Senses. The compositionally prominent sins in the foreground complement the two major events of this wing; the violent aerial beating probably suggested Wrath, and the unconscious return to the village probably suggested Sloth to Bosch’s fertile imagination. Wrath is here uniquely a three-fold image, devouring her children.36 Bosch has thought pictorially in medieval terms, portraying actions with multiple meanings and augmenting the richness and complexity of his art; he also adds another stumbling block for the modern interpreter. That he had a strong grounding in dual or triple concepts of meaning like those abounding in medieval literature, based on hermeneutics and the fourfold exegetical interpretation of biblical passages, again, as in the Haywain, inversion. R. van Schoute’s interpetation of the swallowed figure as a toad (crapaud) (R. van Schoute, M. Verbommen, Jérome Bosch, Tournai, 2000, p. 96) does not see that the legs sticking out of the parent bird’s mouth are exactly the same on its child. 34 Madrid, Prado Musem. See E. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, New York, Evanston, 1962, pl. 24, fig. 45; pl. 25, figs. 46, 47. 35 For Sloth’s association with Saturn, see Bloomfield, pp. 219, 223, 233. An early fourteenth-century wall painting in the Great Chamber, Longthorpe Tower, Peterborough, England, shows Ratio, ruler over the Senses, as a man standing behind a wheel with animals on it, much like the wheel of Fortune. The animals symbolize the Senses: Sloth is pictured, as in Bosch, by a bird, there a vulture. (C. T. Li, ‘The Five Senses in Art, An Analysis of Its Development in Northern Europe’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, June, 1955, p. 21, n. 47f., fig. 3). Another vulture with the same meaning appears in the fourteenthcentury ms. of Richard of Fournival, 1201–ca.1260 (Bestiaire d’Amour, J. P. Morgan Library, New York, ms. 459): see H. W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Warburg Institute, University of London, London, 1952, pp. 240ff., pl. 44a, no. 10. For recent bibliography on the Senses in art, including Janson, Mütherich, 1955, Nordenfalk, 1982, 1985, see Sylvia Ferins-Pagden, I cinque sensi nell arte, Immagini del Sentire, Cremona, Leonardo arte, exhib. cat., 21 Sept. 1996–12 June 1997. 36 F. Saxl, ‘A Spiritual Encyclopedia of the Later Middle Ages’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5, 1942, p. 116.

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seems likely as a result of his long, close association with the numerous clerical members of his confraternity. Bosch began his association with the Confraternity of the Virgin in ’s-Hertogenbosch as an ordinary member in 1486–87 and probably became a sworn member the following year, a connection that lasted until he died in 1516.37 The inclusion of the Five Senses relates to the carrying of Anthony back to his dwelling, where his senses will again be subjected to the strains and torments of demonic forces. Again we anticipate what is to be found in the central panel, where instead of an Anthony subject to demonic tentatio, as physical attack (one meaning of ecclesiastical Latin) with dubious outcome, we shall find triumph in both senses of the word. But Bosch ignores the normal left to right narrative progression on Flemish diptychs, passing over the central panel to present tentatio as temptation in its second meaning, ‘sensuous indulgence’ (Fig. 2–2), on the right wing of the Lisbon triptych. Anthony’s temptations are now related to the table at the lower left of the panel and the seemingly naked woman emerging from the dry-branched tree in the water to the left of the saint. The round table is supported by two naked men, while a third, with draped shoulders, blows on an instrument rather like a trumpet except that it bends back upon itself. The table is half covered by a cloth upon which are a jug, several fruits, and the two loaves of bread which had appeared on the ground between Anthony and his temptress in the earlier miniature by the Master of Mary of Burgundy (Fig. 2–4).38 A demon emerges from under the cloth on the near side of the table as another appears on the far side, the evil character of the whole setting being nowhere in doubt. The musician blows smoke from his curved trumpet, from which a sausage dangles incongruously.39 Though heavily draped about the shoulders, the trumpeter’s

37 The information is summarized in Jos Kodeweij’s introduction to Hieronymus Bosch, The Complete Painting and Drawings, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, 2001, pp. 54ff.; also G. C. M. Van Dijck, Op Zoek naar Jheronimus Van Aken alias Bosch, De Feiten . . ., Zaltbommel, 2001, 42–83. That Bosch gave dual meanings to objects was thought a possibility by L. B. Philip, ‘The Prado Epiphany by Jerome Bosch’, Art Bulletin, 35, 4, 1953, 276: however, Philip neither cited examples nor considered the medieval hermeneutic aspect of Bosch’s thought. For the basis of the fourfold interpretation of the Senses see Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1952, 83, 196 ff. 38 See Figs. 2–2, 2–4. 39 The sausage appears in the Gluttony scene from the Prado Seven Deadly Sins panel.

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naked body is revealed by a filmy undergarment. A similar figure, draped only about the shoulders and lacking the filmy garment, appears frequently in medieval art as an acrobat or jongleur. The filmy garment is found clothing the Imago vanitatis in earlier manuscripts of the fifteenth century.40 Bosch has combined the two types to augment his conception of Anthony’s temptation by the deadly sin of Gluttony, adding thereto the lesser sin of Vanity. To the right of the trumpeter a naked man with his left foot in a jug supports the table with his left arm, while his right arm is supported by a crutch. There is an antecedent with demonic connections for the motive of the foot in a pot; however, it does not seem likely, if for no other reason than its extreme crudity of execution, to have been a source drawn upon by the Netherlandish painter.41 The idea is probably his own invention and meant to express Gluttony. The third naked figure lies on his back while supporting the table with his knees. Blood flows from a wound in his leg. In a gloved right hand he holds a damaged sword, no deterrent to a feline demon leaning forward to slit his throat. Clearly this is an illustration of the words of Christ from the Gospel of Matthew, ‘All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword’.42 The severing of Malchus’s ear which occasioned these words is prominently portrayed on the exterior grisaille of the left wing, and by that prominence again demonstrates the external-internal relationship of Christ and Anthony.43 All belly is the fantastic creature to the right of the table, whose feet in a single large shoe suggests a pig with both feet in its trough. Swollen bellies are of course an obvious symbol for Gluttony, and textual parallels Saxl, p. 102 n. 5; pl. 26b–d. Bax, pp. 115, 120 n. 30. The motif employed by Bosch with demonic associations recurs in Bruegel; the protagonist on the barrel in the Contest between Carnival and Lent (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) also has his foot in a jug. But Bruegel’s figure lacks demonic connotations, a significant change which throws into question the validity of Bax’s continuous citation of Boschian motifs in Bruegel’s art as proof of their meaning in the paintings of the earlier master. 42 Matthew 26:52. 43 Bax’s interpretation of this (p. 115) as a sword dancer connected with Carnival cannot be accepted. His conception of the nakedness of the whole group as symbolic of poverty is clearly contrary to the frequent medieval identification of nakedness and sin, particularly evident in sculptures of the damned on the great cathedrals (e.g., Amiens, Bourges). Poverty was not a sin. 40 41

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are readily found for such an idea; Guillaume de Deguileville’s popular Pèlerinage de l’âme presents one.44 Above the table of Gluttony is another temptation: feminine incitement to sin. A naked woman emerges from a draped, hollow, and lifeless tree, as an old woman with an exotic aureole pours wine into a shallow dish held out by a lolling toad. One clawed foot grasps a filmy garment which covers but does not conceal the naked woman, thereby indicating that she is an instrument of the Devil: Anthony looks away. A catlike demon holds out a fish pierced with an arrow as two ape-headed demons peer out from behind the tree. The nude woman standing in the water may have been inspired by the story of the Devil Queen found in the writings of Alphonsus Bonhominis.45 A nude temptress appears in his Valletta Public Library, Malta, MS of 1426; thus the nude female in Bosch’s painting has a definite source in Antonite iconography. Again, nudity is not a favoured state in Bosch’s art. The impressions derived from the table, the figures, and the elements in the immediate surroundings are suggestive in two directions. The first, northern in spirit, leads toward the famous block-book Exercitium super pater noster, which in the scene Panem nostrum da nobis shows three loaves of bread on the table (panem nature, panem gracie, panem glorie),46 while the scene Et ne nos inducas in temptationem presents a man at table being crowned by Pride, offered a plate by Gluttony, and flanked by a third feminine figure, holding a purse and symbolising Avarice.47 The second 44 Swollen bellies characterise the gluttonous in book 2, ch. 45 (cf. Morton Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins, East Lansing, 1952, p. 232). 45 The Dominican monk Alphonsus Bonhominis provided the greatest late medieval addition to the corpus of legends of St. Anthony when in 1342 he translated certain tales about Anthony. His translations, from Arabic, made at Famagusta, Cyprus, had wide acceptance and long life. The most popular concerns the Devil Queen, discovered by Anthony bathing in a river. When properly dressed she discourses with the saint, invites him to visit her city, there shows him its riches, demonstrates her power to heal the sick, and finally invites him to become her husband. Anthony, overwhelmed by all this as well as her verbosity, declines, but she persists and attempts to remove his habit. This act he recognizes as truly devilish and fights her off, whereupon devils fly in from every point and the battle is joined. After several days of continuous fighting Anthony emerges victorious. (Rose Graham, ed., A Picture Book of the Life of St. Anthony the Abbot. Reproduced from a MS of the Year 1426 in the Malta Public Library at Valletta . . . , Roxburghe Club no. 201, pp. 85–88). A detailed study of manuscripts containing this and other stories transmitted by Alphonsus is found in F. Halkin, S. J., ‘La legende de S. Antoine traduite de l’arabe par Alphonse Bonhomme O. P.’, Analecta bollandiana, 60, 1942, pp. 161–165. 46 Delen, pl. 16; Paul Kristeller, Exercitium super pater noster, Berlin, 1908, pl. 6. 47 Kristeller, pl. 8.

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direction seems to be a protest against a renascent, humanistic spirit in what might be called an ‘antitype’ of a bacchanal. Bosch’s iconographic elements, however, seem thoroughly northern. One has no doubt that the temptations are not truly tempting nor are they meant to be; but by no means are they to be enjoyed. Beyond the dead tree on the left is a figure about to mount a ladder leaning against a dead branch. Figures climbing a ladder are found in several astrological manuscripts where the children of a planet are depicted.48 In the middle distance is a porcupine, that common medieval symbol for the temptations of the flesh. Beyond and to the right of a reflective Anthony interrupted in his reading by these demonic temptations is a simple-faced man without arms. Placed within a device used to help children learning to walk, he gazes vapidly beyond the picture frame. A small jug hangs on the side of his baby walker and a child’s pinwheel is stuck in his clothing. The jug, an attribute of Gluttony, indicates this is a castigation of drunkenness, which makes men foolish.49 This childish man turns away from the saint whose model he should follow to free himself from the foolish ways which cage him. In spirit this figure is related to drollery illustrations.50 The possibility that this and other Boschian motives have origins in manuscript illumination, either in already certified bestiary scenes or in the marginal drolleries so characteristic of earlier English manuscripts, and particularly Dutch and Flemish manuscripts of the fifteenth century, is so marked that citation of a specific source for a single motive is questionable; what may be accepted wholeheartedly is Bosch’s thorough acquaintance with the art. To Anthony’s right a lizard with a monk’s cowl suggests a comment on the sinful character of some monks. In the distance appears a walled town, its ramparts lined with an immense crowd watching a swimming man with sword and shield fighting a dragon in a moat. These elements still lack a satisfactory explanation.51 48 A. Hauber, Planetenkinderbilder und Sternbilder, Strassburg, 1916, Studien zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, 194, pl. 14, fig. 19; pl. 33, fig. 47. 49 Also see Bax, p. 110. 50 Cf. fol. 110 of a Netherlandish book of hours of ca. 1470, Boekenoogen Collection, Amsterdam (A.W. Byvanck and J.G.Hoogewerff, La miniature hollandaise, The Hague, 1926, pl. 14). 51 Bax (p. 122) — without evidence — considers this the city of the Devil Queen. The onion-shaped towers may characterize an eastern milieu, and it is possible that Bosch illustrated a still undiscovered legend related to Anthony; but there is nothing to permit the assumption that the city belongs to the Devil Queen.

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In the sky above, a large fish flies by with a man and woman on its back. In the grossness of his form the foremost rider shows an analogy to the temptations of Gluttony seen below. Bosch’s model was apparently the sole miniature in a tract against witchcraft in the Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels (MS 11209, fol. 3r), ca. 1467, or Paris, Bibliothèque nationale (MS Fr. 961, fol. 1, Fig. 2–14). The fish, undoubtedly derived from the serra or sawfish of the bestiaries (from which Bosch had already taken the motif of the aerial boat on the left wing), was there considered to be the Devil. Here that prime heretic literally supports his followers.52 Bosch allied the heretical fish to like miniature or close family relations, with an overtone of Gluttony, the right wing presenting further temptations of Anthony. The table and its figures add Gluttony to our list of deadly sins, with overtones of castigating worldly vanities, and the end awaiting sinful fools who live by the sword. The aerial group is also related to Gluttony, to which the danger of sorcery is added. Gluttony is clearly a basic theme of this wing. The central panel presents another set of ideas to augment those seen on the wings (Fig. 2–3). Ostensibly the theme, derived from the Athanasian account by way of the Vitae patrum, is that of a kneeling Anthony too weak to rise, yet able to taunt his tormentors to do their worst. But instead of taunting the fantastic crew surrounding him, Anthony turns to the spectator (Figs. 2–3, 2–6). His right hand raised in blessing, he shows his victory over the evil forces about him. The figure of Christ, who has made this victory possible, is almost lost in the shadow of Anthony’s chapel. The saint blesses with one hand, as behind him the temptress in her normal guise of rich clothing, her demonic character revealed by the lizard-shaped tail of her gown, offers a shallow cup of wine to two figures opposite Anthony.53 One, an old woman, reaches for it; the other is a man whose head grows from his legs, for he has no torso. The proffered wine is seemingly the saint vinage made annually at St.-Antoine-en-Dauphiné by pouring wine over Anthony’s relics. This process was believed to give the wine miraculous curative powers, and the liquid was given to those suffering from Saint Anthony’s fire, the ignis sacer.54 Bosch not merely alludes to the story of the 52 Combe (p. 62 n. 89; fig., p. 35), suggested a woodcut from an almanach of 1498 showing Venus riding on a fish as an artistic source. But cf. note 11. 53 The temptress, not Anthony, offers the cup. Her sleeve is crimson-colored, while his habit is brownish grey. 54 Hippolyte Dijon, L’église abbatiale de saint Antoine en Dauphiné, Grenoble, Paris, 1902, pp. 21–22, 140.

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Devil Queen and her pseudo-miraculous cures, but pessimistically shows how demonic power to counterfeit all human acts could even make mockery of the good works of the hospital order. The lolling toad holding a cup and the naked woman in the water of the right wing reinforce the idea. To the left of Anthony and the temptress of the central panel is a group of figures whose origin and meaning has escaped the eyes of previous writers. Rather than the celebration of a black mass, or any other aspect of witchcraft, Bosch’s artistic source for these figures derives from contemporary popular belief in astrology. Luna, cold and moist planet of the night, is dominant,55 thus responsible here for the nocturnal aspect. Indeed, quite rightly so, since Anthony’s troubling visions and foul dreams came to him at night. At Anthony’s back a well-dressed young man, cup in hand, stands before a gaming table; only explainable in relation to Luna, he is the gullible victim of the gesturing, pork-headed, owl-crowned conjurer. The conjurer is one of Luna’s children, who herself stands in yellow garments and with yellow face at the side of her child’s victim.56 The gesturing sharper, with a dog in a fool’s cap on a leash, had been portrayed previously by Bosch in a work (probably a copy) now in the Musée municipal, St.-Germain-en-Laye.57 Though neither pigheaded nor owl-crowned he too is accompanied by a fool’s-capped dog. The conjurer’s table is common in engravings and woodcuts of the planet Luna 55 ‘A female planet in the first sphere, moist, cold, and phlegmatic, situated between the upper and the nether world. She loves geometry and all appertaining thereto; she has a round face and is of medium stature. She governs silver among the metals, the phlegmatic among the temperaments, Spring among the seasons, water among the elements. Her day is Friday . . . her night is that of Friday. She is friendly to Jupiter, and hostile to Mars. She has only one house, in the Crab, near to the Sun and Mercury. She is in the ascendant in the Bull, in the descendant in the Scorpion’ (text accompanying a Florentine engraving of Luna of ca. 1460, in Friedrich Lippmann, The Seven Planets, London, N.Y., 1895, p. 4.) Mention has previously been made of the northern belief in a relationship between devils and the moon (see introduction, note 9). 56 Each planet has its children, that is, those whose birthday occurs during the ascendancy of the planet. 57 Tolnay, p. 18, pl. 2. See J. Hamburger, ‘Bosch’s “Conjuror”, An attack on magic and sacramental heresy’, Simiolus, 14, 1984, pp. 5–24. The dendrochronological felling date, according to Peter Klein, ‘Dendrochronological Analysis of Works by Hieronymus Bosch and His Followers,’ in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Hieronymus Bosch. New Insights into His Life and Work, exhib. cat., ed. Jos Koldeweij, Bernard Vermet, and Barbera van Kooij, 2001, pp. 121–131, is 1484, thus the work, clearly not from Bosch's own hand, is a shop product.

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with her children. An extended search beyond Flemish lands finds such a swindler in fool’s attire cheating a gullible public grouped around his table in a Florentine engraving of ca. 1460 (Fig. 2–7).58 A monkey clings to his leg, the southern equivalent of the northern trained dog on a leash. Thus the motive of the gaming table with its connotations of trickery and deceit comes from a readily transported astrological engraving. Bosch has not merely copied the Florentine figures; their transformation is seen most clearly in the conjurer, whose pig head indicates a castigation of greed and gluttony, while the twin to his dagger and sheath hang on the wall of the room in which the sin of Gluttony is enacted in the Prado painting of the Seven Deadly Sins. Gambling, according to the Somme le roi, was the tenth branch of Avarice, and often grew out of Gluttony.59 The relationship between pig and Gluttony is an obvious one, quite common in both earlier and contemporary art, where this vice normally rides a pig.60 Further borrowings from this same Florentine engraving establish it beyond doubt as Bosch’s source. The Florentine double-arched bridge appears to the right of the central panel, now transformed into the base of a prison built over the water. A sundial atop a column beside the roadway above the double-arched bridge is now transferred to the prison wall, below which the Florentine swimmers and fishermen again appear. The diver at the right of the engraving becomes the nude figure about to dive into the water at the right end of the prison roof. It is significant that the sundial appears only in this version of the planet Luna and her children; it cannot be found in any other preserved engraving or woodcut of the subject.61 Thus, Bosch’s source was the engraving of ca. 1460. The prison is not derived exclusively from the Luna engraving; some elements are taken from the engraving of Saturn in the same series (Fig. 2–8).62 In it a prisoner is seen behind a barred window; in Bosch the bird with a ladder over its shoulder (gallows bird?), and the ape riding before him on a bull seemingly repeat the idea.63 The mother and child at the corner of the Florentine prison have been changed into the weird Lippmann, pl. A.7: also cf. the later copy of the Florentine engraving (pl. B.7), the Netherlandish blockbook copy (pl. C.8), the Housebook Master’s drawing (pl. D.7), etc. 59 Francis, pp. 41, 49. 60 Emile Mâle, L’art religieux de la fin du Moyen Âge en France (1908), fig. 191. 61 Cf. Lippmann, pls. B.V7–F.V7. 62 Lippmann, pl. A.I. 63 The bull has the connotation of Death in several late-fifteenth-century works, e.g., the illustration to Pierre Machaut, La danse des aveugles, on folio 198 of MS fro 182, University 58

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2−7. Luna, ca. 1460. Florentine engraving, 12⅜ x 8 5/16 in. (31.5 x 21.2 cm).

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2−8. Saturn, ca. 1460. Florentine engraving, 12 7/16 x 8¼ in. (31.6 x 21.0 cm).

81

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2−9. Spiritual miscellany, German, Thuringia (?), 15th century. Bibl. Casanatense, Rome. MS 1404, fol. 30v.

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2−10. Jupiter, ca. 1460. Florentine engraving, 9 11/16 x 6 13/16 in. (24.6 x 17.2 cm).

83

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2−11. Venus, 15th century. Netherlandish woodcut, 115/16 x 8 in. (29.3 x 20.3 cm) (page).

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2−12. Saturn, 15th century. Netherlandish woodcut, 11⅜ x 7 15/16 in. (29.0 x 18.7 cm) (page).

85

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2−13. Illustration to chapter 61 (‘Of Dancing’) from Brant’s Das Narrenschiff, 1494, Basel. 8⅝ x 6⅛ in. (22.0 x 15.5 cm).

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2−14. Witches, 1460–1475. Flemish illumination, 9¾ x 6⅞ in. (24.7 x 17.5 cm) (page). Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Ms. fr. 961, f. 1.

87

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woman below the prison moat, holding a swaddled child as she rides on a rat. Her body ends in a tail to give her the aspect of an evil mermaid, and indeed mermaids were in ill repute in the middle ages, the bestiaries considering them as devilish instruments synonymous with sirens. The mermaid-siren with her sweet voice lulled men to sleep so that they and their ships were destroyed. Mermaids were also equated with lying men who speak fair but do evil deeds, thereby destroying men’s goods and their souls by such treachery.64 The motive is found in bestiary illustrations; it was sculptured at Strasbourg where a siren with animal legs holds a swaddled infant, and it is also seen in the northern French Psalter of Guy de Dampierre executed between 1280 and 1297, where a marginal drollery on folio 179v shows a fish-tailed siren holding an unswaddled, but also fish-tailed, infant in her arms.65 It has been suggested that Bosch’s figure with her child, and the grey-bearded figure behind her, are compositionally based on the type of the Flight into Egypt.66 This ‘anti-Flight into Egypt’, seemingly combined with an ‘anti-Adoration of the Magi’, can be understood in relation to the prevailing belief in Antichrist.67 Parallel events from the life of Christ and Antichrist were illustrated in manuscripts of the fifteenth-century (Fig. 2–9). Bosch has portrayed such a parallel in this group, very much in keeping with his normal inversion of the meaning of traditional images. Other motives from the engraving of Saturn appear again in altered form; the butchered pig at the extreme right is seen at the far left of Bosch’s central panel, now hanging from the wheel at the end of a pole carried by a smirking, apelike man who wears a broken pot as a head covering. On the wheel itself are a leg and blackened foot, perhaps a reminder of the effect of Saint Anthony’s fire.68 In the foreground of the engraving, to the left of the Library, Geneva (Bulletin de la société française de reproduction des manuscrits à peintures, 2nd year, no. 2, 1912, pl. 46a). 64 Cf. the Early English (thirteenth-century) translation of the Latin Physiologus of Theobaldus in Richard Morris, ed., An Old English Miscellany, Early English Text Society, original series, no. 49, pp. 18–19. 65 For the Strasbourg figures, see C. Cahier, Nouveaux mélanges d’archéologie, d’histoire et de la littérature sur le moyen âge, Paris, 1874, 1, p. 159, fig. P; for the psalter, see Gaspar et Lyna, 1, 1937, notice 95 (MS 10607), pp. 219–228. 66 Bax, p. 88. 67 Cf. the discussion of the Antichrist legend in Lotte Brand Philip, ‘The Prado Epiphany by Jerome Bosch’, Art Bulletin, 35, 4, 1953, pp. 270ff. 68 The wheel appears in the landscape of the Housebook Master’s Saturnus (Lippmann, pl. D.1).

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kneeling cripple, is another motive that Bosch transforms. A monkish almsgiver squats beside his soup kettle while a recipient of his charity drinks from a dish: in the painting the temptress proffers the same dish to the grotesque cripples before her. Antonite connections in the engraving are even more explicit: one of the Florentine beggars at the corner of the prison wears a badge with the T cross of the Antonite order upon it.69 Still other engravings in the series provided motives for Bosch. From representations of Jupiter may have come the thistle-headed hunter, bird at wrist, riding a metamorphosed jug at the right of the ruined tower. Such a figure on horseback, wearing a flat hat and seen from the rear, is ubiquitous in Italian representations of this planet (Fig. 2–10).70 And the two hunting dogs at the upper right of the Jupiter engraving reappear at the left of the Lisbon panel as accompaniments to the armoured and gauntleted figure holding a ferocious and fantastic animal by its wings. This red-stockinged man, whose head emerges from the tree trunk growing from his shoulders, and who is preceded by armoured lap-dogs of unpleasant mien, is clearly Mars, the warlike planet.71 The horsemen of the Mars engraving may have been the source for the group in the water to the right of the ruined tower.72 Venus has already made her appearance in the temptress who strives to lead Anthony astray. An equation of Venus, Satan, and Sin, found in the Narrenschiff, is here called to mind.73 The harp-playing, skull-headed creature riding a fantastic form in front of the platform may have been suggested by the harp player astride a wall in the middle zone of the Netherlandish woodcut of Venus of ca. 1467 (Fig. 2–11), a cut possibly derived from its Italian predecessor.74 The hat of the third figure of the musical trio in the foreground of the northern woodcut reappears on the conjurer’s gullible victim. The pommer (a kind of oboe) of the first

The cripples of the engraving may have suggested to Bosch the curious combination of head and legs opposite Anthony. 70 See especially, Lippmann, p. 4, also cf. pls. A.2, B.2. 71 Two dogs pull the chariot of Mars in the woodcut of Hans Sebald Beham (Lippmann, pl. E.111). 72 Lippmann, pl. A.111. 73 Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, Cambridge, MA, 1953, pp. 33–34. 74 Lippmann, pl. 7, pls. A.5., C.5. 69

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musician has a square shape close to its bell; this may be the source for the creature behind the gambling group. The creature’s nose is elongated into a musical instrument of like shape, from which emerge wisps of smoke.75 The proximity in their Boschian reappearance of these motives from the Venus woodcut may be taken as further proof of their derivation from a common source. Now Venus is in the ascendant in Pisces, the watery sign of the zodiac. The prophecy of 1499 of the imminent coming of the end of the world was based on the numerous conjunctions in Pisces predicted for February 1524.76 There is thus a further possible explanation for the numerous piscine shapes with evil connotations found throughout the triptych. The planet also makes her appearance in the monk and woman within a tent at the left of the onion tower. The loving pair in a tent in the northern woodcut of Venus (Fig. 2–11) has been transformed into a reference to the corruption of the clergy, indicated by the bellows placed prominently nearby. Such a loving couple within a tent had also been represented as symbolic of Lust in the Prado panel of the Seven Deadly Sins,77 while the wealth of the Church was referred to by a popular preacher of the day as a pair of bellows which only serves to kindle the fires of Lust.78 A crippled beggar with a hurdy-gurdy at the waist is seen to the left of the gambling group. He is derived from similar figures in northern representations of

75 St. Birgitta had a vision in which a demon appeared with a head like a pair of bellows from which extended a long pipe; ‘. . . & I see that the fende stode on the kynges left side, whos hede was lyke to a payr of belowes with a long pipe, his armys wer as ij serpentes, and his knees lyke a presse, and his feete lyke a longe hoke’ (Revelations of Saint Birgitta, p. 81). The ‘fende’ had another aspect to the Swedish saint which Bosch might also have been acquainted with: ‘On the lefte syde of the kynge appered a fende whos hede was lyke to a doggi his wombe myght nott be fylled, his navyll was open and boyled out venom, coloured with all manner of venemouse colours. And in ych fote he hade iij clawes, grete, stronge, and sharpe’ (p. 71). 76 See introduction. Belief in the influence of this on Bosch in conjunction with other evidence leads to a date for the Lisbon triptych as ca. 1500–1505. 77 According to the Somme le roi, this is the twelfth branch of Lechery (Francis, p. 45). 78 Henry Lea, in Cambridge Modern History, 1, p. 676. In the Casanatense manuscript (Fig. 2–9), bellows are employed in similar fashion: ‘In one [scene] is a chariot called the “Castle of Symony”; on it a clerk is seen bargaining with a patron for a living. Behind the clerk a devil is operating the five bellows of consanguinity, bribery, servitude, favour and noble birth’ (Saxl, p. 87).

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Saturn, though in these the hurdy-gurdy is absent (Fig. 2–12): that Bosch’s beggar is evil is revealed by the devilish little tail growing from the sole of his crippled foot, and by the longer tail of his coat.79 Other elements from astrological representations are suggestive in character but not thoroughly demonstrable as having influenced Bosch.80 Astrological engravings, however, cannot be assumed to have furnished all the motives in the central panel.81 Unrelated to astrology is the man with a high-crowned hat at the front of the platform. Seated with his back to the spectator, he stares at a severed foot on a cloth before him. Here, significantly smaller than Anthony, though closer to the spectator, is the

Lippmann, pl. C.1; also see Warburg, 2, figs. 125, 131, 135. Andre Chastel explained the temptation scene as the fantastic vision of a melancholic mind, ‘selon les lois d’une fantaisie qui nous échappe’ (‘La tentation de saint Antoine, ou Le songe du melancholique’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6th series, 15, 1936, pp. 228–229). His conclusion was based on a representation of a monk with a blue T on his cloak, the sign of the Hospital Order, in a Saturn miniature from an astrological manuscript in the Tübingen library (MS M. d.2, fol. 319v, Hauber, pl. 8, fig. 11). The evidence unfortunately does not support the conclusion — too many representations of saturnine monks are found without the T cross, as is the case with the representations from which Bosch borrowed. That Saturn and the melancholic were associated in the late fifteenth century is not questioned (‘Saturn is a male planet, in the seventh sphere, dry and cold, though occasionally moist. He is melancholy, partaking of the character of Earth. . . . He is dark and loves dark raiment; he is pious and steadfast. . . . Among metals he governs lead; among temperaments, the melancholic; agriculture and old age are under his protection. The autumn is his season, his day is Saturday. . . . He is friendly to Mars, hostile to the Sun. He has two houses, the Goat by day, the Water-bearer by night. His life of ascendant is in the Scales, his death or descendant is in the Archer’ [Lippmann, p. 3]). A comparably suggestive association may be derived from the representation of the four temperaments, printed by Guyot Marchand at Paris in his Calendrier des bergers, first issued in 1491. The figure symbolizing the melancholic temperament (Mâle, . . . fin du moyen âge, p. 299, fig. 163) carries a T staff like Anthony, and furthermore, has a pig as his emblem. The T staff appears in the Lisbon panels but the pig, for obvious reasons, does not. Pig heads are there employed with telling effect to indicate evil, stupidity, and gluttony. Though it is clear from his sources that Bosch thought of Anthony as related to the planets and probably to the temperaments as well, it is not clear, nor is it anywhere evident, that he was dealing with melancholia per se. 80 The burning town in the background of the northern woodcut of Mars (Lippmann, pl. C.3) differs from the Italian engravings where haystacks are on fire; the former may have been Bosch’s source for the burning village. The towers rising directly from the water in the northern woodcut of Luna (Lippmann, pl. C.7) may be the artistic source for the ruined tower to the right of Anthony’s retreat. 81 For another assertion of Bosch’s use of elements from astrology, see Andrew Pigler, ‘Astrology and Jerome Bosch’, Burlington Magazine, 92, 566, 1950, pp. 132–136. 79

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blasphemer who had cursed the saint and lost a member for his impiety.82 Behind the gambling group a black servant, symbol of the heretic, carries a platter on which stands a toad holding aloft an egg.83 The toad has a long history of demonic association in art and literature, where it is often related to the sins of magic and witchcraft.84 In relation to Saint Anthony the toad had already appeared in an illustrated story popular in German incunabula of the translated Vitae patrum.85 According to the story, Anthony made his living weaving baskets to be sold to infrequent travellers. One day, under one of his baskets, he discovered a toad, which transformed itself into a beautiful temptress who, with such a beginning, obviously stood no chance of success. The egg also owned demonic associations, as is clear from the flying figure at the top of this panel. Further evidence is found in book 3, chapter 22, of Ficino’s De vita libri tres: ‘Sicut & ovum putrefactione vel adjustione sit venenosum un de nascuntur vel evadunt immundi quida[m], ignavi, tristes, invidi, daemonibus immundis expositi’ . The egg was also connected with magic and sorcery.86 Bosch evidently had like ideas in mind. The grinning ape-snouted figure at the left of the panel, who carries a wheel with the Florentine pig hanging from it, has a broken pot as his headgear. Now the Somme le roi tells us that the wrathy man breaks ‘pottes, coppes, and disches’.87 Though he is not choleric at the moment, his associates leave little doubt of his identification with the deadly sin of Wrath. At the lower right in front of the platform two devils are seen, half in and half out of a large exotic fruit, while a procession moves from this

82 See Jozef Morawski, La légende de saint Antoine ermite. Histoire, poésie, art, folklore. Avec une vie inconnue de s. Antoine en vers française du XIV e siècle et des extraits d’une ‘Chronique antonienne’ inédite, Poznan, 1939, pp. 117–118, for popular tales of the fate of those who cursed the saint and were struck subsequently with Saint Anthony’s fire. The high-crowned hat of the man appeared earlier on the head of the St.-Germain-en-Laye charlatan. Blasphemy is a sin of the tongue, hence, according to the Somme le roi allied to Gluttony (Francis, p. 68) . 83 A figure with similar connotations bears a platter with a swan on it in the work of an unknown late follower, the Marriage at Cana, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (the oak panel has a felling date of 1553, Klein, 2001, p. 129). 84 See n. 6. 85 Hain 8609, fol. 16f.; also cf. Hain 8605, 8608, etc. 86 Charbonneau-Lassay, Le Bestiaire de Christ, pp. 676–677. 87 Francis, p. 25.

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shelter toward the centre of the panel. Still attached to the stem of this fruit is a basket in which sits a small naked man with irate face, holding a sword over his head. Bax has related this figure to the punishment meted out for certain minor crimes, in which the culprit was either placed in a basket and elevated above the ground — where the crowd could throw mud or other missiles at him — or placed in a basket hung over the water, in which case he was given a sword so that he could cut the rope and free himself, but not without a ducking.88 This pugnacious figure, and the crane in shoulder armour next to him, may be considered as aspects of Wrath. A nearby donkey may have been included in the group because of its reputation for stubbornness, though it also had the symbolic aspect of Sloth.89 The procession is headed by the harping, skulled monster in armour riding on the back of a plucked goose with a sheep’s face. Death, of course, is implied by the skull and winding sheet seen in the long, trailing cloth covering this fantastic vision. It is clearly allied to stupidity: ‘sheep’s head’, ‘plucked goose’ — these are not terms suggesting sagacity. Bosch’s moral is equally clear: stupidity, pugnacity, stubbornness, and folly; all lead to Death, and all are led by it.90 Taken as a whole, the group constitutes a parody, or rather a Boschian castigation, of the vanity and folly of knights and their chivalrous ideals. Chivalry held up to ridicule in an inverted world is a frequent parody in the drolleries found in Flemish manuscripts even as late as Bosch’s own day.91 Without doubt he derived his group either from reality or from a manuscript illumination depicting the sortie of a mounted contestant from his tent, surrounded by equerries, to participate in a tourney of love; with this he united the wall-riding harp player from the northern Venus woodcut. But the models received a drastic transformation; this dour condemnation of the conventions of courtly love and chivalric ideals takes place

88 Bax, p. 67. It is also related to the medieval legend of Virgil and the Roman princess. (cf. the engraving of Lucas van Leyden). 89 ‘La Paresse peut être symbolisée par l’âne, non pas que l’âne soit paresseux de sa nature, mais l’âne aiment le chardon [qui] avec ses piquants est l’image des tentations qui passe dans les rêves de la Paresse et lui font du temps en temps sentir leur aiguillon’. (Mâle, . . . fin du moyen âge, p. 332). 90 Bax’s interpretation (p. 69) of the goose, the beaver to its left, the two deer beyond, and the rat swimming in the water in front of the platform, as lovers of drink, as bacchantes, is not convincing. 91 See H. W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore, pp. 166 ff.

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not only in a topsy-turvy world, expressed with morbid fantasy, but in a stupid and malignant one, full of perils, vanity, folly, and sin. In the water before the platform are several nautical forms whose meaning escapes convincing identification. Above these a devilish trio stands at the right edge of the platform. Pig-snouted and tonsured, a demonic priest reads from a book while two other demons listen. The book is not his, but belongs to Anthony. The motive of a demon with the book of the saint appears contemporaneously in the art of Grünewald and Bernardo Parentino. Apparently of Italian origin, it can be traced back to an Italianate manuscript of ca. 1410.92 A rent in the priest’s robe reveals a skeleton underneath, as well as Bosch’s awareness of Italian iconographic tradition favouring skeletized demons. The cowled attendant demons reinforce ideas visible in other parts of the triptych; the weasel-headed demon wears an inverted funnel similar to that on the skating figure on the left wing; the other demon is stork-headed and his crown a nest with a single egg. The general outline of a further denunciation of corrupt clergy and corrupt monks emerges. To the right is a group of riders derived in part from astrological representations. The transformed hunter with a bird at his wrist may be a representation of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, for it was common in the late fifteenth century to depict the Sins as mounted riders, sometimes armoured, and occasionally carrying birds on their arms.93 Possibly this mounted hunter is a symbol of Superbia, or Pride, whose steed is Flattery, whose horn represents cruelty, and who is equipped with spurs. Such a figure — female, however — is described in Guillaume de Deguileville’s popular late medieval moral treatise, the Pèlerinage de la vie humaine.94 92 ‘Temptation of Anthony’, MS 219, fol. 246v, Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery; Charles D. Cuttler, ‘Some Grünewald Sources’, Art Quarterly, 19, 2, 1956, pp. 109–110, fig. 5. 93 See Saxl, for armoured knights; for riders with birds, etc., see Mâle, . . . fin du moyen âge, figs. 178–185, 189–192. Neid rides a horse in Johann Baemler’s Ein schöne materi von den Sieben Todsünden un von den Sieben Tugende, published at Augsburg, November 15, 1474 (Albert Schramm, Der Bilderschmuck der Frühdrucke, Leipzig, 1923, 3, fig. 222). 94 Printed at Haarlem by Jacobus Bellaert in 1486 (Boek van den pelgherym, HainCopinger 3962), by Vérard in 1499, etc. In the English translation (F. J. Furnival and Katharine B. Locock, eds., The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, Englisht by John Lydgate, A.D. 1426 . . ., Early English Text Society, extra series, nos. 77, 83, 92, pp. 346ff.) the sins are, as elsewhere, hags, with the exception of Wrath, who is an armed man looking like a hedgehog (cf. the hedgehog behind Anthony on the right wing of the Lisbon triptych), has a steel saw in his mouth, and is venomous as a toad (p. 418).

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Other riders in this Antichrist group may represent other sins but exact identification remains uncertain. Somewhat comparable to the different levels of interpretation characteristic of medieval thought is the seeming relationship of these variant figures to the castigation of Chivalry depicted at the lower left of the panel. A tower rising from the water at the right of Anthony’s abode is ornamented with scenes that Tolnay thought illustrated the triumph of faith over heresy.95 Lowest on the tower is a dimly discerned scene of a hunter preceded by a dog and a deer. Immediately above is the scene of the return of the emissaries to Hebron bearing the grapes of Canaan, a prototype of baptism according to the Biblia pauperum.96 Above the emissaries, an ape seated on a daislike drum receives the offerings of a swan, a kid or lamb, and a cow.97 An owl, that popular medieval symbol of the heretic, peers out of a dark hole at the left.98 The worship of false gods is indicated here, rather than a witches’ sabbath or Black Mass, in which the Devil normally presided in the form of a goat.99 The worship of the ape (i.e., folly, which Bosch equates with sin) seems to symbolise the renunciation of ‘that Faith which is theirs by the Sacrament of Baptism’ mentioned in the Bull of 1484 of Pope Innocent VIII. And the prototype of that baptism is found immediately below.100 According to the Speculum humanae salvationis, the crowning scene of Moses receiving the tablets of the Law is a prefiguration of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, while the scene of the dancers about the Golden Calf placed at a lower level was considered by Tolnay as the dispersal of its worshipers, and thus a prefiguration of the Fall of the Idols.101 One must question Tolnay’s conception of this crowning scene on the tower upon noticing that the figures are dancing quite actively and not being dispersed.

Tolnay, p. 29. Tolnay, p. 29. 97 The white-feathered but black-fleshed swan also appears on the bordello sign in The Pedlar and in the Marriage at Cana (the latter, as now known from dendrochronology, must be dated after 1553), both paintings in the Boijmans Van Beunigen Museum, Rotterdam (for both see Klein, 2001, pp. 125, 129. 98 Janson, pp. 166, 177–178, 181. 99 The vigor of this tradition is felt as late as Goya’s time; cf. his Witches’ Sabbath in the Prado Museum, Madrid, where a goat-headed demon dominates. 100 The artistic basis for this may lie in two woodcuts cited by Bax, figs. 120, 121. 101 Tolnay, p. 29. 95 96

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Illustrations to Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff seem to have provided the model for the dancing figures (Fig. 2–13). Brant had equated sin, dancing, Satan, and Venus: Wie dantz / mit sund entsprungen sy Und ich kan mercken / und betracht Das es der tufel hat vffbracht Do er das gulden kalb erdaht Vnd schu(e)ff das got wart gantz veraht Noch vil er mit zu(e) wegen bringt Uss dantzen vil vnratts entspringt So ist hochfart / vnd üppikeyt Und fn louff der vnlutterkeyt So schleyfft man Venus by der hend So hatt all erberkeyt eyn end.102 Except for the hunting of the deer and the worship of false gods, the scenes of the ruined tower are taken from the Old Testament. Seemingly Bosch depicted not the Christian fortress of Faith, but the incompleteness and error of the Old Testament. Despite Tolnay’s belief, the triumph of faith over heresy cannot be found on the ruined tower. As in the gradual destruction of the physical structure of the Synagogue in the bas-de-pages of the Calendar pages of the Belleville Breviary and its followers,103 we are here confronted with the decay of the Old Dispensation, Mosaic law, as evil birds flit among its ruins. The ruined tomb and tower inhabited by 102 Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff, p. 151; Zeydel’s translation (pp. 204–205) follows: . . . dance and sin are one in kind, That very easily ’tis scented: The dance by Satan was invented When he devized the golden calf And taught men at God to laugh, And Satan dancing still doth use To hatch out evil, to abuse. It stirs up pride, immodesty, And prompts men ever lewd to be. The pagan Venus gives her hand And purity is rudely banned. 103 See Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, pp. 33–34.

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Anthony (seen as though across the Nile, which explains the water before the platform) has assumed the symbolic character of the Old Dispensation. Unlike the earlier manuscripts there is no apposite construction to symbolize the New Dispensation. But the New is present, even though in affirmation it seems timid and even tentative. Almost obscured by its darkness, in the chapel behind Anthony the blessing figure of Christ stands beside the altar, upon which a single taper burns before a sculptured crucifix with the figure of Christ upon it. The blessing gestures of Anthony and Christ are identical. Here is the response, even before it is uttered, to Anthony’s reproachful, ‘Ubi eras, ubi eras, Jesu bone . . . ?’ (Where were you, where were you, good Jesus . . . [when I needed you?]), which came after the worst of his demonic beatings. Christ, both standing and crucified, is not so inexplicable as might be assumed. His appearance to Anthony, either alone, upon a crucifix, or on a crucifix held before him by God the Father, is common in scenes of Anthony’s temptations, though the event took place after the demons were dispersed and Anthony’s dwelling restored. In so altering the sequence of events Bosch has again taken liberties with the account of Saint Anthony’s life and tribulations. Further, by replacing the heavenly vision with the earthly appearance of Christ, the painter has clearly expressed his inherent emphasis upon naturalism. It heightens the visual effect of his supernatural beings, good and bad, and particularly the latter because they are prominently placed. But in making the visionary concrete, his allusion to Anthony’s later salvation by Christ results in the religiously most important figure being reduced to an artistically subordinate accessory. Because of his insistent naturalism, Bosch’s natural and supernatural worlds so interpenetrate that they lose their separate identities. Distinctions between his figures also tend to break down; despite their varied exteriors they have the same inherent meaning of evil. Anthony and Christ are the exceptions, but this fantastic world envelops them as well, and their existence outside of it is hardly conceivable.104 No ennobling act or attitude beyond the conventional sign of blessing separates them from the Boschian crew. With the crossed nimbus almost indiscernible in the darkness of the chapel, the greatest attention and therefore importance adheres to the artistically prominent figure. In consequence, Bosch has not merely elevated Anthony A hermeneutic influence may explain the multiplication of the appearance of Christ as moving from the literal to the spiritual. 104

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to a position of equality with Christ, he has unwittingly raised him to an even higher position. That Bosch was reputed to be a heretic, as Fray Joseph de Sigüenza relates,105 may be attributed to this and to similar artistic ideas resulting from growth of the cult of the saints in late fifteenth-century Europe. In the air above the ruined tomb two fantastic airships fly by. One mounts a crescent, symbol of the Turk and of heresy, the other reveals a decorative half-round device in its rigging similar to that on the staff of the goading soldier on the exterior of the left wing. The air is clearly a region controlled by demons, as can be seen from the devils flying to assist in burning the village at the left. A fierce fire rages. In the midst of it demons topple the church tower, possibly a warning of the coming of Antichrist.106 A woman in the foreground, unconcerned with the catastrophic events going on behind her, washes her clothes in the stream as a mounted procession crosses a bridge nearby. The sky above is filled with strange portents, and flashes of flame. A toad flies by on a winged egg, a torch at the end of the long pole in his hand. High in the sky at the extreme left a strange cavalcade is led by a gaunt demon mounted on a flying fish. Several horsemen with banners are dimly discerned through the murk; these are night riders, as Bax thought, but they have no connection with Carnival.107 They are horsemen of the Apocalypse come to visit their plagues and torments upon the living; the ultimate cataclysm is near. Though transformed by Bosch, the leader of this aerial cavalcade, with a bow over his shoulder, can be recognized as probably inspired by the bow-carrying righthand figure of Dürer’s famous woodcut of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.108 One cannot sufficiently emphasize the cosmic character of this overwhelming conception of the Temptations of Saint Anthony. Air, earth, fire, water, heat and cold, wet and dry; everything on earth and in the heavens has its place in Bosch’s synthesis of the beliefs and fears of medieval man.

Tolnay, p. 76. Cf. Fig. 2–9. In the copy of the Casanatense MS. in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library, London (MS 49) the copyist liked the motif so well that he repeated it on folios 5r, 6r, 16v, 20v, 21v, 27r. I thank Dr. F. N. L. Poynter, who furnished these folio numbers. 107 Bax, p. 104. 108 W. Kurth, The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer, N.Y., n.d., fig. 109, ca. 1497–98. 105

106

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Astrology and the Seven Deadly Sins contributed the chief elements in this synthetic expression. All the branches of the Sins seem to have been given pictorial shape even though some components escape identification.109 The relationship presented here between the Seven Deadly Sins and the Apocalypse was not neglected in medieval thought: the seven heads of the apocalyptic beast were allied to the seven sins.110 Synthesis does not stop here; the apocalyptic element has been allied to Antichrist. And the planets too enter into this grand pictorial summa of medieval belief. Possibly Robert Grosseteste’s Templum domini or some work related to it was the basis for the amalgam seen in the Lisbon triptych. Grosseteste had related each planet to a specific sin, and to specific diseases. Saturn was allied with Sloth, Sol with Pride, Luna with Envy, Mars with Wrath, Mercury with Avarice, Venus with Lust, and Jupiter with Gluttony.111 Though not all the planets are in evidence in Bosch’s work, there is a sufficient number coupled to the Seven Deadly Sins (and each of these has been represented at least once) to permit the assumption that such a synthesis underlies the iconographic program of the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony. This synthesizing attitude also governed Bosch’s unification of the two major temptation themes into a single comprehensive form. It is further evident that he represented the saint as prey to all those things which stirred and frightened his contemporaries. Fear of the unknown, dread of malignant powers beyond human control, a debilitating fatalism engendered by belief in astrology, imminence of the ultimate cataclysm as revealed in the Apocalypse and the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday, daily enticement to commit one or all of the Seven Deadly Sins — these are at the core of Bosch’s interpretation of the way to salvation through proper exercise of freedom of the will and invocation of divine grace, a way shown to all men by the ‘miles Christi’, Saint Anthony Abbot. Though under the influence of Saturn and thus predestined according to astrology to an unfortunate life, nevertheless he had overcome the Devil, had been 109 For the sins and all their branches according to the Somme le roi, see Francis, pp. 11–68. 110 Francis, p. 10. The theme is a common one in medieval manuscripts. 111 The diseases of Sloth are peraditus and caro mortua; Pride has ydropicus and inflatio; Envy, febrititas and venenum; Wrath, demoniatus and putredo; Avarice, insensibilis and dolor; Gluttony, leprosus and superfluus sanguis; and the diseases associated with Lust are fluens sanguine and fetor (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Lat. 543, fol. 72; also cf. British Library Add. MS 32578, fols. 105v–116: both cited in Morton Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins, p. 233).

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victorious in contest with the Seven Deadly Sins, and surmounted the evil effects of the planets. Bosch’s moralising in paint is possibly as original as the form it takes. It is conceivable, however, that it was influenced by his own training by some clerical figure, a member of his confraternity, or possibly Denys the Carthusian. His Quatuor novissima reproduces almost word for word the Vision of Tondalus which Bosch had already illustrated on the right wing of the Haywain triptych in the Prado.112 Denys, last of the great scholastics, companion of Nicolas of Cusa, had tremendous influence upon his age. It is not unreasonable to suppose that his influence was at its greatest at ’s-Hertogenbosh, near which he resided until close to his death in 1471. Unfortunately his writings on sorcery, magic, and heresy have been lost. These might have proved of immense value for a study of Bosch. But responsibility for the numerous combinations of ideas presented in the Lisbon panels must be attributed to collaboration with scholastic minds steeped in the complex symbolism of the late fifteenth century. The heterogeneous elements suggest that the painter has transferred to a painted panel ideas literary in essence but also theologically unique. That some works by Bosch give evidence for belief in a dictated literary program rises from comparison of the Lisbon panels with the Hermits Retable in Venice, which shows far less abundant motives, and from comparison with the Prado painting of Anthony in contemplation. Almost none of the Lisbon devices appear in this latter work; the saint sits in meditation unaware of the few demonic reminiscences sparsely scattered about.113 Bosch conceived Saint Anthony’s life as an imitatio Christi, of resisting, as did the devotio moderna, the Brethren of the Common Life, by adhering to a personal piety, the Devil’s manifold wiles physical and mental. The true way to salvation for humanity, Bosch says, is by emulating the model of Christ and his saints through a life of piety, abnegation and restraint. If the lure of the senses and all temptations devised by the forces of evil are See chapter 1. For Deny’s Quatuor novissima, see Mâle, . . . fin du moyen âge, p. 468. Marijnissen and Ruyffelaere, pp. 436–439, to my mind rightly place it among the disputed works; Van Schoute and Verboomen, Jérome Bosch, catalogue critique, no. 18, p. 209, would prefer to think of it as an original work by Bosch. Vandenbroeck (Complete Paintings, 2001, p. 91, ill. 72), on the basis of the early date of the wood (after 1462/68), thinks it possibly an early work. But this is an impossibility, given the borrowing of the pose from Dürer’s St. Anthony outside a City engraving of 1519, B 58, and the developed landscape that puts this work into the decade of the 1520s by an unknown Flemish artist. 112 113

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rejected, those who follow Saint Anthony’s model could escape the apocalyptic cataclysm and damnation to achieve eternal salvation for their souls. The striking fantasy of real and imagined anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms, depicted with an overwhelming mass of naturalistic detail, enabled the Lisbon triptych to supplant all previous Flemish models of Anthony’s torments. Bosch’s unnatural yet material beings, pieced together with artistic rather than natural logic, were a perfect vehicle for his serious, moralising exaltation of basic Christian ideals, but this forceful vehicle was too individualistic to achieve the same end in the hands of followers, who in their imitations fell into the trap of delightful detail. Though Bosch related formally to the progressive tendencies of his era, in spirit he asserted his truly medieval heritage; his very individualistic genius of invention, artistically and theologically, shows he could not transcend the rising forces of his day.

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The Garden of Earthly Delights

H

IERONYMUS Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (Fig. 3–1a, b) in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, is undoubtedly his best and greatest triptych, the most widely known and the last of our trio. Over seven feet tall (86 5/8 by 763/4 inches; 220 by 195 cm), it is unique — both for size and for the variety and fascination of its detail. It is also the most enigmatic of all Bosch’s works and the subject of innumerable commentaries devoted to its imagery. To understand his choice and use of motifs, their meaning, their possible sources, their relation to apocalyptic exegesis and salvation of all humanity, is the purpose of our endeavour. Bosch’s achievement is the goal toward which he has been aiming in the Haywain and the Temptation of Saint Anthony triptychs. In this immense painting, in both size and content he created the most profoundly erudite artistic logic of his time.1

1 This chapter was first delivered as the keynote address to the Central Renaissance Conference, at Wichita, Kansas, April 20, 1972. It has since been presented to audiences on three continents; modifications resulting from listener questions are acknowledged in these notes. Major additions to conclusions about the Garden presented at Wichita relate to more precise characterisations, such as the glutton, identification of the cuckold, introduction of the Stoeffler prognostication, above all discovery of the meaning of the group at the lower left of the Garden’s centre panel, my response now to an unanswered question from Prof. Yoko Mori in Tokyo, 1979. Karen J. Hellerstedt’s catalogue, Gardens of Earthly Delight: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish Gardens, Frick Art Museum, Pittsburgh, 1986, corroborates some of my conclusions.

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It may be the work with ‘many bizarre details’ that was mentioned as being in Brussels in 1517, the year after Bosch’s death.2 When the triptych came into the possession of King Philip II of Spain in 1593 it was inventoried as a ‘pintura del variedad del mundo’.3 In 1605 Fray de Sigüenza, the Spanish Hieronymite, called it ‘the strawberry painting’, a representation of the vanities and worldly goals symbolised by the fruit’s numerous appearances, and said that many sermons could be read from it. He saw the work as moralizing, expressing a serious religious intent, and wished that many copies could be spread about for the world’s edification. His point of view has been supported by many subsequent writers, and an enormous literature on the triptych now exists.4 Max J. Friedländer, the great historian of Netherlandish painting, thought that the left panel represented Eve’s birth, that the central panel expressed the apotheosis of sin consequent upon her lack of resistance to temptation, and that the right panel showed the expiation of that sin in Hell.5 Charles de Tolnay in his important book on Bosch of 1937 restated in 1966 his idea that the panels show: For belief that Antonis de Beatis saw the Garden triptych in Brussels in 1517 in the palace of Hendrik III of Nassau, see J. K. Steppe, Jheronimus Bosch, Bijdragen, ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1967, pp. 10–11; E. H. Gombrich’s like proposal, also 1967, with less exhaustive documentation (‘The Earliest Description of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delight ’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 30, 1967, 403–406) lacks Steppe’s reference to Hendrik III’s possessions descending to William the Silent, whose art collection was confiscated by the Duke of Alba. Philip II gave the triptych to the Escorial on July 8, 1593, acquiring it from the auction of the goods of Alba’s son, Prior Don Fernando (†1591). 3 See the 1952 catalogue of the Prado Museum, Madrid, F. J. Sánchez Cantón, no. 2823, for an abbreviated version; the full text is given in J. Folie, ‘Les oeuvres authentifiées des primitifs flamands’, Bulletin de l’Institut royal du patrimoine artistique, Brussels, 6, 1963, 238ff. 4 J. Snyder, Bosch in Perspective, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1973; Fray de Sigüenza’s text in English translation, pp. 34–41. 5 M. J. Friedländer, Geertgen tot Sint Jans and Jerome Bosch (Early Netherlandish Painting, 5), Leiden, Brussels, 1969, p. 57 (English ed. of Die altniederländische Malerei, 5, Berlin, 1927). See also W. S. Gibson, Hieronymus Bosch, An Annotated Bibliography, Boston, 1983, E 71–145. Post Gibson is Gloria Vallese, ‘Follia e mondo alIa rovescia nel “Giardino delle Delizie” di Bosch’, Paragone, 28, n.s., no. 3 (447), May, 1987, 3–22, fig. 215b. See figs. 2, 3, 5b, 6, 7a, 10b for men in foliage in the margins of fifteenth-century Dutch manuscripts proposed as models for Bosch. Also L. Jacobs, ‘The Triptychs of Hieronymus Bosch’, The SixteenthCentury Journal, The Journal of Early Modern Studies, 31, 4, (Winter, 2000), 1009–1041, a study taking brief account of earlier scholars’ conceptions of three of Bosch’s triptychs and their resolution of exterior and interior religious iconographic relationships, including recent bibliography. 2

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an encyclopedia of love and at the same time a presentation of the sweetness and beauty of mankind’s collective dream of an earthly paradise that would bring fulfilment of its deepest unconscious wishes, while at the same time it shows their vanity and fragility . . . [as] . . . many of his motifs are dream symbols of sexual desire.6 Tolnay’s opinion of a psychoanalytic accentuation is still popular. He conceived that this paradise contains the seeds of its own destruction, and that it represents, according to Virgil, a world made of horn and ivory, which materials he thought to see in the fantastic forms in the background.7 In 1947 Wilhelm Fraenger published in German an interpretation which, when translated into English, struck the imagination of intellectuals outside the field of art history with extraordinary force, but almost every other art historian vehemently opposed his thesis: that the triptych illustrates the millennial paradise of an Adamite cult, the Homines intelligentsiae, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, for whose grand master Bosch was, according to Fraenger, essentially an illustrator.8 Dirk Bax, a strong opponent, pointed out that the Adamite cult, documented in the early years of the fifteenth century, was effectively stifled by the Church in 1411, and that there is no record of its survival to Bosch’s own day or in his hometown of ’s-Hertogenbosch9 (however, it or a related form appears later in Germany). Undeterred, Fraenger uncovered in ’s-Hertogenbosch in the late fifteenth century a converted Jew, Jakob van Almaengian, whom he presented as the grand master of the heretical brethren (how they had perpetuated themselves from 1411 to the end of the century was left unexplained10). Fraenger found his guiding hand as well as his countenance in several of Bosch’s pictures. His notion of Bosch as illustrator has been given wide publicity outside of art history, and in some European art Charles de Tolnay, Hieronymus Bosch, New York, 1966. Tolnay, p. 361. Horn = true dreams; ivory = deceptive ones. 8 W. Fraenger, Das tausendjährige Reich, Grundzüge einer Auslegung, Coburg, 1947 (The Millenium of Hieronymus Bosch, Outlines of a New Interpretation), Chicago, 1951, pp. 13–14. 9 D. Bax, Beschriving en poging tot verklaring van het Tuin der Onkuishheidrieluik van Jeroen Bosch, gevold door kritiek of Fraenger, Amsterdam, 1956, pp. 136ff. 10 In 1411 William of Hildernissen, brought to trial at Cambrai, recanted. No further mention of the Adamite cult occurred at Brussels; neither chronicles nor mention of it can be found subsequently: ‘For this reason the theory that the Homines intelligentiae continued to flourish secretly to influence the iconography of Bosch seems preposterous’. R. E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit of the Later Middle Ages, Berkeley, London, 1972, p. 162. 6 7

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3−1a. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, triptych, ca. 1510. Panel, interior, center, 86⅝ x 38¼ in. (190.0 x 175.0 cm). Museo del Prado, Madrid.

105

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3–1b. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, ca. 1510, triptych, interior wings, each wing, 73⅝ x 30¼ in. (187.5 x 76.5 cm). Museo del Prado, Madrid.

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3−2. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, ca. 1510, triptych, exterior. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

107

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3−3. Cornelis Galle I, Sic erat in diebus Noë (W. 1), ca. 1625. Engraving, 9 3/16 x 13⅛ in. (23.3 x 34.3 cm). British Museum, London. Copyright museum.

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3−4. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, center panel, detail, double image. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

3−5. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, center panel, detail, center left. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

109

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historical writings seems to have finally developed a small following.11 However, most Bosch specialists have denied Fraenger’s theory that the triptych represents an apotheosis of physical rebirth and free love; among them was Jacques Combe, who mixed Tolnay’s emphasis on sexuality and dreams with his own belief of the presence of alchemical ideas, in which theories Combe may have been influenced by the modern French philosopher Bachelard.12 Dirk Bax called the work a ‘Garden of Unchastity’ (‘Tuin der Onkuisheid’), and preferred Tolnay’s interpretation. He added his particular belief that the work is a pictorialised expression of Netherlandish folklore and literature, an approach to Bosch’s art that is basic to all his writing.13 Many scholars have wrestled with the riddles of Bosch’s art, seeking what Panofsky called the key to Bosch, an unfortunate term too many have taken to mean there is a single answer to the problems of his exceedingly complex personality, a complexity well recognised by Bosch himself.14 Fraenger in particular paid insufficient attention to the implication of the known facts of Bosch’s patronage by Philip the Handsome, ruler of the Netherlands, for whom he made a Last Judgment triptych, with Paradise and Hell on the wings, nine feet high and eleven feet wide. He was paid thirty-six pounds for it in 1504 but Philip died soon after, thus terminating the contract. The Belgian historian J. P. Sosson informed me that such a sum of money was sufficient then only to pay a carpenter’s wages for one month (which could have paid for the frame: we remember that paintings at this time were painted in their frames). That small sum thus vitiates all arguments that attempt to tie the contract to existing paintings; the Vienna Last Judgment, for one. Bosch’s elevated patronage shows that his orthodoxy must have been unquestionable — no Adamite or other esoteric tinge would have been possible. Later, one of his paintings was owned by Regent Margaret of 11 See P. Reuterswärd, ‘Hieronymus Bosch’, Figura, Acta Universitatis Upsalensis, n.s. 7, Uppsala, 1970. 12 J. Combe, Jheronimus Bosch, Paris, 1946; see esp. p. 37. For a more recent and fuller treatment of alchemy and Bosch see L. Dixon, ‘Bosch’s Garden of Delights Triptych: Remnants of a Fossil Science’, Art Bulletin, 63, 1981, 96–113 (Gibson, E 89, also see E 87, 88). See also L. Dixon, Hieronymus Bosch, London, 2003, passim. 13 Gibson, D 41–44, E 71, 228, 249, J 24. 14 E. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origin and Character, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, p. 357.

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Austria, sister of Philip the Handsome, and many more were acquired by their grandson and grandnephew, the ‘Most Catholic’ Philip II of Spain. Philip became the eventual owner of the Garden triptych and from his collection it passed to the Museo del Prado. Ernst H. Gombrich proposed in 1969 that both the exterior and the interior of the Garden triptych refer to a subject known to have been painted by Bosch, but unknown today either in a shopwork or in a picture of that subject by a follower. Gombrich thought the theme of the centre panel to be the sinfulness of the world before Noah: Sic erat in diebus Noë; ‘As it was in the days before Noah’, according to Matthew 24:36–39.15 Because the exterior shows an unpopulated globe that stretches over both panels, with a very small God the Father in the upper left hand corner, pointing to a book in his lap (Fig. 3–2), Gombrich conceived the exterior imagery to represent the world after the Flood, when the waters receded, though the ark and dead men and animals normally found in such a scene are lacking. Previously, the interior had been read as showing the third day of creation, based on inscriptions legible along the upper margin of the exterior panels: Ipse dixit et facta sunt; ipse mandavit et creata sunt (Psalm 33:9 and Psalm 148:5): ‘For he spake and it was done; he commanded and it was created’, phrases normally interpreted then and now by commentators to refer to the efficacy of the Word, as the book in God’s lap indicates.16 Gombrich thought to see castles and other buildings in the watery landscape, and interpreted the painted streak of light which defines the global shape as the rainbow which appeared after the Flood, the sign of God’s covenant with Noah. However, it is clear that if Bosch intended to paint a rainbow it cannot be proven, for almost the whole of the exterior is painted in grisaille. Gombrich’ s ‘rainbow’ can only be the streaks of light modelling the globe

E. H. Gombrich, ‘Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights; A Progress Report’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 32, 1969, 162–170; but see also R. H. Wilenski’s suggestion (Flemish Painters, 1430–1830, London, 1960, 1, p. 98) that ‘the Garden triptych symbolises the state of the world on the eve of the Flood, has some confirmation in the fact that the Archduke Ernest, at the end of the sixteenth century, owned a picture by Bosch which was then titled “Sic erat in diebus Noe” ’ (and was perhaps a version of this picture). 16 The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 4, The Book of Psalms, The Book of Proverbs, Nashville, 1955, pp. 175, 755. 15

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of earth. More damaging for Gombrich’s thesis (as he realised) is that Noah’s ark is nowhere seen, nor does it appear on the interior of the triptych as it should, though the ark is clearly visible in Joachim Sadelaer’s 1580–85 engraving that Gombrich illustrated as proof of his theory.17 The ark also appears in a later engraving of the same theme by Cornelis Galle I (Fig. 3–3), and in two painted versions (1624, 1632) by Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem.18 Therefore, if Gombrich were correct, such a triptych would have had a scene of the Deluge on at least one of its wings, which is not the case with the Prado painting.19 Two wing panels showing the world immediately before and after the Flood are now in Rotterdam, there attributed to Bosch; unfortunately there is no central panel that accords with them. It shall be seen that this painting does not show Gombrich’s world before the Flood. This is, after all, a garden. Its central interior image conforms to the concept of an earthly paradise found throughout the literature of the late medieval and Renaissance periods.20 Usually the garden is difficult of approach; it is arrived at either by flying through the air, by dropping down a well, by crossing a dangerous narrow bridge that eventually widens, by coming under the sea or across a fiery river or out of a flaming pit, by following a path through a desolate waste, or by making one’s way through a series of tunnels. Surmounting these hurdles brings the traveller to a garden with a fountain in a verdant landscape, with fruit trees growing everywhere. A desolate exterior is shut out by high mountains or by gold, silver, or crystal walls. Such landscapes often include a pavilion or a castle whose walls may be made of crystal that gleams with gold or silver.

Gombrich, 1969, pl. 47e. On the art market (Colnaghi), Apollo, 227, 313, (1988), 69, s.d. 1624; Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, no. L 901, s. d. 1632. Late dates confirm the persistence of the ark as an integral part of the iconography of the theme. 19 M. Cinotti, L’opera completa di Bosch, Milan, 1967, 2nd ed., 1967, nos. 25 A–D, pls. 10, 11. 20 H. Patch, The Other World, According to Descriptions in Medieval Literature, Cambridge, Mass., 1950; see pp. 132ff., 238ff., and 320ff. Bosch’s garden does not have the characteristics of heavenly gardens; nor aspects of paradises, either actual, lost, or promised; it is not a new Jerusalem on a mountain, with the presence or even the implication that the Son of Man will or has appeared according to the Gospel of Matthew 24:29ff. and 25:31 (see S. L. Ringbom, Paradis terrestris, Helsinki, 1958, and W. Hofman, Das irdische Paradies, Munich, 1960); A. B. Giamatti, The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic, Princeton, 1966. 17 18

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Bosch’s Shangri-la calls to mind the Venusberg,21 which is usually benign but eventually terrible, for those who penetrate to it may lose their lives or souls or both. If able to return to their starting place they have usually aged ten years for each hour in the earthly paradise, for the legends mix in a Rip van Winkle aspect. Such a goal of an earthly paradise is achieved either by travel in a vision or through those physically difficult methods of access, but are common in late medieval writings: Dante’s Divine Comedy, for one, gives full evidence of the journey to a distant paradise. The garden is variously located in these accounts; most frequently its placement is in the East, Cyprus being cited in one.22 Generally it lies in the East beyond Eden. In almost all earthly paradises some of the chief objects described are columns of glass or temples of glass or crystal. Transparent crystal is a constant feature, and it is also found in Chaucer’s House of Fame,23 in Fortune’s garden with its standard paradisial properties: soft meadows, playing fountains, groves of trees bearing rich fruit, the whole peopled by fair youths and lovely maidens. Bosch’s garden is also so equipped, apparently borrowing from the artistic tradition of the Love Garden, though in its several versions the figures are clothed. Compared with all the nude figures in Bosch’s central panel it strongly suggests that he was not illustrating the Love Garden so much as thinking in counter terms, for nudity is not exalted in his picture.24 Furthermore, Hell is close by.

P. S. Barto, Tannhäuser and the Mountain of Venus: A Study in the Legend of the Germanic Paradise, N.Y., 1916; the Venusberg ‘is really the evil otherworld’, p. 44; D. Owen, The Vision of Hell: Infernal Journeys in Medieval French Literature, Edinburgh, 1970, pp. 6, 27–32, 44, passim. The initial appearance of the Venusberg is ca. 1440; Barto, p. 18. 22 Barto, p. 21, cites localisation in Cyprus by Felix Faber, ca. 1453. 23 G. Chaucer, The Complete Works, ed. by Rev. W. Skeat, Oxford, 1894, v. 3, book 1, line 120. 24 Prints by Master E.S. (L. 207, 215) and two prints of the Love Garden theme by the Master of the Love Gardens (Small Love Garden L. 20, Large Love Garden, L. 21) exalt pleasure by young lovers; they have clear relationship to the Romance of the Rose, and a less obvious relationship to the theme of the fountain of youth, as, for example, the version by the Banderolles Master in which nude women stand in a pool but men wear bikinis. Undoubtedly Bosch knew the latter print, but it is clear in both detail and manner of presentation that he did not intend to make his picture a love-theme illustration. Advocacy of the Love Garden theme is a strong element in Gibson, E 98. 21

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Some motifs of contemporary literature are clearly seen in Bosch’s picture but others are more obscure, their meanings not always clear. Flying figures carrying fruit or fish aspire to strange goals: when they take to the air, they remind us that demons controlled the air space of medieval and Renaissance Europe. Numerous indications denote it as demonic territory in the literature of the period; the Flemish De Natuurkunde van bet Geheelal, the ‘physical nature of the universe’, speaks of ‘nachtmerrie’, night devils, that light up as they fly through the night air hurling fire at each other.25 Rarely do humans penetrate the upper air, and normally only when accompanied by angels,26 as in Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de l’âme, in an episode in which the soul is brought before Saint Michael, angel on one side, devil on the other27 (calling to mind Bosch’s panel in Venice of the ascent of the souls to the empyrean, aided by angels).28 Among the painted flying figures on the left side of the Garden’s central panel is an armoured merman seen earlier in Bosch’s Lisbon painting and there identified as demonic.29 There is no reason here to view such a figure

25 C. Lemaire, Le cercle des choses, textes traduits du moyen néerlandais, choisis et presentés, Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier, Brussels, 1970, pp. 382ff. 26 Episodes of flight to the upper air, common in pagan mythology, were given impetus in Christian art because of the enormously influential Vision of St. Paul, a work possibly as early as third century (Patch, Other World, pp. 91ff.). The motif also suggests a topsy-turvy world. 27 The Book of the Pylgremage of the Sowle, translated from the French of Guillaume de Deguileville, and printed by William Caxton An. 1483 with illustrations taken from the MS copy in the British Museum [Egerton 6157], ed. K. E. Cust, London, 1859, p. 4: ‘Capitulo III: How the sowle is led to Jugement betwene the Aungel and the fowle Sathanas. ‘So I was thenne ledd bytwene them bothe, and faste I was lyft up in to the eyer, the angel vpon my ryght syde, and the fowle wyght vppon the other syde’. The motif of the soul lifted to heaven on the backs of angels is found in French mss. of the early fifteenth century, e.g., Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS lat. 1176, folio 97 (B.N. photo D 60196), and in the late fifteenth century in numerous mss. of the Ghent-Bruges School, e.g.; Breviarium Grimani, Venice, Library of S. Marco, lat. xi, 67, fol. 469r.; A. Grote, G. Ferrari, M. Salmi, and H. Sieveking, Breviarium Grimani, Faksimileausgabe der Miniaturen und Kommentar, Berlin, 1973, pl. 60; Hortulus animae, Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, MS 1897, fol. 176; F. Dörnhofer, Hortulus animae, le jardinet de l’ame, Frankfurt, 1912, pls. 13, 14; London, British Library, Yates Thompson MS. 13, fol. 33v. (B. M. photo 8859); and Add. MS 18850, fol. 157. Also see P. M. de Winter, ‘A Book of Hours of Isabel la Católica’, Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, December, 1981, figs. 26–28. 28 Cinotti, no. 26D, pl. 12. 29 Charles D. Cuttler, ‘Witchcraft in a Work by Bosch’, Art Quarterly, 20, 1957, 132.

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differently. Immediately below are crags and rocks pierced by crystal rods, those common features of paradise gardens. In the centre of the lake or pool is a floating ringed ball; on its golden ring are various figures; one man is inverted and faces his reflection on the ball. He is related to Hell and to the medieval travel narrative, the Vision of Tondalus, with proof seen in woodcuts and an illustrated manuscript made for Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, written in French at Ghent in 1474; there too is the same inverted handstand. Immediately below is a half-round opening; though it is not a mouth of Hell per se, that it derives from one seems clear, and the man at the left of the opening with his hand on a woman’s pudenda, and the naked posterior on the right side of the opening, suggestive of sin, do nothing to counter the impression. The idea of a Hellmouth was without doubt known to Bosch, given its popularity in illumination, painting and theatre.30 It appears again farther down the axis of the picture, further accenting Bosch’s boundless facility for invention. The sinful connotation of the actions in the opening is amplified by more acrobatics performed by several of the nude riders in the counterrotating cavalcade moving around the pool. The concept of the sins riding on animals is common in the art of the period, and they were commented

30 Illuminated and Calligraphic Manuscripts; Harvard College Library, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge, Mass., 1955, 26f., no. 88. Les Visions du chevalier Tondal, Philip Hofer Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Typ. 234 unfoliated, illustrated in Cuttler, ‘Two Aspects of Bosch’s Hell imagery’, Scriptorium, 23, 1969, pl. 107: Two naked men are shown; one does a handstand on the lower lip of the frontally presented Hellmouth; Tondalus and his accompanying angel stand to one side. Bosch seems to have repeated its conceptual aspect and may have borrowed from it perceptually. The inverted figure on the edge, seen in the illumination and in Bosch, is also found in woodcuts by Zainer at Ulm and Mathis Hupfuff at Strasbourg. In 1500 both illustrate the same text, e.g., Tondalus ain riter aus hibernia, fol. 22v; A. Schramm, Der Bilderschmuck der Frühdrucke, 5, Die Drucke von Johann Zainer in Ulm, Leipzig, 1923, 17, 20, pl. 88, fig. 483; 20, Die Strassburger Drucker, 2, Leipzig, 1937, 20, 30, pl. 280, fig. 2197. In the woodcuts the Hellmouth has been turned sideways, the head-standing nude transformed into a headstanding armoured soldier on the lip of the Hellmouth, and Tondalus and the angel stand to one side as in the ms. illumination. Armoured soldiers in Bosch’s Hell panel seemingly show a relationship to the woodcuts; the head-standing nudes on the central ball apparently are related to the Tondalus illumination. Also see T. Kren, The Visions of Tondal from the Library of Margaret of York, Malibu, 1990. For the Hellmouth see G. D. Schmidt, The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell: Eighth-Century Britain to the Fifteenth Century (Selinsgrove, Pa., Susquehanna University Press; London, Associated University Presses, 1995).

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3−6. Master of the Frankfurt Paradise Garden, Virgin of the Paradise Garden, ca.1410–20. Panel, 9½ x 12 3/16 in. (24.1 x 31.0 cm). Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt.

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3−7. Master of Mary of Burgundy, Ecce Homo, Hours of Engelbert II of Nassau, 1485–90. Illumination, ca. 8⅝ x 6 in. (21.9 x 16.5 cm). Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Douce 219, fol. 69r.

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3−8. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, central panel, detail, foreground. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

3−9. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, central panel, detail, lower right corner. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

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3−10. Jacquemart de Hesdin, The Fool, Psalter of Duke Jean de Berry, ca. 1380–85. Illumination, 4¼ x 3½ in. (10.8 x 8.9 cm). Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Ms. Fr. 13091, fol. 106.

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3−11. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, interior, right wing, detail. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

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3−12. Anon., Presumed portrait of Bosch, Recueil d’Arras. Bibliothèque municipale, Arras, fol. 275. 3−13. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, interior, right wing, detail. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

121

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upon by Fray de Sigüenza.31 In the pool are nude females of several races, the heads of some of them adorned with birds or cherries, both images having connotations of indecency. The black women by the pool and elsewhere convey, in accordance with common belief at the time, a sense of sensuality and sin.32 Numerous efforts have been been made to identify Bosch’s figures as sinful, beginning with Fray de Sigüenza.33 However, not all Bosch’s figures are obviously active sinners; nudity and participation seem to be enough. The path of humanity apparently leads from Creation to Hell without let or hindrance in a world that, though gay in colour, is without hope of Christian resurrection. Nevertheless, salvation is present in Bosch’s world, or at least hope of it. Below the cavalcade, far more than ingeniously adapting older forms, Bosch made a great advance conceptually in his inventive imagery; it was a natural step for one whose thinking was conditioned by a late medieval tendency to multiple symbolic references: here Bosch invents the double image. It is found a third of the way up the panel where naked men appear in and about an exotic plant (Fig. 3–4). One man lies on his back with his legs drawn up and his head away from the viewer. Another kneels, looking toward the spectator with a slight smile, and puts his arm through the leaves of the plant to support the stalk of its thistly flower, while his other arm is extended behind him to hold up a long, flowing, spiky leaf. A third lightly

31 Snyder, Bosch, p. 40, lines 14–16. The counterclockwise rotation of the cavalcade, undoubtedly intentional, was called to my attention by Daniel Levine, to whom my thanks. For an early example of the sins riding on animals see British Library, MS. Yates Thompson 3, the Dunois Hours of ca. 1435; also R. H. Marijnissen, ‘Laatmiddeleeuwse Symboliek en de Beeldental van Hieronymus Bosch’, Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Schone Kunsten, 39, 1, 1977. 32 Black men and women are adulterers in Li ver del juïse, a thirteenth-century manuscript from the Liege region, based on the Vision of St. Paul, according to D. D. R. Owen (Vision of Hell, Edinburgh, 1970, p. 86), while black women, tormented by fire, vermin, and devils, are the unchaste who slew their children and husbands, and were witches, according to a 1466 Catalan version of the Vision of Tondalus (Owen, p. 92). 33 E.g., L. von Baldass, Hieronymus Bosch, Vienna, 1943; reprinted with summaries by Günther Heinz, 1959; English ed., London, 1960. See the summaries, the exhib. catalogue, Jheronimus Bosch, Nordbrabantsmuseum, ’s-Hertogenbosch, 17 September–15 November, 1967, and Marijnissen and Ruyffelaere, pp. 84–87. For Fray de Sigüenza, see Snyder, Bosch, pp. 34–41.

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grasps the knee of the man on his back and with his right hand grasps the wrist of the reclining man. By squinting at this curious image, one sees that Bosch used the dark spaces to create the face of a fool’s-capped head turned to our left. Its open mouth is about to bite off the head of the man on his back. A long thin nose is suggested by the third man’s extended left arm. The right eye of this image is formed by the dark space below the armpit of the man holding the stalk, and the left eye is seen in the dark space below his elbow. Its mouth is formed by the edges defined by the underside of the left arm of the man reaching forward, his chest, the left side of the leg of the man supporting the stalk, and the upturned head, left shoulder, and upper arm of the recumbent figure. Two thistles become bells attached to the figure’s cap. The resultant image is the most complex in all of Bosch’s art. (The biting motif is echoed in the group of naked men crowded together behind this image; they open their mouths to receive the cherry held in the beak of the large bird leaning over them). This double image, placed at the intersection of two diagonals in the design, is a transformed medieval Hellmouth, repeating its conceptual aspect, and borrowing from it perceptually, for there is no corresponding body. Bosch summarised a Hellmouth’s basic aspects, an entrance to Hell as a setting for damnation. The implied devouring of the man on his back (reminding us of the drunken sinner on his back at the side of the Haywain) is conviction enough that Bosch shows the damnation awaiting all unrepentant sinners. Such a double image is unknown in medieval fantastic imagery. Bosch, it has been thought, was influenced by drolleries, but there is a clear-cut difference between the free fantasy of a drollery and Bosch’s conception of the illusionistic double image. When in the margins of manuscripts animals are shown performing human acts, they normally satirise the foibles of man by allusion. Allusion, rather than illusion, was the stronger force in the symbolically oriented medieval outlook. But Bosch, by inventing the double image, is both allusive — in his iconography — and illusive in his synthesizing depictions. His ability to unite allusion and illusion has often been a stumbling block to a ready apprehension of some of his images. Now we see the most imaginative Hellmouth in medieval art. Only with Bosch — and those who came after him — can one find the double image per se. Possibly influenced by Bosch, a popular motif in early sixteenth-century pictures is the building entrance suggesting the mouth of Hell, as in Joachim Patinir’s Temptation of Saint Anthony in the Prado Museum. There Charon ferries a soul across the River Styx toward such a

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building on the right bank.34 It was soon emulated in a 1522 woodcut of Saint Anthony’s temptation, attributed to Jan Wellens de Cock. But Bosch was apparently the northern inventor of the double image around 1510 while at the same time that equally individualistic Florentine artist Piero di Cosimo created a double image of a woebegone face (or body) in the tree in his Discovery of Honey, of ca. 1499 (Worcester, Mass., Art Museum): it almost seems the result of a natural law of simultaneous discovery. In time double images became a convention of mannerism, which also dealt in multiple references; though generally unrecognized by Bosch’s followers, they appear again, for example, later in the century in Archimboldo’s portraits made up of fruit or other materials (a variant, unrelated to Bosch, is Hans Holbein’s play of perspective in a stretched painted skull inserted as a painted memento mori into his 1533 portrait The Ambassadors, London, National Gallery). The underlying savagery of Bosch’s double image, however, leaves no doubt that he intended his centrally placed Hellmouth to epitomise the fate of the evil world whose acts forecast its fate in Hell. Such a devouring image shows that Fraenger’s widely publicised theory of the painting as a portrait of paradisal innocence is untenable. Bosch has presented an allegory of the world in which foolish, naked souls disport themselves in a world basically unreal — when compared with eternal reality — in which mortal life is seen as that transitory stage ending in damnation for the sinners who populate the earth. Though obscure in many of its details, this meaning is easily read, and is epitomised in the central double image of the Hellmouth. Bosch’s exegesis here of sinful behaviour on earth is seemingly the nadir of his pessimism. At the same time it is also the expression of an imaginative, fecund mind of amazing breadth, combining and transforming images available to it into unique, formal structures whose multiple meanings are rooted in medieval belief. Two processes govern the creation of Bosch’s Hell imagery. The first, akin to the drollery, transforms previously existing ideas and images in manuscript illuminations into new combinations whose meanings still partake of their several origins. The second process is the construction, from similar sources, of the double image, a striking invention of a new kind of illusion. His double images are conceived from elements with readily apprehended literal meanings; however, as constituent parts of a double 34

Cuttler, NP , fig. 572.

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image they are agents of additional meaning in a larger context: the artist’s profound concern with the morality of human acts. If further evidence is needed for Bosch’s conviction of the sinful condition of mankind it can be found in Bosch’s inverted spread-legged nude figure covering his genitals. Head down in the water like an ostrich with its head in the sand he is aware of both sex and sin (Fig. 3–5). This is no innocent in paradise.35 At lower right of this inverted figure, in another symbol of the topsy-turvy world, sexual aspects are again emphasised in the man and woman within a large mussel shell carried by another nude male figure. Pearls issue from the shell to express sexual awareness — and cuckoldry, suggestive of a tale by Boccaccio. Another kind of awareness is visible in the man looking out of the hollow plant, immediately to the left of the cuckolded carrier; he gazes at a rat at the end of the glass tube, thereby suggesting one of the most horrible inventions of torture of the late medieval and Renaissance period — the cage mask attached to the victim’s face into which was introduced a starved rat. Below this image a man carries a gigantic strawberry on his back; its projecting hairs seem as ominous as the scorpion tail of this unnatural berry. (One is reminded of a similar tail terminating the gown of the temptress in the central panel of the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony triptych.) To judge from this, the strawberry’s meaning here is the opposite of its medieval concept: it was often associated with the Virgin, as in two examples, the Virgin of the Paradise Garden (Fig. 3–6), of about 1420 in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt;36 and the stylistically related Virgin of the Strawberries in the Solothurn Kunstmuseum.37 Most appearances of strawberries relate chiefly to the Virgin, or to comparable models of purity. (Young girls still bring strawberries in procession to the Virgin in spring at Beveren in eastern Flanders.) The delicacy of form and fragrance of the fruit was naturally associated with equally tender and delicate things. In the eleventh chapter of the autobiography of the German fourteenth-century mystic Suso, the strawberry symbolises spiritual love.38 Strawberries fill Saint Dorothy’s basket Fraenger, 1951, p. 122. The attempt to resolve contradiction to his thesis by calling the figure a ‘loner’ is thoroughly unconvincing. 36 Cuttler, NP, pl. 6. 37 E. M. Vetter, ‘Das Frankfurter Paradiesgärtlein’, Heidelberger Jahrbuch, 9, 1965, pp. 102–146. 38 L. J. Ross, ‘The Meaning of Strawberries in Shakespeare’, Studies in the Renaissance, Renaissance Society of America, N.Y., 8, 1960, pp. 225–240; K.-A. Wirth, ‘Erdbeere’, Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, 5, Stuttgart, 1967, pp. 984–993. 35

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in a painting by Conrad von Soest, and in a woodcut of ca. 1420, also of German origin.39 It is told that on her way to martyrdom the saint encountered a radiant child (usually seen as the Christ Child) who brought her — in midwinter — a basket full of fruit and flowers. These she sent to the lawyer Theophilus who had jeered at her belief in Christ: the legend was very popular in the fifteenth century. Strawberries were also associated with Christ’s Passion; the fruit appears in the margin of the scenes of Christ’s betrayal and Christ before Herod in the Oxford Hours of Engelbert of Nassau of 1480–85, by the Master of Mary of Burgundy (Fig. 3–7).40 The plant was also associated with a golden age — in Bosch’s central panel it seems to imply the very opposite. A medieval topos was the widespread belief in the decline of the earth and its inhabitants, both physically and morally (in regular stages of six thousand years, according to the Bible); then cataclysms would precede the Second Coming of Christ and the Last Judgment. Medieval thought follows Saint Augustine (and others before him) in believing that the world had passed through distinct stages, perhaps as many as ten: from a golden age to one of base metal. Each stage is named in descending order after a less pure metal: gold, silver, copper, brass, bronze, tin, lead, etc. — iron is last. A parallel belief saw the world in progressively declining stages of life, often divided into four eras (or as many as ten), influenced, one can believe, by the nature of human mortality.41 Undoubtedly related to declining vigour with age, the Old Testament speaks of the decline and disappearance of the ‘giants in the earth’ of early times in Genesis 6:4. Because it is God’s creation, the world is good; however, corrupted by the Fall of Adam and Eve, it has declined in virtue. The first age begins with 39 Vetter, p. 136, n. 72. For the woodcut see Cuttler, NP, fig. 374; for a Flemish fifteenth-century illumination see Ross, fig. 6. 40 Hours of Engelbert of Nassau, 1480–85, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 219, fols. 56v, 63v, by the Master of Mary of Burgundy (O. Pächt, The Master of Mary of Burgundy, London, 1948, cat. 14). Engelbert’s nephew, Hendrik III of Nassau, may have been the first owner of Bosch’s Garden triptych, which was apparently seen in the Nassau townhouse in Brussels in 1517 by Antonis de Beatis; see n. 2. Originally it may have been made for Bosch’s Confraternity of the Virgin, or, less likely, as a duplicate. Of recent interest: Walter S. Gibson, ‘The Strawberries of Hieronymus Bosch’, Cleveland Studies in the History of Art, 8, 2003, pp. 23–33. 41 For the topos of the world grown old, see J. D. Dean, The World Grown Old in Later Medieval Literature, The Medieval Academy of America, Cambridge, MA, 1997, and E. Sears, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle (Princeton, N.J., 1986).

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Adam but because of its wickedness ends with Noah and the Flood (Genesis 6, 7), thus beginning the chronology of humanity’s physical and moral decline. By the end of the fifteenth century many believed the Second Coming was already at hand, preceded by the coming of Antichrist (in the North often thought to be the Roman pope). The forecast of 1499 of a second flood to occur in 1526 only served to reinforce memories of the catastrophes of the present and the immediate past — plagues, floods, famines, wars, earthquakes, comets, falling stars — and to promote fear of more terrible events predicted in the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday.42 Not all the signs are clearly indicated in Bosch’s triptych. But he included enough of them to show a knowledge of the apocalyptic threats of the nearness of coming events. The world grown old and close to its end appears in the central panel’s small men (and a black woman) riding on the backs of giant birds, themselves indications of ancient times, and another kind of the unnaturalness of his times and a postlapsarian oddity (Fig. 3–1a). The classical world only served to reinforce these ideas. Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History (7.16) of giants of the past in contrast to the smaller men of his day: ‘few men are taller than their fathers, as the conflagration that the crisis toward which the age is now verging is exhausting the fertility of the semen’. A similar view of declining humanity can be found in the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, in the Second Book of Esdras (5:55–57; also 14:10–18): ‘ You are smaller in stature than those who were before you, and those who come after you will be smaller than you, for the creation is already growing old, as it were, and past the strength of youth’.43

Heist, see introduction, n. 4. E. J. Goodspeed, The Apocrypha: An American Translation, Chicago, 1938, p. 58; also, ‘For the world has lost its youth and the times are beginning to grow old. For the life of the world is divided into twelve parts, and nine parts and a half of the tenth part are already past, there are left two parts and half of the part. Now therefor [sic] put your house in order, and warn your people, comfort the humble among them, and teach those who are wise, and now renounce the life that perishes, and dismiss from your mind mortal considerations, and throw off the burdens of human existence, and lay aside your weak nature, and put away your perplexities, and hasten to escape from these times. For worst evils are still to come than those you have seen happen. For the more the world grows weak with age the more evils will increase upon those who live in it. Truth will more and more retire, and falsehood draw near’. (2 Esdras 14:10–18; Goodspeed, p. 295.) 42 43

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A widespread accompaniment to the concept of the fall from virtue was a rejection of the world, the contemptus mundi that flourished with the monastic orders (its source is 1 John 2:15) even as the world grew more knowledgeable, particularly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The potentiality of all natural form to undergo change, according to medieval thought, to become what we today would think of as monstrous, is well rooted in Aristotelian modes of thought. Wittkower showed this in his essay on the marvels of the East, citing a passage from the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (ca. 560–636): monsters are part of creation, and thus are not ‘contra naturam’.44 Nothing happens at random; everything follows God’s plan in which even monsters, including Bosch’s giant scorpion-tailed strawberry, have a rationale. In the immediate foreground of the central panel, right of centre, a man kneels over a monstrous flower in the lap of a second man. A third man behind them bites into another gigantic strawberry (Fig. 3–8). The foremost pair seems derived from a loving couple in a Love Garden engraving,45 with a significant difference: the apparent partners are both male. And the glutton biting the monstrous strawberry he greedily guards for himself recalls the common illustration in books of hours for Psalm 53; the Fool biting a stone (Fig. 3–10), to illustrate the first verse, ‘The Fool hath said in his heart, there is no God’.46 One cannot doubt the sinful character and moralising content of these prominent foreground figures, who set the scene for incipient and actual biting of many more of Bosch’s human creatures. At the foreground’s extreme right, another group of figures has been variously interpreted, two of them often called Adam and Eve (Fig. 3–9); the man points to the woman in front of him, who seems to have a plug or baby

R. Wittkower, ‘Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5, 1942, pp. 159–197. 45 See especially the Small Love Garden; M. Lehrs, Late Gothic Engravings of Germany and the Netherlands, 682 copper plates from the ‘Kritischer Katalog’, with a new essay by A. Hyatt Mayor . . ., New York, 1969, reprint ed., fig. 101. 46 M. Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Late Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke, New York, 1967, fig. 78; Jacquemart de Hesdin, Fool, Paris, Bibl. nat. fr. 13091, fol. 106. Meiss (p. 154) believed the painter illustrated not the first verse of the psalm, given in our text, but the fourth verse, ‘Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread; they have not called upon God’. But this Fool does not look like ‘a worker of iniquity’. 44

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pacifier in her mouth. The only clothed figure in the entire panel, he seems to wear a hair shirt, which has suggested John the Baptist, but not to Fraenger, who saw this figure (a third head looks over his shoulder) as grand master of the Brethren of the Free Spirit.47 Bax called the last figure Noah. The foremost figure, clearly female, with breasts and long, curly hair on head and body, rests her head in her left hand and holds an apple (?) before her in her right hand. She sits, head turned, at what might be the entrance, flanked by crystal columns, to a cave or tunnel (in classical belief cave dwellers inhabited the prelapsarian world). The setting calls to mind one of the several manners of entry into paradise gardens from the outside world. This figure might indeed be Eve, but if so she is a new type, a wild-woman ‘Eve’ of enigmatic meaning. If this be a primitive life portrayed by Bosch, it seems unconcerned with a mythological past, nor does it seem a medieval view of the golden age with which the strawberry was associated; the panel seems very much to be an allegory with apocalyptic overtones. The conclusion of many writers from Sigüenza on — with Fraenger the most notable exception — that this is an allegory of the committing of sins seems justified by the motifs singled out here. Bosch’s transformation of what may be myth into moral exemplar is intended to appeal to a medieval outlook consonant with his own. The absence of Noah’s ark, and the presence in the pool and elsewhere in the central panel of the black children of the cursed, impious Ham, born after the Flood, disprove Gombrich’s antediluvian theory.48 Instead this picture shows a post-Flood stage of humanity’s sinful behaviour, judging from such motifs as the traditional cavalcade, the gigantic birds, immense fruits and small men, the gluttonous fool biting a giant strawberry he tries to keep to himself, the cuckold and the homosexual. Sinful mankind revelling shortly before the Last Judgment is a parallel theme to humanity’s sinfulness before the Flood. It was known and illustrated later in the sixteenth century (as in works by Cornelis Galle I [Fig. 3–3] and Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem). Nor should we forget the widely believed apocalyptic prophecy predicted in 1499, referred to earlier, of the world’s imminent end by another flood on February 25, 1526.

47 48

Fraenger, p. 141. See n. 15, Gombrich, 1969, p. 169, note 5.

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Bosch’s picture clearly anticipates later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century garden scenes of elegant, even sinful, revelry before the Last Judgment. He warns of the coming end of the world, and castigates society’s moral excesses in his turnabout of the Love Garden theme.49 49 W. Stechow, ‘Lusus Laetitaeque Modus’, Art Quarterly, 35, 1972, pp. 165–175, figs. 2, 4, 10. Gerrit Pietersz Sweelinck’s print, called by Stechow The Prodigal Son: Man before the Last Judgment, shows only clothed figures; however, a painting by Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem (c. 1625), Gemäldegalerie, Potsdam, shows almost all the figures as nude. Stechow remarks (p. 172): ‘The setting [of the painting, Life before the Last Judgment, in Budapest, by Cornelisz. van Haarlem] hardly differs from that of the Days of Noah . . . minus the Ark. Man has not changed; but next time there will be no ark’. Gerrit Pietersz’s print was engraved by Cornelis Galle I, with this text (tr. Stechow): You who wish to lead a quiet life without worries Join our company here; we have plenty of fun Sadness, sorrow and grief, far be they from our circle Truly mirth and play are our only desire. Examples are preserved of a second tradition of representing humankind before the Last Judgment; some are earlier than Cornelisz. van Haarlem, and may have influenced him, e.g., Dirck Barendsz.’s 1581 drawing of the subject (J. R. Judson, Dirck Barendsz. 1534–1592, Amsterdam, 1970, cat. 57, fig. 27) shows an interior party scene with clothed figures, the Last Judgment seen out a large doorway (engraved by Jan Sadelaer, illus. Judson, cat. 71, fig. 42, with text below, ITA ERIT ET ADVENTUS FILII HOMINIS, Matthew 24). But Cornelis mixes nude and clothed figures and omits the Last Judgment scene entirely. A picture in Berlin, Jagdschloss, Grünewald, dated 1596, is titled The Prodigal Son, or Mankind before the Last Judgment by Stechow (his fig. 4), but Garden of Love by Judson (p. 95, fig. 161). Clothed figures occupy the foreground as nudes bathe in the background; the combination is characteristic of Cornelis’s pictures. Judson asks: Is it not possible that such realistic scenes found in the foreground of Barendsz., with their explanation in the background, became traditional and that by the seventeenth century their meanings were so commonly understood that the explanatory key in the landscape was eliminated while the foreground scenes kept their original meaning? (p. 95, and n. 5), but Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, as early as 1596, painted nonrealistic pictures that seem to reflect a different tradition. For the Ulm almanach see L. Hain, Repertorium bibliographicum . . ., Stuttgart, Paris, 1826–1838, no. 15085. Belief in a second deluge was based on the prediction of sixteen conjunctions in Pisces for February, 1524 (A. Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften, Die Erneurung der heidnische Antike, Leipzig, 1932, 2, p. 509). Belief in the imminent end of the world marks numerous works; Sebastian Brant’s contemporaneous moralising text, the Narrenschiff (its prints possibly by young Albrecht Dürer), considered the Last Judgment to be near in time. Brant allied it to the coming of Antichrist in the near future: folly in Brant’s work is either sinful or leads to sin, as is evident from the prologue (E. Zeydel, The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant, New York, 1944, p. 57; for Antichrist see chapter 103, p. 336). Bosch was far from alone in thinking of the rapid ending of a sinful world; recall the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday.

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The interior right wing, with little disagreement among scholars, shows the punishment of sins, in particular gambling and popular music, and their utter condemnation by Bosch (Fig. 3–1b). Gambling was considered one of the chief sins of the day, and that branch of Avarice is castigated in many a moralising treatise, such as the Somme le roi, the ‘King’s Sum’. The dissipation of one’s resources, material and spiritual, at the tavern is a constant theme repeated down to our own day. (Such figures as the famous American reformers Anthony Comstock [†1915] or Carrie Nation, saloon buster [†1911], come out of a rich background of condemnation of drink and moral turpitude, of which Bosch’s illustration of the fate of gamblers and revellers is only one instance.) Immediately below the pierced ears separated by a knife, to left above centre, is a combined image, its legs blasted tree trunks resting on boats frozen in the dark water (Fig. 3–11).50 Combe thought its smooth, broken body to be the alchemical egg51 while Fraenger, quoting Eratosthenes, said it is the fateful world egg laid by Nemesis when she assumed the form of a god; he also sees in this figure a counterpart to the Tree of Life on the left wing, this strange figure then becoming for him a Tree of Death.52 Bax thought it a giant goose, like that in the central panel and then — predictably — related it to a local Flemish pastime of ‘knocking down the goose’ (like a Mexican piñata).53 Benesch thought the face of the figure looking back over its shoulder is a self-portrait;54 if it is compared with the Arras Sketchbook’s presumed portrait of Bosch the relationship is not impossible (Fig. 3–12). Demons and sinners parade around the rim of the creature’s hat, a disconsolate wheeling action that presents a clue to Bosch’s meaning. The sinful revels in the interior of the strange form (Fig. 3–13), revels that suggest the tavern in several motifs, and the references to games of chance below, imply that this image is also a highly unusual translation of a characterisation of Chance, a negative image of its goddess, Fortune. Here is Fortuna Mala,

50 Panofsky, p. 357, n. 5, related this image to the illustration of Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pilgrimages. 51 Combe, p. 37. 52 Fraenger, p. 68. 53 Bax, Beschrijving, p. 110. 54 O. Benesch, ‘Hieronymus Bosch and the Thinking of the Late Middle Ages’, Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, 26, 1957, p. 126.

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Adversa, Infortunium55 which can induce the foolish, sinful behaviour Bosch frequently represents as leading to Hell. In his study of the Goddess Fortuna, Howard Patch classified the medieval conceptions of Fortuna into cults: the Fortune of Love, of the Sea, Combat, Fame, Personal Fortune, Time, and of Death.56 It is easy to find aspects of these conceptions in Bosch’s painted figures, while Fortune’s famous wheel is transformed into the hat brim of the monster around which circle those desolate creatures. Fortune is identified with the spirit of evil by Lactantius, Saint Jerome and others, who denied her actual existence,57 believing that Fortune, that is, Chance, had no proper place within a Christian framework in which acts of free will can be contravened by merely chance occurrences. For Fortune to enter comfortably within a Christian scheme of things, its actions and results had to become subject to a greater power, thus Fortune was soon transformed into a servant of God to work according to divine providence. And so Fortune’s method and purpose become concealed. Fortune’s continued existence in the medieval popular mind was little hindered, playing its part in life, literature, and art in Christian as in pagan times. Fortune’s image is popular in the medieval period; witness frequent portrayal of her wheel sculpted on church portals, such as those of Amiens and Beauvais cathedrals, and she appears in the album of Villard de Honnecourt, to mention only three obvious examples. Fortune is a fickle mistress who plays the harlot; her companions are concupiscence, ‘covetise’, and pride, according to Piers Plowman.58 Innumerable examples culled from medieval and Renaissance literature attest to the uncertainties of Fortune, either at the gaming table, the tavern,59 in sexual affairs, or indeed all aspects of life, and in death.

Hans Sebald Beham made a print of this subject ca. 1540. F. W. Hollstein, German Engraving, Etching and Woodcut, ca. 1400–1700, Amsterdam, n.d., 3, 84 (Bartsch 141, Pauli, 144). 56 H. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature, Cambridge, Mass., 1927, repr. 1967, p. 89. 57 Patch, p. 60, n. 5. 58 Patch, p. 16, refers to Piers Plowman. 59 See the Liber fortunae, lines 32–39f. (J. Grigsby, The Middle French ‘Liber Fortunae’, A Critical Edition, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967 (University of California Publications in Modern Philology, v. 81). The Liber fortunae is related to two moralising treatises, the Miroir du Monde and the Somme le roi. 55

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It is as important to demonstrate medieval and Renaissance knowledge of Fortune as personification, figure of speech, or even as actual belief, as it is to point to examples of Bosch’s knowledge; the Anonimo records a now lost painting attributed to him of Fortune showing a whale swallowing Jonah, in Cardinal Grimani’s collection in Venice in 1521, five years after Bosch’s death.60 The severed hand in the forefront of the Garden Hell panel holds a die, another is seen on the head of the nude female immediately above (Fortuna holds a die in a figure by Veronese, a later example of the continuing relationship between Fortune and sinful gambling61). Here is incontrovertible evidence of Bosch’s knowledge of the imagery of gambling; with it he associates prostitution, one can believe, in his portrayal of the nude female form (prostitution is clearly indicated by the prostitute at the window of the house in his [Rotterdam] The Pedlar, and also by the monk in the tower of the Lisbon Saint Anthony). Usually Fortune is allegorised as a clothed female, often winged, frequently standing with one or both feet on a ball, the latter a return to the classical conception, as Patch pointed out.62 Her wheel resulted from reducing the ball to a flat inscribed shape, a popular attribute in Italy and the north but not invariably so shown. Fortune is also associated with the Fates and with Nemesis, which indicates a certain independence in her characterisation.63 In the north she is often clothed, usually standing on solid ground with her wheel beside her; at the same time Italian artists show her as nude. Those changes of Fortune’s image in the fifteenth century which could have affected Bosch are likely German and Italian. He may have known Dürer’s two engravings, the Small Fortune (B. 78) of about 1497, and the magnificent Nemesis (B. 77) of about five years later. Bosch could also have

The Anonimo, Notes on Pictures and Works of Art in Italy Made by an Anonymous Writer in the Sixteenth Century, tr. P. Mussi, ed. G. C. Williamson, London, 1903, repr. 1969, N.Y., p. 119. Bosch probably also knew the Narrenschiff examples of the danger of trusting Fortune; see Zeydel, pp. 114–115, 190ff. 61 R. Marini, L’opera completa del Veronese, Milan, 1968, p. 117, fig. 183M; the painting is in the Sala del Collegio, Palazzo Ducale, Venice. 62 Patch, Fortuna, p. 148. 63 Also related to Fortune is the figure of Frau Welt (W. Stammler, Frau Welt, eine mittelalterliche Allegorie, Freiburger Universitätsreden, N.F., no. 23, Freiburg in der Schweiz, 1959, pp. 64–66, and esp. figs. xvii–xix). In Master H. L.’s print (fig. xix) she stands on a ball as wild men dance around her. 60

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known such Italian prints as two round Florentine engravings of Fortune dated by Hind to between 1465 and 1480. Both show a female nude holding a blowing sail; in one, she stands in the sea on a circular form (Fig. 3–14),64 in the second, apparently confused iconographically with a Venus Marina or a Galatea, with a dolphin behind the figure.65 A pavement mosaic in Siena Cathedral shows a Fortune figure with one foot in a boat, the other on a ball.66 Departing from the conventional female characterisation of Fortune, a German drawing of the second decade of the sixteenth century attributed to Peter Vischer the Younger (Fig. 3–15) shows an apparently male winged Fortune holding a blowing sail while standing on a ball.67 From the Netherlands comes another drawing: attributed to Gossaert (though earlier given to van Orley 68), it adheres to the norm of a winged female Fortune standing on a ball, holding a ship in one hand, a purse in the other. Of interest is a drawing in the British Museum, London (Fig. 3–16), attributed to Cornelis Theunissen, who is traceable in Amsterdam after 1527.69 The Theunissen drawing is an example of adverse Fortune; a cask is broached in front of her, her clothes are torn, an eel escapes through her fingers, vessels are broken beside her, and another kind of vessel in the background

64 A. M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving, London, 1938, 2, pl. 157E; A IV 38; also see G. de Tervarent, Attributes et symboles dans l’art profane, 1450–1600, Dictionnaire d’un langage perdu, Geneva, 1958, esp. pp. 51, 410. 65 Gianozzo di Bernardo Salviati’s medal (George F. Hill, Renaissance Medals from the Samuel H. Kress Collection at the National Gallery [Washington, D.C.]. . . ., revised and enlarged by Graham Pollard, London, 1967, no. 264) shows on its reverse an image of a nude Fortune holding a blowing sail while standing on a dolphin. To the left are radiant reflections of a sun in the water, on the right the inscription ARIDEAT VSQVE (‘Let good fortune shine everywhere’; my thanks to Roger Hornsby for the translation). Hill dates the medal to after 1500. 66 Hill, p. 51, fig. 83. Fortune stands with one foot on a ball, the other on an open boat in the sea, its mast broken. She holds a blowing sail in one hand, a cornucopia in the other. It is thought to have been made after a drawing by Pinturicchio about 1504–06. 67 E. Bock, Die Zeichnungen in der Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen, Frankfurt, 1929, p. 68, no. 224, pl. 93, entitled Geflügelter Knabe (Das Glück). 68 Jean Gossaert dit Mabuse, catalogue by H. Pauwels, H. R. Hoetink, S. Herzog, Rotterdam, Bruges, 1965, no. 58, fig. p. 294. 69 A. E. Popham, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Artists Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5, Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, London, 1932, pp. 49–50, pl. 18, 1.

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is in serious difficulty for its sails are set every which way, and with the high wind blowing it is in danger of being damaged or even sunk by the rising seas. Here indeed is Bad Fortune; such a drawing shows, as does the less specific Beham engraving of Infortunium, that the counter aspect of Fortune was also illustrated. It could not be a model for Bosch, who died in 1516, but it is a parallel expression for the theme of Bad Fortune in his art. That this in truth is Bosch’s theme — Bad Fortune, which he transformed in his usual, highly moralistic, individual expression, with ill fortune conceived as evil and therefore perfectly suited to the Hell it surveys — is apparent from the way Bosch turns around the basic meaning of another Florentine Ship of Fortune engraving (Fig. 3–17).70 An almost nude youth stands delicately balanced upon a ship, with a woman in fifteenth-century dress seated in the stern. Now the young man is clearly a male personification of Fortune, for he holds the sail as do female personifications. This time the spar is attached by a rope to the vessel he stands on, the implication of control over its movement corroborated by the inscription: IMI . LASO . PORTARE . ALLA . FORTUNA . SPERANDO . ALFIN DA VER BUONA . VENTURA. (‘I let myself be carried by Fortune hoping that I will finally have a successful future’.)71 Broadly interpreted the phrase can mean that the young man is captain of his own ship, the shaper of his own destiny.72 This is very much an Italian Renaissance point of view,73 and if this work was known to Bosch, as one suspects, he reacted to it negatively. There are other significant relationships and counter-

Hind, 1, p. 27; 2, pl. 6, as ca. 1460–70. My thanks to Wallace J. Tomasini for aid in translating the inscription. 72 A. Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften, 1, pp. 127, 353, thought the youth might be identifed with Bernardo Rucellai. The motif may be related to a drawing attributed to Vischer the Younger. 73 It was expressed by Pico della Mirandola in his Oration on the Dignity of Man, 5, ‘We have made you a creature neither of heaven, nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer’, The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. and tr. E. Cassirer, et al., Chicago, 1948, p. 225. For criticism of literally interpreting Pico see W. G. Craven, Giovanni pico della Mirandola: Symbol of His Age: Modern Interpretations of a Renaissance Philosopher, Geneva, 1981, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, no. 185, p. 32. The antecedent of Pico’s statement was probably Leon Battista Alberti’s ‘faber fortunae suae’, i. e., the maker of his own fortune. 70 71

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relationships. Both Bosch’s figure and the Italian youth are male, both stand on unstable supports, a ship or ships; both are nude. In Bosch’s case the ideal human body of the Italian youth is a hardly human body showing its corruption rather than its perfectibility; Bosch opposes his late medieval morality to the Renaissance assertion of humanity’s potentiality for control of its own destiny (we are reminded of the transformation into northern form of Petrarchan ideas in Maximilian’s Vienna tapestries). The torments of Hell that await those who have trusted too much in Fortune are also displayed to the right, slightly lower in level than the transformed Fortuna figure. A recumbent knight, holding a rampant frog or toad banner in one hand and a chalice in the other, is attacked by evil animals (the whole group from a short distance suggests some kind of weird crustacean). Close behind them to the right, in front of a lantern from which another figure looks out, another knight of the guard, naked of everything except a helmet, is run through by a demon whose long sword pins him to the dead tree left of the lantern pill box (Fig. 3–18). The armoured knight is supine on a disk that also recalls Fortune’s wheel. Its support is precarious, a naked man stretched out on the upturned blade of a gigantic knife, a balancing act that recalls the title page woodcut (Fig. 3–19) of the Liber de sapiente written by Carolus de Bovillus (Charles de Bouvelle) in 1509, and published at Amiens in 1510 and at Paris by H. Stephanus as part of a miscellany. The block was reused for the 1523 publication by Galliot, Paris, of the Remèdes de l’une et l’autre Fortune, the French translation of Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque Fortunae.74 Fortune (FORTVNA), with blindfolded eyes, sits holding her wheel on a ball labeled SEDES FORTVNE ROTV[N]DA (Fortune’s round seat). Above her head is a medallion with a man’s head, labeled INSIPIENS (that is, The Fool). On the scroll coming from his mouth we read TE FACIMUS FORTVNA DEA[M] CELOQUE LOCAMVUS (Thee, Fortune, we honour as a goddess and place thee in heaven). Opposite her is Wisdom (SAPIENTIA), holding a round mirror, labeled SPECVLVM SAPIENTIE (Wisdom’s mirror) ringed with the Seven Planets and showing her own face, signifying ‘Know thyself ’. She is seated on a solid square base labeled SEDES VIRTVTIS QVADRATA (Virtue’s solid seat). Above her head is a

E. Pellegrin, Manuscrits de Pétrarque dans les bibliothèques de France, Padua, 1966. (My thanks to Myra Orth for calling this work to my attention.) 74

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medallion with a man’s head, labeled SAPIENS (the Wise Man). On the scroll coming from his mouth we read FIDITE VIRTVTI: FORTV[N]A FVGATIOR VNDIS (Place your trust in virtue; Fortune is more fleeting than the waves). Here Blind Fortune, that is, Vice, is the counterpart of virtuous Wisdom. Fortune’s feet rest on a triangular prism resting in turn on another strongly pointed prism; instability on a knife edge is basic to both the woodcut figure of Fortuna and Bosch’s figure group. The French print was clearly understood by Bosch as expressing the moral contrast of Virtue and Vice, with Fortune and the Fool (in Bosch’s art symbolic of sin) here opposed to Virtue and Wisdom. Fortune’s ball, which can symbolise the world, now symbolises instability, a contrast to the square stability of Wisdom’s seat. The relationship is so close between Bosch’s picture and this French woodcut that it must have been known to him. (It has been well known to scholars since 1902.75) As a work known to Bosch it would then act as a terminus post quem of 1510 for the date of the Garden triptych, the only date one can point to for it, for dendrochronology’s 1458 date takes us back to Bosch’s infancy. (Obviously Bosch reused old panels, a common artist’s practice, both economically and because of their stability). Again in these Fortuna images — and we may even add the knife blade upheld by a pair of pierced ears as showing an artistic relationship — Bosch demonstrates a fundamentally anticlassical attitude, and asserts his orthodoxy in creating his program. The goods of Fortune, according to the popular Somme le roi, are the second branch of Vainglory, itself the fifth branch of Pride, while wicked folk and evil games are assigned to the tenth

For example, Prince d’Essling, Pétrarque, ses études d’art, son influence sur les artistes. . . L’illustration de ses écrits, Paris, 1902, p. 94. A. Doren, ‘Fortuna im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance’, Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg, 2, 1922–23, 1, p. 143, fig. 15. R. Klibansky, in E. Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, Leipzig, Berlin, pl. 2, 1927 (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, 1927, 10). E. Panofsky, ‘Good Government or Fortune’? Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th series, 68, December, 1966, 321, and fig. 7 (for the inscriptions on the scrolls and the thrones I am indebted to Panofsky’s article). See n. 2 for Gombrich’s 1967 reference to this print to account for Bosch’s ‘images of instability and impermanence’. (pp. 405–406, pl. 47e) For another aspect of the Fortune-Wisdom-Virtue relationship, and also Dürer’s prints, see Mauricio Bonicatti, ‘Dürer nella storia della idee umanistiche fra Quattrocento e Cinquecento’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1, 2, 1971, 164, passim. 75

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branch of Avarice.76 Note that the sins of Luxuria (Sensuousness), Gula (Gluttony), and Avaritia, identified in the lower right-hand corner, can readily be associated with Fortuna.77 To put one’s trust in Fortune or to gamble and revel with music under Fortune’s wing, Bosch says, can lead us to Hell; thus the evil effects of Chance, Mala Fortuna, Fortuna Adversa, Bad Fortune and Adverse Fortune dominate the centre and lower part of the Hell panel. Bosch’s message is abundantly clear, and its expression in paint is wonderful in its complexity. The left interior wing of the Garden triptych must be considered as much more than the usual introduction to the whole, and utterly pessimistic as to man’s fate. Though pessimism is frequently conceived as basic to Bosch’s thought, it never arrived at the point of leaving no hope for salvation. This, however, has been the conclusion of several interpreters of Bosch’s art.78 Belief in his utter pessimism makes Bosch the sole innovator of his pictures and their programs — a dubious assumption. Furthermore, early on Bosch worked with his father; this suggests a craft tradition, characteristic of the times, which means training by his family, even though we do not know whether there was a painters’ guild in ’s-Hertogenbosch. To assume that Bosch painted his works entirely for his own pleasure, chose his own subjects, and painted for an open market is unrealistic in relation to his period and town. There is no evidence outside the works themselves, but one must assume that, if needed, he had a trained advisor in theology: it was normal procedure, as is known from Dirk Bouts’s documented Last Supper Altarpiece (Saint Pierre, Louvain). Given his status of sworn brother of his confraternity, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a solid religious training to accompany artistic training is more than likely.

76 W. N. Francis, The Book of Virtues and Vices: A Fourteenth-Century English Translation of the Somme le roi of Lorens d’Orléans, London, 1942 (EETS, 217), p. 19. 77 R. L. McGrath, ‘Satan and Bosch, The Visio Tondali and the Monastic Vices’, Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th series, 71, 1968, 46–49, and n. 18. 78 Snyder, p. 27; also, Y. Pinson, ‘Fall of the Rebel Angels and Creation in Bosch’s Eden: Meaning and Iconographical Sources’, Flanders in a European Perspective. Manuscript Illumination Around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad. Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven, 7–10 September 1993, ed. by M. Sneyers and B. Cardon, Leuven, 1995, p. 707.

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His triptych, almost seven and a half feet tall, is much too large for the average room of Bosch’s day, but it could have been commissioned for a private chapel: the identification of a strange work seen by Antonis de Beatis in Hendrik III of Nassau’s palace in 1517 seems more and more likely to have been this triptych. Bosch presents program painting; its exact working out was surely the responsibility of the artist both in the main motifs and certainly in the details, as several underdrawings with drastic differences from the surface image make very clear, for example, those for the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony. An unquestionable affirmation of Christian belief occurs on the left wing, rather than in the customary central panel. This change of location may have occasioned a report of Bosch’s heresy that was specifically denied by Sigüenza,79 who, we recall, considered the triptych a symbolic representation of Fame. The foreground of the left wing shows Adam and Eve separated by Christ, who is looking at the spectator and who raises his hand in blessing as with the other he grasps Eve’s wrist (Fig. 3–20). This cannot be her creation from Adam’s rib, as suggested by Friedländer, for Adam is already awake, and furthermore some distance away. She is not drawn from sleeping Adam’s side in the traditional manner that Bosch employed on the left wing of the Haywain triptych. Seemingly this is Eve’s presentation to Adam, as she demurely looks down. The presenting figure is youthful, long-haired and dark-bearded, and not a tiara-crowned, white-bearded God the Father as on the left wing of the Haywain triptych, where there are specifically identifiable scenes from Genesis. There are several other significant differences between the left wing of the slightly earlier Haywain triptych and the Garden triptych: first, there is no expulsion from Eden in the Garden triptych; secondly, evil enters the world in the Haywain triptych twice — through the Fall of Man and through the Fall of the Rebel Angels, the latter a swarm of loathsome insects and winged demons. In the Haywain’s heavens God the Father sits holding a globe in one hand, seemingly blessing with the other, and takes Eve from Adam’s side in the Garden of Eden below. Only God as the Son appears in the Garden triptych, and the setting is different. But it is meant to be Eden since it contains elements proper for it, such as the fountain supposedly the source of the four biblical rivers, the Pishon, the Gihon (thought to be the 79

Snyder, p. 34.

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3−14. Fortuna, 1465–80. Engraving, Florence, 2⅝ in. (6.7 cm) diam. British Museum, London.

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3−15. Attr. to Peter Vischer the Younger, Fortune, early sixteenth century. Drawing, 6¼ x 5 7/16 in. (16 x 14 cm). Universitätsbibliothek, Erlangen.

141

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3−16. Cornelis Theunissen, Fortuna, ca. 1525. Drawing. British Museum, London.

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3−17. The Ship of Fortune, ca. 1460−80. Florentine engraving, 10¼ x 6⅞ in. (25.7 x 17.0 cm). London, British Museum.

143

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3−18. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, interior, right wing, detail, guard box. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

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3−19. Fortune and Wisdom, from the Liber de Sapiente, Traité des Remedes, Amiens, Paris, 1509/10. Woodcut, 14¼ x 11½ in. (37.2 x 29.1 cm).

145

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3−20. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, interior, left wing, detail, Presentation of Eve to Adam. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

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3−21. Creation of Eve, ca. 1460. Florentine engraving, 10 7/16 x 7 in.; 7⅜ in. below (25.8cm x 17.8 cm; 18.6 cm below). Albertina Museum, Vienna.

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3−22. E. Reuwich, animal page from Bernard von Breydenbach, Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam, Mainz, 1486. Woodcut, 8¼ x 5¾ in. (21.0 x 14.7 cm). British Museum, London.

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3−23. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, interior, left wing, detail. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

149

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3−24. Master Bertram, Separation of light from darkness and fall of the rebel angels, Grabow Altarpiece, 1379. Panel, 68⅛ x 66½ in. (178.3 x 169 cm) overall; left wing, ca. 33½ x 22½ in. (85.0 x 57.0 cm), detail. Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

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3−25. Rogier van der Weyden, Seven Sacraments Altarpiece, ca. 1448, interior. Panel, 78¾ x 38¼ in. (200.0 x 97.2 cm); center, 46⅞ x 38¼ in. (118.5 x 97.2 cm); each wing, 46⅞ x 24¾ in. (118.5 x 62.8 cm). Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.

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3−26a, b. Creation of the world (left) and Wisdom (right), from Stammheim Missal, Saint Michael, Hildesheim, ca. 1160. Illumination, each 11⅛ x 7 7/16 in. (28.2 x 18.9 cm). J. Paul Getty Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Ms. 64, folios 10v, 11r.

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3−27. Prayerbook Master, Fall of Man, ca. 1500. Book of hours, 9 x 6 in. (22.9 x 15 cm). Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, codex 1887, folio 20.

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Nile by some), the Tigris or Hiddekel, and the Euphrates, all of which lie in the East, and so Eden was supposed to be there too. (The rivers were believed to circle the world, tunnelling below it to emerge at different points.80) Scenes of Adam and Eve in Eden after their creation and their temptation and expulsion are common; not so common is their representation in a Florentine engraving of Eden of about 146081 where there is a full landscape, the Tigris is named, and dragons, sirens, unicorns and all manner of animals populate its background (Fig. 3–21). Artists in northern Europe were equally interested in these animals. Some appear in the illustrations (probably by Erhard Reuwich) to Bernhard Breydenbach of Mainz’s Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam, published at Mainz in 1486. Bosch clearly copied from this work, as was pointed out many years ago by Dollmayr.82 Three of Reuwich’s animals appear in Bosch’s Eden: the giraffe, the capra d’India, or Indian goat, as an abbreviated twolegged creature, and the unicorn (Fig. 3–22). Farther back in the picture is an elephant with a monkey on its back. Genuine elephants were rarely seen in Europe. Only a few were recorded in the entire medieval period, though one was exhibited at Cologne in the early 1480s and thus could have been seen by Bosch.83 His beast seems more exactly characterised, with ears like the Asian elephant, than the usual bestiary approximation, in which the animal has a trunk and a tail like firemen’s hoses. In and around a dark pool at the bottom of the left wing are fantastic forms so unnatural they create fascination but also unease — or more — in 80 L. L. Ringbom, Paradisus terrestris . . ., Acta societatis scientiariam Fennicae, N.S.C.I., no. 1, Helsingfors, 1958, p. 436. 81 Hind, 2, pl. 86. 82 H. Dollmayr, ‘Hieronymus Bosch und die Darstellung der Vier Letzten Dinge in der niederländischen Malerei des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses zu Wien, 19, 1898, pp. 294–343. 83 Bosch’s elephant differs from the model proposed by P. W. Lehmann, Cyriacus of Ancona’s Egyptian Visit and Its Reflection in Gentile Bellini and Hieronymus Bosch, Locust Valley, N.Y., 1977, figs. 31A, 32, 34, 35. An elephant was taken down the Rhine in the early years of the decade; in 1482 it was at Cologne, and in September 1483 it was at Frankfurt (J. Baum and K. Arndt, ‘Elefant’, Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, 4, Stuttgart, 1958, col. 1229). Bosch in nearby ’s-Hertogenbosch may have seen it. See further, Ch. D. Cuttler, ‘Exotics in Post-Medieval European Art: Giraffes and Centaurs’, Artibus et Historiae, 23, 1991, pp. 168–169, figs. 8, 10. Also different is another elephant (J. Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, Painting, Sculpture; The Graphic Arts from 1235 to 1575, New York, 1985, p. 272, fig. 273), from De proprietatibus rerum, Haarlem, 1485, frontispiece for book 18 by Master of Bellaert.

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the viewer. A triple-headed bird, an armoured seahorse with a unicorn-like horn, and a book-reading merman are only a few. Nearby a cat makes off with its prey, as to the right a broad-billed bird eats a frog, seemingly with delight. In the far middle ground a demonic lizard is being chased by an angry sow as a lion nearby consumes its victim; it is quite evident from these happenings that in Eden, which this must be, the law of the world existed even before Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Combe thought the tree behind Adam to be the Tree of Life and the tree farther back, along the right side of the panel opposite the fountain, to be the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.84 The first tree, to Adam’s left, has a fanciful vine bearing strawberries (a symbol of the Virgin, the second Eve) wound about its trunk. Here Bosch was undoubtedly inspired by Schongauer’s dracaena (dragon) palm in his engraved Flight into Egypt (B. 7), an identification made by many.85 Ripe, red apples grow on the trees in the grove behind Adam, and more large strawberries appear as the fruit of the other palm on the right hand side.86 This distant palm, about whose trunk a serpent (Eve’s tempter) is entwined, grows on top of a rock in the form of a face. Nose and mouth are defined by a curling snake. The ‘eye’ of the rock seemingly cries tears, pictorially reinforced by the demonic animal For Bosch's contemporaneity, and knowledge of the new architectural forms of his day, see Ethan Matt Kavaler, ‘Nature and the Chapel Vaults at Ingoldstat: Structuralist and Other Perspectives’, Art Bulletin, 77, 2 (June 2005), p. 244, figs. 8ff., 25. Kavaler proposes a similarity between the chapel vaults and the fountain structure. 85 Among those identifying the dragon tree (Dracaena drago) see E. and J. Lehner, Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants, and Trees, N.Y., 1960, p. 87. Most scholarly opinion considers Schongauer as the source for Bosch’s dragon tree. However, there is the possibility that Bosch borrowed from one or more of three other earlier versions: an illustrated woodcut by Michael Wolgemut of the Fall of Man from Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Weltchronik (the Nuremberg Chronicle, a historical record of the world up to the time of publication in German and Latin in 1493). D. Landau and P. Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1470–1550, New Haven, London, 1994, p. 39, fig.15, which represents the dragon tree, palm, and apple tree as in Bosch’s left wing; secondly, the same scene in De arte distillandi, Strassburg, 1509; and third, Albrecht Dürer’s Flight into Egypt (B. 89) of ca. 1504 (Cuttler, NP, fig. 439), whose woodcut omits the apple tree, for the scene is not in the Garden of Eden. 86 The strawberry-like fruits of the distant palm are coloured red, not brown like dates, which suggests that Bosch either ignored their normal colour or did not know the colour of dates. Bosch may not have seen a growing palm and depended on woodcuts and engravings, in black and white, for his knowledge (see previous note). Bosch may never have traveled to Italy where he could have seen a palm, as had Dürer, or discovered that its ripe fruit was brown, not red. 84

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below, shaped like a tear bottle (Fig. 3–23). In actuality the rock does not cry at all; its ‘eye’ is formed by an oval clam-like shape with many legs for eyelashes and long streamers suggesting tears coming out from under its body shell. A similar animal is seen below in miniature. Frogs and lizards, one with three heads, flee from the water. In 1953 Erwin Panofsky concluded his monumental study of Netherlandish painting with a relatively brief but masterly discussion of the art of Bosch. He disclaimed possession of the key to Bosch’s elusive art, but he did suggest that this face made from a rock portrays a literary motif from the Pèlerinage de la vie humaine. The rock, made of hard human hearts, when softened by God shed tears into a cistern that served for the Pilgrim’s second baptism of repentance.87 Carrying Panofsky’s observation one step further, it is evident Bosch here transforms the illustration of an allegorical theme into a true optical illusion, the double image. This double image of the hard heart of stone — as yet unsoftened by contrition and repentance even before the Fall of Man — contributes to the panel’s basic meaning, that is, the pre-existence of evil before the creation of Adam and Eve; that Bosch thought in these terms is clearly demonstrated by the Fall of the Rebel Angels on the earlier Haywain triptych’s left wing. In the Garden triptych rebel angels have already penetrated the earth, its

Panofsky (1953) commented (p. 357 and note 4) on the thoroughly Boschian character of the image in Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (Paris, Bibl. nat. MS fr. 823, fol. 78) of Grace Dieu bringing the Pilgrim To a roche of hardë ston And, at an eyë, there ran oute Dropys of water al aboute: The dropys wer (to my semyng) Lych saltë terys of wepyng; And in-ta cisterne ther besyde, The dropys gonnë foer to glyde. British Library MS. Cotton Tiberius A vii with the same text shows tears running from an eye on a hill to a marble bath, and the same scene appears in the Brussels exemplar of the Pèlerinage (MS 10176–78, fol. 92) with the marble bath now a bucket. Grace Dieu, God’s grace, explains to the Pilgrim that the rock is made of hard hearts of unrepentant men, but the grace of God softens these hearts and the resultant tears of contrition are collected in a bath in which the Pilgrim has his second baptism, that of Penance, which washes away all ‘ordure’. Panofsky, struck by the pictorial character of the imagery, commented on its Boschlike nature without defining it. 87

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interior suggested by the black foreground pool with its strange crew. Bosch’s conception follows lines already established over a century before, as, for example, in Master Bertram’s Grabow Altarpiece of 1379, in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Master Bertram followed the Speculum humanae salvationis (Heilspiegel), the Mirror of Human Salvation. This typological book was extremely popular in the fourteenth century and even more so in the next. It was one of the early printed blockbooks with a wide circulation; Bosch probably knew a copy. In Master Bertram’s picture (Fig. 3–24) the scenes of the Separation of Light from Darkness and Fall of the Rebel Angels show God the Father standing on a globe beside a heaven of scalloped cloud forms. In it the head of God the Son is identified by the rays coming from the top and sides of his head. God the Son looks out of the corners of his eyes at the creating hand and at the falling angels about to disappear into the globe below (so much for the belief that medieval man thought the world was flat!). One of the angels, Lucifer, wears a crown and holds a scroll that reads, ‘Ascendero super altitudine[m] nubium similis ero altissimo’ (I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High). A quotation from Isaiah 14:14, it implies the next verse: ‘Yet thou shalt be brought down to Hell, to the sides of the pit’. More than a narration of Creation, Bertram’s picture also shows the contrast of good and evil between which mortals must decide with the aid of Christ. Thus human salvation is conceived in the Speculum to have existed from the very beginning, and the second panel, apparently the creation of heaven and earth (though earth has already been seen as a place into which the black and red devils are falling), shows God the Father now standing on a checkerboard floor in a reversed position from that of the first panel. His hands are held in the same creating (?) gesture. Again God the Son looks out of the corner of his eyes, this time directly at God the Father, to suggest the coming sacrifice as agreed upon. Here then, before Bosch, art expresses the pre-existence of evil in the world before Adam has even made Eve’s acquaintance. As we find in the first chapter of the Speculum humanae salvationis: The mirror of human salvation begins In which is revealed the fall of man and the way of reparation. In this mirror man can contemplate Why the Creator of all decided to create man,

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Man can even see how through the deceit of the devil he was damned, And how through the compassion of God he was formed again. Now Lucifer rose up against his Creator, God Eternal. And in the flash of an eye was hurled from the height of the heavens into inferno, And for this reason God decided to create the human race, So that through it he could make recompense for the fall of Lucifer and his allies. Wherefor the devil, envying man, waited for an opportunity for himself And endeavoured to induce him to transgression. . . .88 Now it is clear that Bosch — far from being heretical in his art — manifests the accepted modes of thought of his era, according to which creation follows the introduction of evil into the world. Humanity was assigned, as the Speculum says, to perpetual imprisonment, but At last the Father of compassions and God of all consolation Mercifully reflected on the state of our damnation And decided to liberate us through Himself.89 So we arrive at a catholic Christian theology in which, after the creation of man, Eve’s seduction put evil by human beings into the world; they can then be redeemed through Christ’s offer of redemption. To achieve redemption humankind must, for its part, do penance. Without grace achieved through penance, mortals necessarily sin because of the conflict of the physical and spiritual within the human race.90 The symbol of penance in the left wing seems to be forecast before its metamorphosed form by the tear-jug animal below the as yet tearless eye. Redemption is offered by Christ’s sacrifice through the medium of the supernatural water of baptism, for the water of baptism is infested with

E. F. Kortlander, ‘The Speculum humanae salvationis: An English translation’, University of Iowa, unpublished thesis, 1956, p. 32 (chapter 1, lines 1–12). 89 Kortlander, p. 42 (chapter 2, lines 89–91). 90 Theological balance has been maintained thanks to the very great kindness in 1972 of Father Maurice B. McNamee, S.J., St. Louis University. 88

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demons, as is everything on earth. They must be exorcised by the sacrament of baptism before the water can become life-giving. Thus the unicorn in the background is purifying with his horn the water from the fountain from which flows the water of the world, a fountain permeated with ignorance and blindness, as the peering owl at its very centre suggests. At the same time evil animals make haste to escape from the purified water. (The power of the unicorn to so purify evil waters was widely believed). The left wing is more than an exposition of the Speculum humanae salvationis, explaining why humans were created. Though alluding to future penance, dependent on future sin allegorically expressed in the central panel, it also refers to future salvation through the instrumental foreground group. Medieval Christianity held that humanity’s salvation from damnation was also achieved through the life of the Virgin Mary in association with Christ; Bosch has already uniquely referred to her. Participating in this expression are six nude figures in the lower left corner of the central panel (Fig. 3–1a). A naked white male, a naked black female at his side, looks up and gestures with extended right arm to indicate Christ, Adam and Eve. Four more nude males are grouped behind the dissimilar pair. The foremost figure at the left holds an inverted giant ripe fruit. He looks at the black woman, who wears a giant cherry on her head suggestive of the sexual act; in her left hand she holds another cherry, partially concealed behind her back. A dark-coloured bird sits on the head of the rearmost figure adding to the perplexing meaning of the group, while the direct gaze of the man in the centre behind the group ‘leader’ seems meant to attract our attention; he is one of relatively few figures looking out of the panel. Bosch’s gesturing man is the problem. He seems to point to the left wing yet may also indicate a bird above his hand. But it is small, dark and hard to see, and the gesture is too strong and high in tonal value so that our eye continues on to the left wing to focus on Christ, Adam, and Eve. No other work of Flemish painting of the period presents a turning backward that reverses the normal progression from left to right in pictures. Bosch’s rendering has no companion in the art of his period. It is unique. Closest to it, yet differing in time and innovation since it does not break with the left-to-right spatial progression, is Rogier van der Weyden’s widow in a wimple who holds the right hand of the fainting Virgin at the left edge of the central panel of his Antwerp Seven Sacraments Altarpiece of ca. 1448

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(Fig. 3–25).91 Her head and hands and the forepart of her body are visible in the central panel but the rest of her body, in its long cloak, extends almost halfway across the foreground of the left wing.92 No other northern artist of the period used this device, so far as I know. This also conceives a frame as possessing spatial identity: Rogier treats it in the Albertian sense of a window into space, a device seen earlier in Flemish portraits where folded hands or a forearm seem to rest on the edge of the frame, as in works by van Eyck and van der Weyden, by Christus and Bouts later, and in French portraiture past mid-century. Rogier conceived his picture’s space as continuous throughout the three parts of his altarpiece. The verticals of the actual frame reinforce the effect of the painted columns interposed between the spectator and the scene portrayed. His triptych shows a single large space flowing from left to right. It brings the viewer, after visually experiencing the sacramental acts in the side aisles and elevation of the host at the altar in the nave, back to the central image of the Crucifixion, the source of salvation symbolised visually by the sacraments. Furthermore, in the elevation of the host by the priest at the altar behind the giant foreground cross, there is explicit reference to transubstantiation, the transformation of the wafer into the body of Christ that takes place in Catholicism at that moment of the mass.93 Bosch’s spatial design and objective, however, are different: the Garden of Earthly Delights is not readily recognisable as an exposition of Christian dogma nor was he concerned, as was Rogier, to create a logical progression in space. Each panel of Bosch’s triptych has an almost independent existence within a larger context of apocalyptic escatology. Its progression is like Rogier’s altarpiece, but its purpose is not immediately apparent; it proceeds by contrast, not by inexorable continuity. Bosch took a normal narrative approach in the wing panels but allied them with the symbolic content of The identification of the woman as a widow is due to Anne H. van Buren, to whom my thanks. 92 Neither Lorne Campbell (Van der Weyden, New York, London, Toronto, 1980) nor Martin Davies earlier (Rogier van der Weyden: An Essay, with a Critical Catalogue of Paintings Assigned to Him and to Robert Campin, London, New York, 1972) refers to this phenomenon. The ornamented edge of the woman’s garment shows that she is not impoverished (a male beggar appears behind a column on the right wing; another beggar, again male, is seen on the right wing of Rogier’s Munich Columba Altarpiece). 93 Shirley Blum, ‘Symbolic Invention in the Art of Rogier van der Weyden’, Konsthistorisk Tidscrift, 46, 1977, p. 103; Blum, The Early Netherlandish Triptych, Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1969, p. 91. 91

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the central panel where individual acts by his players express a manifold variety of statements about sinful human conduct in what has been called a false paradise. To aid the spectator Bosch used the group in the lower lefthand corner of the central panel to make a larger point. And what is that point? In the past art historians have developed several hypotheses on the meaning of the triptych. The wings have left them in no doubt; Eden before the Fall of Man is represented on the left wing, while apocalyptic judgment of the consequences of the Fall is illustrated on the right wing. But the meaning of the central panel has been a problem to many; no other work by Bosch has remained so much an enigma. The recorded interpretations of the central panel began in 1605 with Fray José de Sigüenza, who viewed the painting as an admirable and recondite expression of the commission of sins.94 In 1927 Max J. Friedländer accented the unreality and lack of sensuality in Bosch’s figures. Ten years later Charles de Tolnay introduced dream symbolism and psychoanalysis, bringing the work to the (closer) attention of surrealist painters and writers like Aldous Huxley. Tolnay opened the door to Wilhelm Fraenger’s concept of Bosch as illustrator of the principles of an Adamite cult, a theory vehemently denied by most art historians. ‘The other painting of the vanity and glory and the passing taste of strawberries or the strawberry plant and its pleasant odor that is hardly remembered once it has passed is the most ingenious thing of great skill that can be imagined . . . in this painting we find, as if alive and vivid, an infinite number of passages from the scriptures that touch on the evil ways of man, for there are in the scriptures, in the prophets and Psalms, many allegories or metaphors that present them in the guise of tame, wild, fierce, lazy, sagacious, cruel and bloodthirsty beasts of burden and riding animals that man searches for and converts for his pleasure, recreation and ostentation by his inclinations and customs and the mixture that is made of one and the other. The same applies to the birds, fishes, and reptiles, and others that fill the Divine Book. Here is also demonstrated the transmigration of souls that Pythagoras, Plato, and other poets who made learned fables of these metamorphoses and transformations displayed in the attempt to show us the bad customs, habits, dress, disposition, or sinister shades with which the souls of miserable men clothe themselves — that through pride they are transformed into lions; by vengefulness into tigers; by vanity into peacocks; by slyness and craft into foxes; by gluttony into apes and wolves; by callousness and evil into asses; by stupidity into sheep; because of rashness into goats; and other such changes and forms that are superimposed upon and built into human existence. And thus these monsters and fantasies are made for such vile and vulgar ends as for the pleasure of vengeance and sensuality, of appearance and esteem, and other such things that do not even reach the palate nor wet the mouth, but are like the taste and delicate flavor of the strawberry or strawberry plant and the fragrance of their flowers, on which many people still try to sustain themselves’. From Historia de la Orden de San Jerónimo, by Fray José de Sigüenza (Snyder, Bosch, p. 40). 94

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Subsequent interpretations have embroidered on the possibility of other meanings. Marijnissen, chief among recent writers, cites the varied opinions of Bosch’s intent in the central panel and tries to resolve them; he conceives the most sexually explicit scene in the Garden to be what he describes as sodomy at the bottom opening of the blue ball floating on the centre line of the central panel (the act however has yet to take place): ‘Is it not possible that Bosch placed the key to a correct understanding of the painting in this small, concealed, but nevertheless central scene? . . . We ought perhaps to investigate whether Bosch might have been expressing the view that the sinful sexual conduct of mankind is the consequence of the equally sinful Fall of Adam and Eve, and the group at the bottom left could well be “a narrative link with the left wing as has been claimed by Gerlach” ’.95 The Garden is more than an assemblage of illustrations of indulgence in a myriad of sensual pleasures; Bosch warns of danger in his double image of the Hellmouth but uniquely steps outside conventional artistic statements of eternal damnation. Furthermore, he has not shown Eve’s creation or her presentation to Adam (often incorrectly called the marriage of Adam and Eve) or the Fall. By means of the gesturing figure at lower left he shows another way in which salvation can be achieved. Belief in Christ who created Bosch’s Adam and Eve still innocent, and not yet wed permits humans to lead lives that can reject the infinite possibilities to sin and so escape eternal tortures in Hell.96 Bosch’s concept of human salvation resides 95 A brief record of opinions of Bosch’s art is found in Marijnissen and Ruyffalaere, pp. 23–43, 93. (Most recent is the entry by P. Vandenbroeck, The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, London, NY, 1996, v. 4, pp. 445–454). Marijnissen’s feeling that the painting is sufficiently ambiguous to need a key echoes Panofsky’s conclusion; the left wing may, he suggested, be related to the group in the cave on the other side of the central panel. No further ideas are proposed about the group at the lower left, nor is the cave group explained any further than by P. Gerlach (cited by Marijnissen, 131–165), Steppe or Gombrich. The action is in essence merely mentioned by H. Belting, C. Cruse, Die Erfindung des Gemäldes, Das erste Jahrhundert der niederländischen Malerei, Munich, 1994, p. 124. 96 According to Snyder (p. 27), ‘Thus Bosch’s great triptych may be viewed as an ingenious elaboration on the theme of the apocalyptic Last Judgment. The cycle of history is complete in every respect, from the early springtime rains of the third day [on the exterior], through the summer fruition of life in the left and centre panels, to the wintry death and demolition on the right. And not only has the cycle of nature completed its course, but the cycle of man has, too. He moves from the primeval earth and exotic paradise garden in the beginning to the ravaged urban world, both burning and freezing, in the end. For Bosch there is no return to Paradise at the end of time. There is no heaven’.

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in Eve and her relationship to the Speculum: future salvation is rooted in the medieval hermeneutic conception of the Virgin as the new Eve who will intercede for the sinners who believe in Christ at the Last Judgment. An early artistic instance of the Virgin’s important position appears in a manuscript from Hildesheim of about 1160 (Fig. 3–26), in which Eve’s birth is presented as the completion of the work of creation. Its concordant scene personifies God’s wisdom: in Eve’s creation the foundation stone of human salvation has been laid. Eve is here related to Sapientia or Wisdom, thus to the Church and to Mary; Eve created from Adam’s side is a prefiguration of the wound in the side of Christ from which flowed his blood, source of all the sacraments. In short, a distinct, continuous and hermeneutic relationship exists textually and visually between Eve and the Virgin.97 There are many illustrations of Christian narrative that demonstrate this important relationship. Close to Bosch’s own day, and thoroughly Apparently Snyder has influenced Y. Pinson (‘Fall of the Rebel Angels and Creation in Bosch’s Eden: Meaning and Iconographic Sources’, Manuscript Illumination Around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad, Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven, 7–10 September, 1993, ed. by M. Sneyers and B. Cardon, Leuven, 1995, pp. 693–707) who comes to Snyder’s conclusion after examination of the influence of the Speculum humanae salvationis: ‘In Bosch’s three triptychs there is no room for hope. The world is corrupted from the very beginning of Creation. Man does not fulfil the expectation that evil will be redeemed through him and his descendants. With the Creation of Eve and the Fall of Man, the world is dominated by the Prince of Evil, through human folly and sinful human society, which necessarily lead to Hell’ (p. 701). Pinson has not taken into account that Bosch followed the Speculum only to the emergence on earth of metamorphosed fallen angels. The act of Eve’s creation, her marriage, the Fall and expulsion are not presented. Bosch’s humane interpretation and oblique reference to the Virgin is unique in Flemish painting. The roughly comparable representation I know best is Michelangelo’s prefigurative treatment of Eve on the Sistine ceiling of close date. I have asserted as early as 1972 the positive nature of the Speculum, as a viable assertion of the potentiality of human salvation. In denying this, Snyder and Pinson leave Bosch with no reason for existence, an utter pessimism he visibly rejected by the gesture that calls attention to Christ on the left wing of the Garden triptych. Indeed, Christ’s presence alone is enough to prove the potentiality of salvation, and the very existence of the Speculum denotes belief in it. Further evidence, hardly needed, can be found in other works by Bosch, the most obvious being the panel in Venice of the Ascent to the Empyrean. Infrared reflectography has revealed the original presence of a figure, either Christ or God the Father, seated in the circle of light; it is no longer visible to the naked eye. When it was painted over is not known (C. Limentani Virdis et al., Le Delizie dell’Inferno, Dipinti di Jheronimus Bosch et altri fiamminghi restaurati, Venice, Palazzo Ducale, exhib. cat., May–August, 1992, figs. 6–9, p. 191). 97 E. Guldan, Eva und Maria, Eine Antithese als Bildmotif, Graz, Cologne, Bölau, 1966, pp. 171ff., figs. 23, 24.

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representative of contemporaneous thought and practice, is the Fall of Man in a book of hours of ca. 1500 by the Prayerbook Master.98 The Fall on folio 20r (Fig. 3–27) is, curiously, preceded by the Annunciation, illustrated on folio 19v, an obvious relationship between the Virgin Mary and Eve; that relationship is even closer, for the text of the Fall of Man not only begins the Hours of the Virgin but is made explicit by its framing inscription. The scene of the Fall is placed above the text on the same folio; the resultant two-part block is surrounded by Gabriel’s greeting to the Virgin, AVE [MARIA] GRATIA PLENA . . . (Hail [Mary], full of grace . . .), instead of around the Annunciation on folio 20r (apparently an illuminator’s error.) That Bosch intended his painting to express the salvation of the sinful world through Eve becomes certainty when the left wing is re-examined. Eve is not shown being taken from the side of Adam, as in typical creation scenes. An astonished nude Adam, not asleep as normally seen but wide awake and seated on the ground, looks up at Christ, as Eve, already created, looks down modestly as she kneels before Christ. With his left hand Christ holds her right wrist; her palm is down and open, seeming to signify to the viewer by this unusual act that Eve, and by implication through her, the new Eve, the Virgin Mary, shall be the instrument of human deliverance. This explains both Eve’s modest mien and the awakened gaze of Adam. Christ blesses not Adam, not Eve, but the viewer. It is through our first parents and especially Eve that our salvation is assured if we win Christ’s grace, says Bosch. Now it becomes clear why the Harrowing of Hell was such a popular theme in theatrical presentations of the day. The dramatic action of Christ’s descent into Limbo after the Resurrection, to break down its door,

Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, Codex 1887, folio 20; F. Winkler, Die flämische Buchmalerei des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1925, p. 128; F. Unterkircher, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Austrian National Library, tr. from German by J. M. Brownjohn, London, 1967, p. 228, pl. 53; G. Dogaer, Flemish Miniature Painting in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Amsterdam, 1987, p. 159–160. The relationship between the Virgin and Eve is also evident three decades earlier than the above works in Hugo van der Goes’s small diptych in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; as Eve takes the apple from the tree in the Fall of Man panel so Mary takes Christ from the cross in the Lamentation panel. (J. Sander [verbal communication] has seen the panels as painted early and late in the 1470s; it raises the question as to when the two panels were made into a diptych.) 98

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overthrow Satan and his minions, and liberate Adam and Eve, has clear meaning in relation to Bosch’s figures. When Christ grasps Eve’s wrist, just as he grasps that of Adam in Harrowing of Hell scenes, this is not a marriage of Eve and Adam. In that act his gesture would be different; taking her by the hand, not the wrist, he would literally hand Eve over to Adam. But this scene is different in intent: Christ’s action refers to resurrection for humanity through the instrumentality of the second Eve, the Virgin Mary. Christ grasping the wrist of Eve, not Adam, is unusual for Harrowing of Hell scenes though it is painted in the parecclesion of the Kahrie Djami church in Istanbul of 1315–20/25; there Christ faces the spectator and grasps Adam’s wrist with one hand and Eve’s wrist with the other: Adam is in front of him and Eve is at his back, in this most renowned example of the motif. There are also earlier as well as later Western models that Bosch could have known through shop resources. Possibly earliest is the Harrowing of Hell scene from Nicolas of Verdun’s Klosterneuburg Altar of 1181.99 Here Eve — not Adam — is taken up by Christ. The same artist, following a different text or model, shows both Adam and Eve taken up by Christ, Adam by the elbow, Eve by the forearm, in the Shrine of the Virgin of 1205 at Tournai.100 Several more scenes of like nature date from the thirteenth century. Even later, closer to Bosch’s own day, is a ceiling painting in Sankt Maria Lyskirchen, Cologne, that Bosch might well have known.101 Again, only Eve is taken up by Christ’s hand. It or another version provided Bosch with a

Discussed briefly and illustrated in The Year 1200: A Centennial Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Feb. 12–May 10, 1970, 1, cat. by K. Hoffman, New York, (Cloisters Studies in Medieval Art, 1), pp. 173–174. 100 Illustrated in P. Clemen, Belgische Kunstdenkmäler, 1, Munich, 1923, fig. 115. 101 For the Cologne mural see M. Harrsen, The Neksci-Lipocz Bible, a Fourteenth-Century Manuscript from Hungary in the Library of Congress, Pre-Accession 1, Washington, DC, 1949, fig. 28. There are other examples: the Wolfenbüttel Sketchbook (H. R. Hahnloser, Das Musterbuch von Wolfenbüttel, Vienna, 1929, p. 12 [the Lexikon der Ikonographie, 2, Freiburg, i/B, 325, is incorrect in considering the sketchbook, of 1230–40, as establishing a new type; Nicolas of Verdun is earlier]); Morgan MS 360, an Italo-Hungarian New Testament of ca. 1340 (The Pierpont Morgan Library, Exhibition of Illuminated Manuscripts, N.Y., 1934, p. 42, no. 86); a mural of the second half of the fourteenth century at Markov, St. Demetrios (V. R. Petkovic, La peinture serbe du moyen âge, . . ., Belgrade, 1930. pl. 143a; and the Manual of Christian Iconography of Mt. Athos prescribes Christ taking the hand of Adam by the right hand and that of Eve by the left (G. Schäfer, Das Handbuch der Malerei 99

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model for his Eve on the left wing of the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych, allowing Bosch in a fashion as unusual as that of Nicolas of Verdun at Klosterneuburg to express his veneration of the exalted patron of the Confraternity of the Virgin in ’s-Hertogenbosch. Her significance in the drama of redemption is now acknowledged by Bosch, in contrast to her exclusion from the pessimistic Haywain. The left wing then alludes to future penance which is dependent upon future sin by the descendants of Adam and Eve expressed in allegorical fashion in the triptych central panel. But the left wing’s subject also alludes to future salvation, visible in the manner in which Bosch conceived Eve related to the Speculum and future salvation for humanity. Bosch was continually alive to the potential for sin and humanity’s propensity to ignore the grace so necessary for salvation. He recognised that the human race is prone to be excessively influenced by the branches of the Deadly Sins — Pride, Vainglory, Bad Fortune, Avarice, Gluttony, and more. Although pessimistic about the outcome for mortal beings, he was undoubtedly influenced by the widespread belief in the coming of Antichrist and the approaching end of the world by deluge. In this triptych, painted in or after 1510, Bosch resolved his pessimism to affirm that salvation can be attained — despite the manifold examples of the commission of sin in the central panel and the terrors of the Hell panel — through Christ, who blesses us, Adam our ancestor, his mate the first Eve, and, by implication, through intercession by the lady of the strawberries, the second Eve, the Virgin Mary. Bosch has elevated his moral didacticism in paint to the level of a religious tract parallelling in his art the symbolic imagery of the religious writers of his time. To make certain that his message is not read ambiguously, he has taken the exceptional step of making a break with the fiction of a continuous temporal flow of action from left to right, from beginning to end. The gesturing figure of the central panel who refers the viewer to Christ, the source of all spiritual life and salvation at the time of the world’s beginning, serves the same purpose as the pointing finger so vom Berge Athos, Trier, 1955, p. 207). Larry Silver (‘God in the Details: Bosch and Judgment[s]’, Art Bulletin 83, 4 [Dec.], 2001, 645) asks the viewer to return to the tiny figure of God the Father high in the sky on the exterior of the left wing to find his explanation for the ultimate meaning of the triptych, which seems rather absurd; he even assumes the viewer has and in Bosch’s time had the necessary authority to close the triptych to find the figure again.

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often found in the margins of didactic medieval manuscripts and early printed books: ‘Here is the important point; do not miss this’. The stage is set: Adam has yet to be united with Eve; when that union takes place, the Fall and the course of humanity, its trials and its temptations to sin which are the history of the world, will begin. The gesturing figure of the central panel tells viewers that sin is omnipresent but Christ is the saviour: that humankind can be saved is indicated by the fact of his presence. And by the unusual image of Christ taking Eve by the wrist, and presenting her to the viewer and not to Adam, Bosch associated her with the Speculum and future salvation through the second Eve, the Virgin Mary, intercessor at the Last Judgment for humankind and patron of Bosch’s confraternity. So ended Bosch’s progress from the pessimistic, indeed sardonic, conception of the Haywain to the hortatory emphasis on Saint Anthony’s model for achieving salvation to the final statement in the Garden triptych. They all express, the last most profoundly, the potentiality of aid from Christ to achieve eternal salvation despite all trials and tribulations. To the last, his greatest work, Bosch added the medieval hermeneutic potential of compassionate intervention for humanity by the second Eve, the Virgin Mary. Now, says Bosch, we in our constant struggle can overcome the apocalyptic terrors of the coming world’s end and the inevitable Last Judgment.

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Animals, Birds and Demons

A

S with everything else in Bosch’s universally religious paintings, animals have a place governed by their purpose as the logic of an artistic situation demands, for animals can be used to show by contrast the spiritual life of which humans are capable. Birds have illustrative and symbolic meaning that is an inheritance from the medieval past, while demons in Bosch’s paintings play a very active part as visual reminders of the dangers to the soul, with intimations, if not more, of the possible adversity of an eternal future that awaits unrepentant members of the human race. His painted animals are of four kinds. First, natural, that is, easily recognisable portrayals of common beasts associated either with Christian narrative or with saints as their symbols. Secondly, uncommon, that is to say, unusual; here unusual means exotic: the ‘exotic’ animal in Bosch’s day was one foreign to the Netherlands, an import into Europe from Africa or Asia. The third kind of animal Bosch and his contemporaries thought actually existed; illustrations were available, for they were the product of centuries-old fictions: the unicorn, the centaur, the griffin, mermen, mermaids, dragons, and more, commonly found in illustrated bestiaries and other manuscripts. The last type is the animal created by an artist’s imagination, often like those found in medieval manuscript drolleries.1 Bosch’s imaginary animals combine animal and even human parts in strange mixtures and proportions

For a general introduction see J. R. Benton, The Medieval Menagerie, Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages, New York, London, Paris, 1992; particularly rich in relevant bibliography 1

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to perform acts of evil intent as they illustrate moralising sermons in paint. For one thing they hurry the action along so that the artist can make his point more telling. Bosch, native of ’s-Hertogenbosch, lived in a world in which all transportation was either by horseback, cart, or shank’s mare. Not too long after Bosch’s death, numerous canals permitted transport by boat that allowed travellers to go from one Netherlandish coastal town to another at a relatively rapid pace on a commercial ‘waterbus’. On any such journey one would see the normal domestic animals found in Bosch’s pictures — the pigs, cows, goats, sheep, dogs, horses and donkeys that became common features of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting. Wild animals also fascinated Bosch, for they play a lively part in his paintings. Some of these he saw — the common forms such as rats, weasels, hedgehogs, shrews and more — but others metamorphose in his art into active demonic combinations of fox and weasel, with snouts of apes, boars or other animal heads, with claw feet joined to essentially human, dark-coloured bodies, sometimes naked, sometimes clothed. If the figures are clothed, the animal parts such as weasel heads and claw feet emerge from under the clothing to indicate their evil nature. Some stags, deer, bears, and a few other animals are occasionally unmodified accessories, now and then playing an active, even symbolic part, at other times playing a role comparable to that of horses and donkeys, beasts of burden and transportation. Interestingly, rabbits are seldom shown by Bosch, though two appear in the Prado Garden triptych in the Eden left wing panel, one in the central panel, and one in the right wing Hell panel. In the foreground of the latter a large rabbit carries a long pole over its shoulder, with a naked man upside down on it as a trophy to symbolise the evil of a topsy-turvy world, a concept traceable to manuscript illumination. The pole ends in a double hook, and is often used by demons in Bosch’s paintings: clearly a topsyturvy world is sinful. The same motif, a naked human being used as a hunter’s trophy carried on a pole, is also found on the right wing of the Haywain triptych but the

are: Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages, The Bestiary and Its Legacy, eds. W. B. Clark and M. T. McMunn, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989, and D. Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries, Text, Image, Ideology, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1995 (especially rich in social history).

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carrier is a dark-faced man in dark garments blowing on a trumpet to signal his kill; however, this action — one human being carrying off another as a trophy — seems contrary to Bosch’s normal message: sinful behaviour results in torment or torture by demons, not humans; 2 here we conclude he refers to evil men (his model could well have been Dante’s Inferno). Bosch has often been cited, and rightly, for his use of earlier manuscript illumination as one source for his own ‘drolleries’. The rabbit hunter, or rabbits engaging in human activities, for example, characterise some fourteenth-century English manuscripts,3 though the rabbit as hunter, a clear indication of a topsy-turvy world, appears only once in his preserved work. (Bosch was little interested in the powerless of this world as possible turnaround figures). The greatest number of animals appear in the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. In the central panel (Fig. 3–1a), we recall, a procession of naked men, riding horses and other animals, circles counterclockwise, not the opposite, around a pool occupied by equally naked women who clearly excite the men; their presence is meant to convey an aspect of sinful behaviour. Of the six black women in the pool, one at the left edge wears a peacock (a familiar symbol of Vanity) as a hat and holds up a cherry in her left hand, while to her left three other women wear cherries on their heads. The cherry is still referred to in modern slang in relation to intercourse, usually deflowering. The sinful nature of Bosch’s setting cannot be doubted. Various animals carry the thickly packed encircling crowd of bareback male riders; some steeds are definitely exotic, such as the two Bactrian camels at the ten o’clock position, so sharply characterised that Bosch must have seen the actual animal. Camels do not appear in earlier works by Bosch so the presumed late date of the triptych, ca. 1510–16, seems confirmed by their presence here. (The earliest camels appear in print in 1485 in the frontispiece to book 18 of De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomaeus

Two existing versions of the Haywain, one in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, the other in the Escorial, with felling dates of 1508 and 1496, have been doubted as originals, e.g., Gerd Unverfehrt, Hieronymus Bosch Studien, Berlin, 1980, p. 27. A human hunter rather than a devil hunter might support Unverfehrt’s conclusion of copies. See chapter 1, n. 2. 3 A rabbit carries an inverted bound human as a trophy dangling from a pole over its shoulder in the margin of a fourteenth-century Romance of Alexander, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS 264, fol. 81v. (L. Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts, Berkeley, California, 1966, fig. 356). 2

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Anglicus, published at Haarlem by the Master of Bellaert).4 A griffin, similar to one engraved by Schongauer, Bosch undoubtedly knew.5 Stags and deer, long-horned goats, a tufted house cat in the guise of a green leopard, boars with and without riders, two bears, one of them riderless, a bull, unicorns, and horses of several breeds make up the remainder of the circling forms. Bosch shows animals with the potential of pejorative symbolic meaning, such as camels and bears, while others, such as horses, seem to have limited symbolic significance. The camel’s ‘most conspicuous role was sexual: it was a medieval nymphomaniac’ while the bear, with mainly derogatory characteristics, symbolises lust and fornication. The other animals of the procession, the lusty goat, the cat, and even the unicorn, were associated in the medieval period with either sex, sin, or both.6 Other exotic animals, to be considered later, appear on the Garden left wing. Prominent on the Garden right wing, the sow in the right foreground holding a pen wears the headdress of a religious; she urges the nude sinner to sign (or amend?) an already twice-sealed document draped over his knee, as a grotesque figure encased in armour presents an inkpot. Birds are omnipresent, but reptilian forms are confined to the wing panels. Armoured mermen and several mermaids swim in the small lake beyond the circular pool of the centre panel, a lake with four outlets suggestive of the legendary fountain of the Garden of Eden from which the four world rivers were believed to flow. Such a fountain is only implied by the ball floating in the centre of this small lake; not even the related structure in the Eden panel sits in the midst of four outlets. In the far distance across the upper reaches of the picture are actual animals and combinations of natural and imaginary creatures, intended perhaps to suggest the distant regions of the world. Of the animals Bosch put into his Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony triptych (Fig. 2–3), the only domestic animals not transformed into demonic antagonists are two small dogs in armour in the warlike procession at the left behind Saint Anthony’s back, and an ox (or cow) with a monkey on its back in the gallery to the left of the onion tower. 4 J. Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, Painting, Sculpture, The Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, and Harry Abrams, 1985, p. 272, fig. 273. 5 For Schongauer’s griffin, see A. Shestak, The Complete Engravings of Martin Schongauer, New York, 1969, fig. 89. 6 Beryl Rowland, Animals with Human Faces, A Guide to Animal Symbolism, Knoxville, 1973, 32ff., 49–50, 51ff., 80–86, 155.

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Metamorphosed animal, human and bird forms are scattered throughout all three Lisbon panels; for example, the central panel’s tonsured, animalsnouted right-foreground figure is a false priest wearing glasses and pointing with a bony hand to the text of a book with open black pages. Through a rent in his garment we see his bare ribs and bleeding body. The remaining triptychs attributed to Bosch have far fewer animals or birds, either natural or metamorphosed, an exception being the Flood panel in Rotterdam, where animals leave Noah’s Ark in pairs, the work of a follower, to judge from the lesser quality of execution (Fig. 4–1).7 The Epiphany Triptych (Adoration of the Magi) in Madrid, Prado Museum (Fig. 4–2) includes several animals and a problem. In addition to its background pack animal with a monkey on its back, armies of horsemen, presumably Herod’s minions, search for the infant Jesus. In the middle ground of the right wing, two poorly characterised wolves attack a man and woman. But at the back of the foreground, directly above the head of Agnes Bosschuyse,8 the female donor, her name saint behind her, is her symbol, a large reclining lamb, sheltered by a steep-sided hillock. A like symbolic lamb is seen with Saint John the Baptist, in the panel in the Lázaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid (Fig. 4–3).9 Saint John has been interpreted as pointing to the lamb, the Agnus Dei. To my knowledge this lamb is the only exact F. Lammertse, ed., Van Eyck to Bruegel 1400–1550: Dutch and Flemish Painting in the Collection of the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1994, pp. 97–101. Recently cleaned of overpainting, the picture shows appreciable paint loss; despite rather weak drawing it has been attributed to Bosch himself, partially on the basis of dendrochronological examination. Peter Klein, Hamburg University, Ordinariat für Holzbiologie, examined the panel, and his report is cited (p. 101) as follows: ‘The panel would have been ready for painting by 1508, although it is more likely to have been painted after 1514’. An earlier report sent to me by Dr. Klein, July 9, 1992, suggested a felling date of 1512, and he indicated a normal storage date of ten years with a painting date of 1522. Depending on which date is more accurate, the painting date occurred either just before Bosch died or six years after his death. Given the inequality of execution of the badly damaged panel, the situation at Bosch’s demise could have been responsible for the problems the panel presents. The design might have been by Bosch but the execution could be shop work; an analogous situation characterizes Dürer’s shop, where it was common for the master to paint the central panel and the shop to paint the wings. The Rotterdam panels indeed look like wings; furthermore, the figure types in paint differ from the latest works by Bosch. 8 For the identification of the female donor, etc., see Roger H. Marijnissen and Peter Ruyffelaere, Hieronymus Bosch, The Complete Works, Antwerp. 1987, pp. 234ff. 9 Marijnissen and Ruyffelsere, pp. 394–401; also see Gregory T. Clark, ‘Bosch’s St. John in the Wilderness and the Artist’s “Fleurs du Mal”’, A Tribute to Robert A. Koch, Studies in the Northern Renaissance, Princeton, 1995, pp. 3–18. 7

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unreversed repetition of a motif by Bosch. It leads to a suspicion that one of these two works either is by an imitator or is an excellent shopwork, possibly the latter, for the saint’s pointing gesture is awkward; his finger is not in the air as it should be if the lamb is being pointed to, but on the stone ledge he leans against. If the saint is truly pointing at the lamb he is pointing to its hindquarters, not to its head, as he should. The Saint John the Baptist panel was considered by G. Knuttel to be by an imitator from the northern Netherlands, as Roger Marijnissen points out, adding that the saint’s cloak is red rather than the normal brown.10 The lamb lacks a halo, and he concludes, ‘Whether or not the lamb without a halo is actually the Lamb of God, and is identified as such by Saint John’s pointing finger, is a matter for specialists in the fields of iconography and iconology’. Marijnissen has never hesitated to act as iconographer where it so suits him so we may conclude that he entertains a doubt as to the identity of the lamb and possibly also the identity of the creating artist. I propose that the Saint John the Baptist panel is probably a shop work or by the immediate inheritor of his shop, technically capable, when Bosch died in 1516. Attention is called to the anachronisms of the rich red robe instead of a normal brown haircloth garment, the questionable direction of the pointing gesture, the lack of a halo for the lamb (not absolutely necessary) and the exact repetition of the animal, which is the most disturbing aspect of all.11 If an authentic work or by a shop member, it indicates Bosch’s use

10 Marijnissen and Ruyffelaere, p. 394. Dendrochronological study of the panel (the support’s effective felling date of 1472 [Klein, p. 124]), suggests a reused panel; reflectography shows that a kneeling donor to the left has been replaced by the giant plant (R. Van Schoute and M. Verbommen, Jérôme Bosch, Tournai, 2001, pp. 108–109, 212, no. 22). 11 The motif of St. John the Baptist pointing to the lamb is not found in many standard iconographic dictionaries; however, other representations exist. See E. Kirschbaum, W. Braunfels, Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 7, Ikonographie der Heiligen, Freiburg i/B, 1974, col. 182, no. 20, fig. 14 (a predella panel, second half of the fourteenth century). Close to Bosch’s day is Hans Memling’s St. John the Baptist on the left wing of the Donne Triptych, London, National Gallery of Art; the saint holds the lamb on his left forearm and points to it with his right hand (Cuttler, NP, fig. 207; also fig. 214 [outside of the left wing of the Floreins Triptych, 1479]). Furthermore, compositionally the Madrid work reminds one of Geertgen tot Sint Jans’ St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness, Cuttler, NP, pl. 14. An early reference to the pointing motif appears in the records of the Quinisext Council (692), Canon 82: ‘On some venerable images is depicted a lamb at whom the Forerunner points with his finger: this has been accepted as a symbol of Grace, showing us in advance, through the Law, the true Lamb, Christ our Lord. While embracing the ancient symbols and shadows inasmuch as they

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of animals as symbols of identity and as aspects of narrative, having these qualities in common with other artists. Bosch’s exotic animals, however, form a category of their own. The exotic animal best known to northern Europeans was the lion, seen in many bestiaries, and known to Villard de Honnecourt in the thirteenth century; his drawing of a lion seen en face specifically states it was drawn from life, al vif. Lions are recorded at the French courts in the early fifteenth century, while the city of Ghent owned lions in the same century and Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, paid for the upkeep of one in 1476. Lions were also recorded in Germany. Not only drawings of this animal existed, as in the late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century sketchbook of Jacques Daliwe in Berlin (not from nature we assume), but the animal itself could have been seen by a curious artist: Dürer was one. In 1521 he visited the ‘beastgarden’ in Ghent and made a drawing of a lion (Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, L.60]). No drawings of lions by Bosch exist, yet several appear in his attributed paintings: one eats a deer on the left wing of the Last Judgment triptych in the Akademie der bildenden Künste; Vienna, a second does the same in the Blessed in Paradise panel in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice; another is again in the same pose but reversed and also eating a deer, on the left wing of the Garden triptych in Madrid (Fig. 3–1b); another, looking more like a house cat but in the same arched-back pose, appears in the Saint Jerome panel in Ghent, and there is possibly a fifth, at the left in the central panel of the Hermits triptych in Venice. All are shown in an arched-back pose; the only difference among the four is the act of devouring a deer (one is reversed). What can be made of this? Had Bosch gone to Italy he could have seen lions in many places — Venice, Florence, and Rome, to name only the most likely. But it must be concluded that Bosch hardly travelled away from his home town; certainly not to Ghent, for it is difficult if not impossible not are signs and anticipatory tracings handed down to the Church, we give preference to the Grace and the Truth, which we have received as the fulfilment of the Law. Consequently, in order that Truth in its fullest manifestation . . . should be set down before everybody’s eyes even in painting, we decree that [the figure of ] the Lamb, Christ our God, who removes the sins of the world, should henceforth be set up in human form on images also, in the place of the ancient lamb, inasmuch as we comprehend thereby the sublimity of the humiliation of God’s Word, and are guided by the recollection of His life in the flesh, His Passion and his salutary Death, and the redemption which has thence accrued to the world’. C. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453, Toronto, Buffalo, London, 1986, Sources and Documents (Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching), pp. 139ff.

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to believe that if he knew of a lion in his vicinity he would have made every effort to see and record it for the future. In 1504 Philip the Handsome commissioned a Last Judgment triptych from Bosch that was probably never completed. It is evident that Bosch had access to the court, which means access to its various aspects, a travelling zoo with its exotic animals being one of them. Bax pointed out12 that Philip the Handsome was in ’s-Hertogenbosch at least five times, twice for extended stays; in 1494 for several months; and in 1504 from at least September until the end of winter, joined by his father Maximilian I and entourage around year’s end. No other commission from an individual is recorded, though after he died Margaret of Austria owned a Temptation of Saint Anthony said to be by Bosch. If Bosch travelled as a journeyman we would expect that he saw and recorded much. Somewhere he saw the camel that he reproduced faithfully in the central panel of the Garden triptych. He introduced both an elephant and a giraffe into the Eden panel, the left wing of the same triptych, the latter named animal based on a drawing in a manuscript of Cyriacus of Ancona, an Italian antiquarian and traveller in the Near East; his urtext dates from the second quarter of the fifteenth century. However, Bosch’s elephant, a monkey on its back, is not the same as the illustrated woodcut elephant with other animals in the aforementioned frontispiece to book 18 of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (of 1485). Though an elephant was paraded around the Netherlands at about that time, if we compare Bosch’s elephant with his camel it seems that Bosch had seen an actual camel but probably not an actual elephant. Bosch’s elephant shows the ear of the Asian elephant, which is different from Cyriacus’s African elephant.13 The Garden triptych giraffe on the left wing

D. Bax, Hieronymus Bosch and Lucas Cranach, Two Last Judgment Triptychs, Description and Exposition, tr. M. A. Bax-Botha, Koninklijk Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Verhandelingen Afdeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, deel 117, Amsterdam, Oxford, New York, 1983, p. 318. 13 Ch. D. Cuttler, ‘Exotics in Post-Medieval Art: Giraffes and Centaurs’, Artibus et Historiae, no. 23, (12), 1991, pp. 168 ff. Götz Pochat, Der Exotismus während des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, Voraussetzungen, Entwicklung und Wandel eines bildnerischen Vokabulars, Stockholm Studies in the History of Art 21, Uppsala, 1970, pp. 131ff. suggested Schongauer’s War Elephant as a model for Bosch’s Eden panel elephant, using the Du Hameel print as a Boschian creation; however, Bosch’s model does not resemble the Schongauer or du Hameel elephants. 12

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Eden panel is repeated in the exact pose, but without a mate in the animals shown in grisaille in the Rotterdam panel of animals leaving the Ark after the Deluge; one strongly doubts that Bosch’s own hand was involved in the Rotterdam panel, as comparison makes clear.14 And its elephants are poor relations to that in the Garden triptych Eden panel. The Besieged Elephant engraving (Fig. 4–4) by architect Alart du Hameel (died before 27 January 1507) was possibly modified at a later date when the word ‘bosche’ was added to the engraving to make it more saleable by referring to our by then long-deceased artist (or to indicate the town, not a common practice). Another version was printed by Hieronymus Cock at Antwerp long after Bosch died.15 Du Hameel’s engraving has ‘Boschian’ details but his elephant is clearly based on Schongauer’s engraving. A pair of lions at lower right in the Rotterdam Flood panel repeats the lion of the Garden triptych’s Eden panel, which in its turn is echoed in reverse in the Ghent Saint Jerome panel. These repetitions signify collaboration and point to the knechten, the youngsters who are known to have worked in Bosch’s shop in 1503–04, and who were probably adept enough to assist in painting Boschian panels. Nor should Bosch’s painter family be denied.16 So it seems that someone did more than prepare the artist’s panels and grind his paints for him. Bosch probably was the head of a highly productive shop; the commission from Philip the Handsome in 1504 speaks of him as ‘Jero[n]imus van Aken, called Bosch’, which means his reputation was already sufficient to characterise him with the name of his city, rather than ‘van Aken’, ‘from Aachen’ as with family members earlier. 14 See note 7. Again, the execution may have been by the shop; in any case the figure types in the panels differ from the latest works by Bosch. 15 For the print by du Hameel see the extensive bibliography in the ’s-Hertogenbosch 1967 exhibition catalogue, no. 92 (see chapter 3, n. 33); for the Hieronymus Cock print see L. Voet, Antwerp Drawings and Prints: Sixteenth–Seventeenth Centuries, Smithsonian Institution, 1976–78, exhib. cat., p. 90, no. 67, illus. 16 Marijnissen and Ruyffalaere, pp. 10–14. Grandfather Jan van Aken died between March and August 1454, his father Anthonius died before Dec. 29, 1480, his uncles Thomas, Goessen and Jan were active into the 1460s, his brother Goessen died in 1498. Earlier Hieronymus, followed by another brother, Jan, and a sister, Herberta, each gave part of the family house on the main square of ’s-Hertogenbosch to brother Goessen. The house and grounds had been bought by their father in 1462 and the gift seems to have been a settlement of inheritance. Hieronymus, it seems, lived in his wife’s house, also on the main square, after their marriage.

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Bosch’s exotica of the animal world of the Garden also include the twolegged, long-eared animal next to the giraffe of the Eden wing, an arbitrary transformation of the four-legged capra de India, or Indian goat, of illustrator Erhard Reuwich’s animal page 17 for Bernhard von Breydenbach’s Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam, published at Mainz in 1486 (Fig. 3–22), one year after the Bellaert book.18 Whether the nearby unicorn drinking from the fountain in Eden is an exotic animal from Bosch’s viewpoint may be questioned. Long after Bosch’s lifetime the unicorn was still generally believed to exist; its horn was treasured for its assumed ability to neutralise poisons, the ‘unicorn’ horns still preserved today actually being those of the male narwhal. Astonishingly, the number of natural animals is limited in Bosch’s work, though if reptilian and bird forms are added to this category, the number rises to sixty-two.19 A fantastic combination of forms was more interesting to Bosch, and these, like the natural animals, appear in abundance but in relatively few preserved works. Though his fame has been built in the popular mind on his fantastic demonic animals, they are restricted in number though rich in diversity and excitement, a wealth of imagery to nourish a whole school of emulators after he died in 1516.20 As in his animal world natural, exotic, and imagined combinations vitalise Bosch’s bird world. Here too he could have drawn on a bestiary manuscript; among its customary thirty-four birds he would have found the imaginary all-white caladrius (or Charadrius), which was believed to perch on the end of a sick man’s bed ‘in the hall of kings’; if the monarch was going to die it turned away from him but if he was going to live it drew the poison from him and flew up to the sun, whose heat consumed the disease, as Christ heals the Gentiles of their spiritual diseases.21 Equally imaginary are the Pochat (pp. 222ff., figs. 97, 98) believes the ‘capra de India’ was inspired possibly by medieval document seals but also by drolleries, as in the Heures de Thérouanne, Paris, Bibl. nat. MS lat. 14284; the latter seems most likely. 18 This is another clear indication of a creation date after 1485 for the Garden triptych, here dated about three decades later. The animal page mixes animals seen and animals believed to exist in the Holy Land even though unseen, as, for example, the unicorn, a fabled animal directly descended from nonexistent animals described in medieval bestiaries. 19 Bax, p. 424. 20 See Unverfehrt. 21 Arthur H. Collins, Symbolism of Animals and Birds Represented in English Church Architecture, New York, 1913, pp. 132–133; Physiologus, trans. Michael J. Curley, Austin, Texas, 17

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phoenix,22 halcyon, and cinomolgus (and siren; the latter appears in illustration, though not in texts, as female to the waist but with fish tails and clawed feet;23 mermen and mermaids were related to them.)24 A merman flies through the air in the Garden triptych. In illuminated bestiaries the pelican, mentioned in Psalm 102:6, revives its children with blood from its own breast, a symbol for Christ’s sacrifice for humanity referring both to the Passion and the Resurrection.25 Many birds found in bestiaries were familiar to the people of the Netherlands; the crane, stork, swan, coot, jay, hoopoe, owl, partridge, magpie, hawk, nightingale, bat, raven, crow, dove, swallow, quail, cock and peacock, duck and goose, were readily seen by all. But the ostrich, vulture, pelican and parrot, exotic actual birds of the bestiary, were rarely seen, if ever, before Bosch’s death. Despite the existence of many familiar species, accurate bird portraits as a norm appear relatively late in medieval art. One of the earliest works with recognisable birds is the mid-thirteenth-century (1244–50) De arte venandi cum avibus of Emperor Frederick II (Vatican, MS. Pal. Lat. 1071). It has no known predecessor; only two copies exist, both French. There is also a fairly accurate early rendering of birds in the possibly Saxon London, 1979, pp. 7–9; T. H. White, The Book of Beasts, being a translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century, New York, 1954, p. 115. 22 For the phoenix, symbol of Christ and immortality, see T. H. White, 125–128; Physiologus, pp. 13–14. According to Jean de Outremeuse, compiler of the John de Mandeville tales, the crest of the phoenix is more magnificent than the peacock’s, it has a yellow neck, blue beak, purple wings and a tail barred green, yellow and red (Dorothy M. Stuart, A Book of Birds and Beasts, London, 1957, p. 24). No such bird can be found in Bosch’s paintings. 23 G. C. Druce, ‘Some Abnormal and Composite Human Forms in English Church Architecture’, Archaeological Journal, 72 (1915), pp. 171–172; E. Farel, ‘La queue de poisson des sirènes’, Romania, 74 (1953), pp. 443–506; White, fig. p. 135; C. S. Pendergast, ‘The Cluny 228 Capital of the Three-Headed Bird’, Gesta, 27, 1–2 (1988), pp. 33–36; J. R. Benton, The Medieval Menagerie, Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages, New York, London, Paris, 1992, pp. 34–41, figs. 24–29. 24 White, pp. 251–252; Benton, 34–41. 25 Collins, p. 141; White, p. 132 f.; Physiologus, pp. 9–10; Willene B. Clark, ed. and trans., The Medieval Book of Birds, Hugh of Fouilloy’s Aviarium, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 80, Binghamton, N.Y., 1992. Hugh’s book of the mid twelfth century is characteristic of many such medieval texts; their chief concern is Christian morality and though there is a cycle of illustrations (Clark presents seventy-three examples) in the numerous extant manuscripts and fragments (see her appendix 2), the visual characterisation of the bird form was general and not specifically distinguished from other birds to be useful for exact identification (twenty-six birds are discussed in the Aviarium).

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Commentary on the Apocalypse of Alexander of Bremen, ca. 1242 (Cambridge, University Library, MS Mm. v. 31).26 More or less simultaneously, and soon thereafter, bird species are common, for example, the Calling of the Birds scene in apocalypse manuscripts, created in England and the Continent after about the mid-fourteenth century, as in the Holkham Bible,27 also scenes of Adam naming the animals or Saint Francis preaching to the birds. Indigenous birds portrayed accurately begin to appear in the pages of apocalypses, bestiaries, psalters, lectionaries, missals, Bibles, books of hours, and other texts in England, France and the Netherlands. A possible explanation for precise renderings of birds (though many are imprecise) is that the greater number of these illuminated manuscripts were made for royalty, nobles and landed gentry, a number of whom possessed zoos and aviaries; they made up the class for whom the hunting of birds and animals was reserved and they would have wanted accurate identification of what their falcons brought down. The frequent portrayal of distinct bird types in English manuscripts of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries has parallels in some fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury French and Flemish manuscripts, yet detailed portrayals of bird species as popular and widespread as in English manuscripts is met less often at the same time in France and Flanders. A continental exception, the Prayerbook of Bonne of Luxembourg (Paris, Bibl. nat. fr. 12400), ca. 1300, has twenty-one identified bird portraits.28 It would be foolhardy to assume that each and every member of this winged encyclopedia carried a specific symbolic weight: a half-dozen birds, each different, in the margins of the Taking of Christ page in Bonne’s prayerbook (fol. 246v.) are sufficient to call that idea (six birds for one event?) into question. A sample of the variety possible on an illuminated page, with the birds and animals mostly unrelated to their page subjects, is seen in the borders Brunsdon Yapp, Birds in Medieval Manuscripts, London, 1981, pp. 106–107; pl. 14. Francis Klingender, Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages, ed. E. Antal and J. Harthan, London, 1971, fig. 243. 28 Charles Vaurie, ‘Birds in the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg’, Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 29, 1971, pp. 279–281: magpie, rook, falcon, goldfinch, chaffinch, mallard drake, little owl, barn swallow, jay, gray heron, lapwing, turtledove, kingfisher, hoopoe, starling, wagtail, titmouse, nightingale, linnet, bullfinch, and (Indian) parakeet. Yapp, p. 43, also illustrates the Indian rose-ringed parakeet and finds no evidence that any other was known (the difference between the Indian and African parrot is slight) and is lacking in French bestiaries. Also, A. Lermack, ‘Fit for a Queen: The Psalter of Bonne of Luxembourg at the Cloisters’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1999. 26 27

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of a Utrecht Use book of hours, after 1460, in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (formerly Dyson Perrins Collection, no. 109). Folio 137 shows Saint Bernard (Fig. 4–5); around him are a goose in the upper right-hand corner, and a generic bird in the middle right border. A cowled centaur with a lance fights a wild man riding a wolf-like mount at left in the lower border; in the right lower corner with its back to the viewer a lion stands erect on two feet. The lower border particularly seems quite clearly an epitome of unrelatedness.29 In another example, a Dutch Horae of c. 1490 (Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, MS IV, 216) shows a crested bird somewhat like a jay in several scenes: the Coronation of the Virgin (fol. 48) is one; but in the Christ on the Cross page miniature, two birds like it are depicted in the lower border while a pelican at the top of the border feeds its young from its breast, the latter indeed symbolic. But what can we make of the fact that one of the jays below has red wings, and the other has green wings? A brownish crow is painted on folio 58v, which shows the Agony in the Garden, but in the border below the scene of the Arrest of Christ on folio 59 an owl is attacked by jay-like diurnal birds, and in the miniature showing Christ before Caiaphas on folio 65 there are red, green and blue ‘jays’ in the border.30 A mixture of symbolic and non-symbolic elements seems indicated. Another Dutch manuscript, the Hours of Cornelis Croesink and Hildegarde van Almade (New York, Morgan Library MS 1078), is illuminated by the same master, who shows roosters fighting in the lower border of the miniature of the Virgin and Child accompanied by Saints Catherine and Agnes, on folio 115. The Virgin is probably alluded to in the numerous strawberries and strewn flowers, but she surely was not symbolised in the border by a monkey spinning thread.31 Of roughly the same date, the last decade of the fifteenth century, is the Psalter and Book of Hours attributed to the Master of the Older Prayerbook of Maximilian I (Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 3769). The Crucifixion on folio 166v of the second volume32 shows decorative vines in the ornamented border around the scene, probably symbolic violets and carnations, but in the right lower

Getty Centre Photo Archive no. 0002244. James Marrow, Noordnederlandse Miniaturen, 1971, no. 53, attributes the illuminations to his Master(s) of the Dark Eyes. 31 Marrow also attributes this work to his Master of the Dark Eyes and dates it as ca. 1510 (photo at Getty Centre, Los Angeles, California). 29 30

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corner a peacock in full frontal spread is undoubtedly a symbol of resurrection.33 Despite their frequent appearances in illuminated manuscripts, especially in illuminated borders of sumptuous manuscripts of the GhentBruges school, birds generally serve a non-symbolic function (a similar phenomenon is noted in contemporaneous French manuscripts). Again the possibility of painting birds to please the privileged classes presents itself. Birds that perform symbolic functions appear early though not often in Flemish panel painting: Jacques Daret painted a goldfinch on the roof of the shed of the Nativity in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, now Madrid.34 In Jan van Eyck’s simulated sculpture the pelican in its piety and the phoenix crown the arms of the Virgin’s throne in the altarpiece of 1437 in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden. No birds appear in the interior Adoration of the Lamb panel of Jan van Eyck’s masterpiece, the Ghent Altarpiece, and only a few, too tiny to identify, are pictured above the distant trees of its lower exterior Hermits and Pilgrims panels. Two peacocks appear by the wall embrasures of van Eyck’s Rolin Madonna, Paris, Louvre, undoubtedly conveying their normal relationship to Christ’s resurrection to the viewer of the period, and a green parrot with a red beak, also well observed, appears in Jan’s Van der Paele Virgin and Child Enthroned of 1436, Bruges,

Getty Centre Photo Archive no. 0250392–9: see the bibliography of Patrick de Winter, ‘A Book of Hours of Queen Isabel la Católica’, Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 68, no. 10 (Dec.), 1981, p. 425, n. 55. For an illumination from the manuscript (no birds in the border) see de Winter, fig. 86. 33 ‘St. Augustine remarked, ‘Who, except God, the Creator of all things, endowed the flesh of the dead peacock with the power of never decaying?’ De Civ. Dei . . . in White, p. 149; from this it seems grew the concept of the peacock as symbol of immortality. Clark, Aviarium, p. 249 and notes 1–4. R. L. Falkenburg, ‘De duivel buiten beeld, Over duivelafwerende krachten en motieven in de beeldende kunst rond 1500’, in Duivelsbeelden, een cultuurhistorische speurtocht door de Lage Landen. G. Rooijakkers, L. Dresen-Coenders, M. Geerdes, eds., Baarn, 1994, pp. 107–122, 420, discusses floral border decorations as possessing apotropaic function. 34 The goldfinch carried a variety of symbolic meanings: from the soul to be saved by Christ to a symbol of the soul itself, a symbol of death, of fertility, and resurrection, and it has been substituted for the caladrius and the dove (Herbert Friedmann, The Symbolic Goldfinch, Its History and Significance in European Devotional Art, Washington, DC, 1946, Bollingen Series 7, see chapter 2, appendix, pls. 22–31). The bird is even considered a symbol of frivolity in Chaucer’s tale of Perkyn Revelour (Rowland, p. 66). 32

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Groeningen Museum.35 Doves appear in Annunciations and in the Ghent Altarpiece, and falcons are seen on the wrists of personages in drawings attributed to Jan van Eyck, but these are all. Only a few doves appear in the art of Rogier van der Weyden, Dirk Bouts or Hugo van der Goes (the latter’s Virgin and Child, Brussels, Musées royaux des beaux-arts, shows a goldfinch in the hands of the Child).36 Not even Bosch’s contemporary Gerard David thought to include birds, though Geertgen tot Sint Jans in Haarlem showed a few in his Berlin Museum painting of Saint John in the Wilderness, and a goldfinch appears in his Adoration of the Magi, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.37 It is astonishing that in total Bosch’s bird scenario surpasses his contemporaries tenfold. This differs little from his treatment of animals in that the greatest number of birds, like the animals, are found in the Garden triptych. A lesser number of birds appear in the Haywain triptych and the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony, with a paucity in the remainder of his preserved works. Such evidence brings a conclusion that Bosch’s most fascinating work is also his most complex and most challenging. It also raises the probably unanswerable question of whether the great number of painted birds in the Garden triptych results from the preferences of an aristocratic patron. Bosch’s interest and knowledge of bird species is extraordinary. It is vast and more accurate than that of any of his contemporaries; he must have been the most ardent birder of his age. He paints the heron, great tit, hooded crow or raven, rail, swift, egret, stork, wheatear, mallard and other ducks, hawk, hoopoe, owl, kingfisher, goldfinch, robin, spoonbill, wood-

35 The parrot in the hands of the Child is a parallel to the Child holding a goldfinch in numerous Italian pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth century; Friedmann, p. 54 (only four Flemish painters before or contemporary with Bosch are cited, pp. 139–140). Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, New York, n.d. (ca. 1979), p. 223, calls the parrot a symbol of the Virgin, based on the writings of a Dominican, Franciscus de Retza (†1425), and notes that the parrot as Marian symbol is found in the art of Jan Gossaert, Albrecht Dürer, and Peter Paul Rubens. For Jan van Eyck’s parrot as a possible alternate for the goldfinch, see Friedmann, p. 55; Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, p. 141, cites the pelican and the phoenix, and in The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, Princeton, 4th ed., 1955, p. 85, speaks of the parrot as ‘wise and benevolent’ (as opposed to the diabolical serpent) in discussing the engraving of the Fall of Man. 36 Friedmann, pl. 31. 37 Friedmann, p. 37.

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pecker, goose (both plucked and feathered), chicken, hooded falcon, pelican, eagle and dove, the last three most often subjected by artists to symbolic treatment. There are many others that are too difficult to identify precisely and indeed may not have been painted to be identifiable. Nor are all birds accurately rendered. The pelican, symbol of Christ’s sacrifice for humanity, on the reverse side of the Berlin Saint John on Patmos clearly was never seen by Bosch: his pelican feeding its young with blood from its breast apparently had for a model a generic large bird, possibly a hawk, while his eagle, Saint John’s symbol, on the front of the panel, looks more like a crow and has been called a partridge (Fig. 5–1). His array of birds, however, is most numerous and varied in the panels of the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. On the left wing at its extreme lower right is a dark pond inhabited by strange creatures and ringed by others equally strange (Fig. 3–1b). Some of the bird forms are recognisable, such as that of the hoopoe with its head in the pond and its tail up in the air. Immediately above, a spoon-billed fish swimming in the pond next to a scaly-backed unicorn-horned seahorse is an impossible hybrid, a bird with three heads, large wings and an ornamental tail found on no known bird. Bosch’s starting point may have been a heron.38 To its left is a gray and black bird, a European hooded crow, clearly reproduced.39 To the right of the three-headed bird is a bird possibly derived from a redstart, though the beak 38 The heron of the Physiologus, pp. 40, 82, also called a coot (White, pp. 107, 122–123) can also be a stork but it was variously assessed as wise, prudent, faithful, consistent and forebearing, lacking ‘sensuality on one hand, on the other . . . a symbol of a man exhausted by sex’ (Rowland, pp. 80–81). 39 The crow has a long symbolic history, beginning with the fables of the white crow turned black by Apollo when it tattled about his wife, and the crow that dressed in peacock feathers disdaining its companions but in its turn despised by the undeceived peacocks. In medieval times the crow was known by the ancient fable and so was used by the church fathers to denigrate women, while to Camerarius the crow was symbolic of the arrogant and ambitious (Rowland, p. 36). It also enters Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools, as we find from the following rhyme heading chapter 31, ‘Of Seeking Delay’: Who sings ‘Cras, Cras’ [Latin for ‘tomorrow’, i.e., delay] like any crow Will stay a fool till death, and so His dunce’s cap will wax and grow A fool of whom the Lord does say: ‘Improve yourself this very day, Abandoning your wrong and sin, A better life you should begin’, And who remarks: ‘Let me delay,

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4−1. H. Bosch Shop, After the Flood, ca. 1500? Panel, 27⅜ x 15 in. (69.2 x 38.2 cm). Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam.

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4−2. H. Bosch, Epiphany Triptych, ca. 1510, center. Panel, 54⅜ x 28⅜ in. (138.2 x 72 cm) center; 54⅜ x 13 in. (138.2 x 33 cm) each wing. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

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4−3. H. Bosch, Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, ca. 1500–05. Panel, 19¼ x 15¾ in. (48.5 x 40.0 cm). Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.

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4−4. A. Du Hameel, Besieged Elephant, 1478−94. Engraving, 8 x 13¾ in. (20.4 x 33.5 cm). British Museum, London.

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4−5. Unknown illuminator, Initial V: Saint Bernard, after 1460. Book of hours, northern Netherlands. Illumination, 6¾ x 4 13/16 in. (163.7 x 12.7 cm). J. Paul Getty Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, 83.ML.105, fol. 137.

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4−6. Bosch follower, Last Judgment, triptych, center, ca. 1516–20. Panel, 64 9/16 x 50 in. (164 x 127 cm) center. Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna.

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4−7. H. Bosch, Death of the Miser, ca. 1500. Panel, 36⅝ x 12⅛ in. (93 x 31 cm). Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

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and tail are too long; next to it is another concoction and to its right is certainly a biological impossibility, a bird with a huge toothed spoonbillAnd mend my ways some other day’, And sings ‘Cras, Cras’ as does the crow, But ne’er his span of life doth know. Many a fool has come to sorrow By crying: ‘I’ll do that tomorrow’. Where sins are found and folly’s blight, There crowds rush in with great delight. But goodly service, righteous deed, Are all performed with sluggish speed, Inviting ever long delay. ‘Confession? Yes, but why today? Tomorrow let God’s will be done’. In this you hear the prodigal son. That tomorrow never will be felt, Like snow ’twill quickly come to melt. But when at length the soul has gone, Then will at last that morrow dawn. So terrible misfortune’s toll, The body pays no heed to soul. And thus in wilderness there died Those Jews whom God did not decide To take into the happy land That he had promised with His hand. If you would not repent today Tomorrow will be worse than ay. To whom this day God’s summons call May later hear no voice at all. By thousands men are now forlorn Who planned improvement on the morn. The crow is found in the panel attributed to Bosch, Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, Madrid, Lázaro Galdiano Museum, and a hooded crow, which often interbreeds with the allblack carrion crow, appears in the Nativity, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, also attributed to Bosch. In the Physiologus, pp. 5ff. the little crow is abandoned and symbolises the synagogue. Other members of the crow family (Corvidae) are jays, magpies and ravens: the jay is illustrated by Rowland from a twelfth-century bestiary in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The text describes a graculus — graculos enim significat et gulosos (‘for the graculus signifies garrulous and greedy people’). Further, says Rowland, to Chaucer ‘the jay appears to have symbolised mindless chattering and repetition’. Magpies, says Rowland, will attack the eyes of ailing lambs and sheep, and possibly that is the reason the bird had a reputation for greed. Gossip is also assumed to be a characteristic of the magpie, which is known as are other corvids for its ability to mimic other birds. As a symbol of dissipation and vanity it appears in Flemish sixteenth-century painting, Rowland says; caged in Bosch it is a symbol, as a maison close. No reason is given.

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inspired bill chewing up the frog in its mouth. Other fantastic inventions are visible at lower left. But not at all fantastic is a small owl, close to a Tengmalm’s owl (Aegolius funereus) in type, peering out of the abnormal pink plant form in the centre of the panel, here symbolic, it seems, of the reappearance on earth of the fallen angels as evil spirits before the union in Paradise of Adam and Eve. Exceedingly long-tailed birds appear to left and right at roughly the same level as the owl. The left-hand bird’s tail is impossibly corrugated. Two more birds below, left and right, perch on glass or crystal rods that project from the support for the exuberant plant housing the owl. To the left, ducks swim, while farther back beyond the elephant stand egrets and storks, and swifts fly in the sky to the upper left. If these latter birds carry symbolic meaning, it is not obvious. A gigantic owl, far left of centre on the central panel (Fig. 3–1a; actually a small species in nature), is visually balanced by another, also gigantic, but this time a tawny owl (normally larger than the other) to far right of centre, and lower down. A small man is at the side of the first owl; both owl and man stare at the spectator. The man puts a hand on the owl’s breast as his other arm embraces the bird from behind its back. Repeating the action, other small men nearby put their hands possessively on the bodies of women both black and white. Why the little man embraces the owl can only be guessed at; he is possibly embracing the owl’s character, in this case, dubious. Owls in medieval art, as in the Physiologus, symbolise the Jews who rejected Christ, preferring the darkness of error as the owl shuns the light.40 Probably closest to Bosch’s owl in human embrace is the apparently lubricious meaning of an owl in a love garden print attributed to Master E.S.41 Other small men ride on the backs of gigantic birds. Klingender identified 40 Physiologus, pp. 10ff. Also see the extensive discussion on the good and bad character of owls by P. Vandenbroeck, ‘Bubo significans. Die Eule als Sinnbild von Schlechtigkeit und Torheit, vor allem in den niederländischen und deutschen Bilddarstellung und bei Jheronimus Bosch. I’. Jaarboek van bet Koninklijk Museum voor schone Kunsten, Antwerpen, 1985, pp. 19–135; lists all works by Bosch that show owls. Though it lists Dieter Koepplin’s dissertation of 1973 he does not mention the published version, Cranachs Ehebildnis des Johannes Cuspinian van 1502: seine christliche-humanistische Bedeutung, Basel, 1975, where the owl is considered evil according to John 3:19–20 as opposed to the star above Cuspinian’s head (reviewed by L. Silver, Art Bulletin, 58, 2, 1976, pp. 290–292). 41 M. Geisberg, Die Kupferstiche des Meisters E.S., Berlin, Cassirer, 1924, p. 22, pl. 157. Illustrated in a master’s thesis by William L. Gannon, not cited by Vandenbroeck (William L. Gannon, ‘Marianus Bubo, The Translation of a Sixteenth-Century Book on Owls, Annotated with Special Attention to Certain Traditions of Owl Imagery’, University of Iowa, June,

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these as goldfinch, robin, woodpecker, hoopoe, kingfisher, jay and two mallard ducks,42 one of the latter propelling itself so vigorously into the picture as to suggest the characterisation given by Vincent of Beauvais: the mallard drake mates so enthusiastically that it sometimes drowns its partner (a fact of life). Chaucer apparently refers to this in the Parlement of Fowles when he says the drake is a ‘stroyere of his owene kinde’.43 Leading the flock of giant birds (Fig. 3–5) is a European goldfinch, a berry in its beak dangled over the open mouths of three naked men standing in the water waiting for the berry to drop (the motif may have inspired Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting the Land of Cockaigne of 1567, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, in which three men sprawled on the ground at the base of a central tree wait for food to fall into their mouths). A naked man dreams on the goldfinch’s back, his eyes closed and his head in his hands. A robin follows the goldfinch, and straddling its back is another small naked man; a large bubble-like hood with a floral stem completely veils his head. Like the goldfinch, the robin had a positive image in medieval thought because the red colour of its breast suggested Christ’s sacrifice. In John Skelton’s Phyllyp Sparrow, dating before the end of 1508, we find the lines: ‘Robin Redbreast/ He shall be priest/ The requiem mass to say [for the sparrow]’, an idea apparently grown out of Court of Love 1953, 227). For the Master E.S.-attributed print, entitled The Court of Love, see his fig. 24. There are other engravings that associate the owl and sexual attraction; one disapproving print, by Master M.Z., ca. 1500, shows a fashionably dressed young woman looking back over her shoulder and lifting her skirts as she flees to our left to escape flames descending from heaven. An entwined scroll is lettered DVCK DICH K (i.e., hide yourself, also, humble yourself ). An owl on the ground before her also looks back over its shoulder as it flees before her. Here the owl shares the woman’s shame. (Late Gothic Engravings of Germany and The Netherlands, 682 copper plates from the ‘Kritischer Katalog’ by Max Lehrs, with a new essay ‘Early Engraving in Germany and the Netherlands’ by A. H. Mayor, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Dover Publications, New York, 1969, pl. 594). Vandenbroeck (‘Eule’, p. 66, n. 144) quotes Dieter Koepplin’s 1973 dissertation, pp. 221–222, identification of the inscription as a portion of a folksong, ‘Duck dich Käuzelein, las über gan/Das wetter wil sein Fortgang han’. The relevance to Bosch’s little man and large owl lies in the relation between the woman, seemingly of loose morals, and the owl, which normally shuns the light, thus operates in conditions where a reprehensible morality can flourish. 42 Francis Klingender, Animals in Art and Thought, to the End of the Middle Ages, London, 1971, p. 487. 43 Beryl Rowland, Birds with Human Souls, A Guide to Bird Symbolism, Knoxville, Tenn., 1978, p. 49; Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturalis, 16, xxvii.

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literature harking back to La Messe des Oiseaux of Jean de Condé (ca. 1275–1340).44 Behind the robin comes a redheaded woodpecker,45 also ridden by a small naked man, his head encased in a glass bubble. He raises his hand like a jockey urging on a mount during a race. And behind him is a giant hoopoe, then a female mallard duck at the left edge. Above and behind it, partially obscured, is another large bird, which may be the bird Klingender called a jay. It has a vertical feathered crest and is possibly a black-crested night heron. Two small men ride in the hoopoe’s crest.46 Nine more small men appear as spectators; all are only heads crowded into spaces between the giant birds. The mallard advancing vigorously into the scene has a gleam in its eye and seems to smile; on its back sits a large kingfisher under whose bill a small nude pair sit eye to eye on the mallard’s back, the man touching the face of his black female companion. On the right side of the central panel (Fig. 3–1a) the preternaturally gigantic tawny horned owl stares out of the picture while being upheld by wildly dancing nude males. The contrast between the owl, seemingly here symbolising dominance, and the men appears deliberate because of the

Edw. A. Armstrong, The Folklore of Birds, An Enquiry into the Origin and Distribution of Some Magico-Religious Traditions, New York, 1970, 2nd ed. Dover, p. 171. 45 In the version of the Physiologus attributed to Epiphanios cited by Rowland (p. 182) the colorful woodpecker symbolises the crafty devil. In the Narrenschiff it symbolises idle chatter; the heading to Brant’s chapter 19, ‘Of Idle Talk’, is as follows: Who guards his speech and holds his tongue By anguish ne’er his soul is stung Woodpecker’s screech betrays their young. . . . Whate’er he knows a fool will prate The wise men keep their peace and wait, For idle talk’s of little use, It only nurtures harm, abuse, And so to hush is surely better Than talking, prating, useless chatter . . . (Zeydel, 104ff.). 46 Though the Physiologus speaks well of the hoopoe (chapter 10, p. 14) by late medieval times this now comparatively rare bird had acquired a quite different reputation. The bestiary names two birds which have been identified as the hoopoe, one good, one bad (White, the Epopus, pp. 131–132, and the Upupa, p. 150). The latter ‘is an ungrateful bird that soils its own nest’ according to a proverb in a Breslau Luben manuscript of 1349 and it is said to ‘signify fornicators and adulterers . . .’ while Bartholomaeus Anglicus, following Isidore of Seville, made derogatory comments about the bird, and Luther used the expression, ‘er stinket wie ein wiederhopfnest’ (he stinks like a hoopoe’s nest), Rowland, p. 83. 44

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ludicrous activity, for so we read it, of the males below foolishly intent on their dance and nothing else. Here, Bosch means to say, is unrestrained folly crowned by a symbol of evil. His equation of folly and sin is unquestionable. What governed Bosch’s choice of these giant birds? Except for the owl only hoopoes and woodpeckers had bad reputations, other birds being respectable in medieval and late medieval times, like the robin47 and the even more colourful kingfisher,48 though the mallard’s enthusiasm expresses a lusty sexual drive.49 The giant birds contrast with the puny nature of enfeebled men. Such men are subject to sin, like the slothful men under the giant blackberry, and Bosch makes his point clear when he alludes to miscegenation by the white man embracing the nude black female as they ride on the lustful mallard’s back. The point is made again to the left of the red tent, close to the centre of the panel, in the open-mouthed men waiting for a cherry to fall from the mouth of a bird that seems a cross between a goldfinch and an American tanager. Two cherries are balanced on the long horn of the deerlike animal with ass’s ears and goat’s beard that carries a rider in the procession about the central pond; in the right ‘aisle’ of the pond, floating on a giant leaf, an impossibly round-bodied bird’s excessively long narrow beak has impaled on it another cherry, an unattainable goal held up above the outstretched arms of five tiny men encased in the pink ball of sharply pointed leaves. These acts and contrasts in size between men and birds comment on the decline of men (and women) in power, size and moral stature shortly before the Last Judgment, following the apocryphal 2 Esdras 5:54–56. Furthermore, the Garden triptych does not include among its numerous 47 The robin’s red breast inevitably made it a symbol of Christ’s Passion. A Breton legend explained the colour of its breast as a staining with Christ’s blood when it attempted to pull a thorn from his crown and so in late medieval times the bird was associated with charity. It was also the priest in the parody ‘The Bird Mass’ (Rowland, p. 150). The robin is not found in the Physiologus or in the bestiaries. 48 Also associated with Christ’s Passion because of its red breast, the kingfisher is not found in the Physiologus. In the bestiaries, however, it was conflated with the halcyon of Greek legend which hatched its eggs at sea during a weeklong period in winter of calm and little (neap) tide. The medieval altion (halcyon) laid its eggs on the shore in a like period of calm but of two weeks’ duration instead of one, and expressed mother-love (White, pp. 124–125). The church fathers thought the bird expressed magnanimity, and Geraldus Cambrensis conceived it to signify saintly men since he thought it did not putrefy after death; it was also associated with Saint Anne (Rowland, pp. 89–92). 49 Rowland, Birds, p. 49. Also see n. 22.

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examples those birds commonly interpreted as positively relevant to a Christian way of life, such as the dove, symbol of the soul and the Third Person of the Trinity, or the eagle, which in old age renews itself by plunging from great height three times into a fountain, to restore its plumage and ‘splendour of vision’, as man should seek the spiritual fountain (the action becomes a symbol of baptism) and lift his mind’s eye to God.50 Above the group of slothful sinners and the disguised Hellmouth (Fig. 3–1a) in the pool on the central axis of the Garden, a group of nude women in its centre stand in water above their knees with marsh birds, such as white-bodied but black-billed rails, spoonbills, storks and egrets, perched on their heads. At the left edge of the pool we have noted a black nude woman with a peacock as her headdress holding up a cherry. Crows stand on the heads of a third group. A cavalcade of nude men on various natural and fantastic animals circle the women in a counterclockwise direction. As on the left wing, we find egrets, storks, spoonbills and herons; a rail is about to probe with its long beak the anus of a man who is bent double, standing on one leg on horseback, his other leg raised in the air. Across the circle from this image an owl with impossibly long ears rests on a lancelike rod emerging from an undefinable form on which a large group of nude men ride. Apparently no symbolic meaning can be attached to the rail, as opposed to owls. Bosch showed both mermen (armoured) and mermaids in the waters and in the air of the central panel of the Madrid Garden of Earthly Delights. The central panel of the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony (Fig. 2–3) shows an armoured figure much like the merman riding a fish in the sky of the left wing with another fish as a lance to attack the saint (Fig. 2–1); in the water below a superannuated wizened mermaid holds a child and rides a rat to personify the anti-Virgin of an antiFlight into Egypt.51 Though these flying forms are not birds in a 50 Psalm 103:5; Isaiah 40:3 for the eagle, and White, pp. 105ff.; Physiologus, p. 12. Also see Collins, with references to the Septuagint and the Vulgate, p. 133. The dove (shown in Bosch’s Saint John in the Wilderness, Madrid, Lázaro Galdiano Museum) is a symbol of purity and the godhead to both Hebrew and Christian believers; for the latter, the white dove is a symbol of ‘. . . the Holy Ghost, of Christ, of the Church, of the Virgin, of the souls of the redeemed, of spiritual love, of innocence, of defenselessness, of charity, of martyrdom, and of the Ascension’. (Rowland, pp. 41–42; for a full description of the dove’s symbolism, see pp. 41–48). 51 As before, Bosch here refers to Antichrist whose life was considered to parody that of Christ.

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modern ornithological sense, as demonic forms they are capable of aerial flight, since demons, according to medieval belief, can imititate all natural acts. Whether the painter believed in the actual existence of mermen and mermaids is impossible to say. The astonishing proliferation of birds in Bosch’s art in the Garden triptych again exemplifies his ingenuity and his delight in presenting recognisable aspects of the real world that transmute into fantastic new inventions. A striking example is the prominently enthroned, demonic, blue-bodied, bird-headed, human-bodied figure devouring a nude male, head first (right wing of the Garden triptych); swifts take flight from the sinner’s anus. Crowned with a three-legged kettle and its feet encased in jugs, the head of Bosch’s demonic figure was inspired by a merlin, a small European falcon, much like the American pigeon hawk, to augment the figure’s evil character. The transformation from the real to the demonic is as logical as the part played by owls in the central panel. For the most part the birds in Bosch’s aviary neither parade their symbolic meaning nor take advantage of it to convey obvious moral messages. They participate as accessories to the parade of humankind’s sinful activities but they are not overly insistent bearers of Bosch’s message. Again we see Bosch’s thought about natural forms, about truth to nature, unadulterated, transmuted, muted and as emblem. Most birds are natural, as in the gigantic birds (with riders of doubtful character), imagined as he conceived the armoured merman and mermaid to be, constructed as in the three-headed bird on the left wing, an evil abomination to medieval minds because it departed from the norm of observed natural phenomena. Another kind of animal, Bosch’s fantastic agent of the Devil, appears in multiple forms both early and late in his art. The Seven Deadly Sins Tabletop in the Prado, considered by many to be one of his earliest works (Fig. 6–1), was much admired by Philip II of Spain; he kept it in his bedroom in his grandiose palace-office-monastery, the Escorial.52 The Sins are illustrated by genre scenes around the central ‘eye’ of the panel. With one exception they are physically rather than symbolically conceived. 52 See chapter 6. Jacqueline Folie, ‘Les Oeuvres authentifiées des primitifs flamands’, Bulletin del l’Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique, 6, 1963, pp. 235ff. Also see Walter S. Gibson, ‘Hieronymus Bosch and the Mirror of Man, the Authorship and Iconography of the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins’, Oud Holland, 87, 1973, pp. 205–226 (Gibson E 268).

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Only one of the central scenes includes a demonic form, that of Pride (Superbia); there the demon is a tempter. A primping woman, seen from the back, looks into a mirror (her reflected image is a left profile, not a front view) held out from behind an armoire by a demon attired only in an outmoded headdress that matches her own. (A comparable headdress is seen in the Prayer on the Shore scene in the Turin-Milan Hours associated with the van Eycks, and in Jan van Eyck’s portrait of his wife, Margaret, of 1439, Groeningemuseum, Bruges.) 53 Already Bosch’s unique demonic characterisations appear. The devil shows long fingers, a claw foot and a curling tail; its dark naked form is essentially human — there are no bat wings or scales — while the head without horns is that of a foxlike animal with a long snout and long teeth in its open mouth. More traditionally represented, though the head is not specifically animal, is the dark demon of the Extreme Unction roundel in the upper left of the Sins panel. It carries a meathook over its shoulder as it waits on top of the headboard for the coming contest with the angel beside it. (The contest itself is seen earlier in the art of the Rohan Master’s name book of hours where the demon and the angel battle for the dead man’s soul). The details of the Hell roundel in the left-hand corner are related to earlier manuscript illumination,54 as is the central image’s spoke-like character. The roundel demons resemble the demon in the scene of Pride’s primping woman, and there is a variant of black wings on several demonic figures; these are, however, still within the tradition of depicting demons, as in the Hell scene in Tavernier manuscripts and in the Limbourgs’ Très Riches Heures of the second decade of the fifteenth century.55 One motif in the midst of all these portrayals of man’s misdeeds is an innovation in demonic representation. Thoroughly characteristic of later Boschian conceptions, if the Tabletop is an early work, is the Hell roundel’s plump little man who wears a cowl and nothing else and who may have clawed feet (Fig. 6–1c). He stands next to the boiling cauldron, holding in one hand the end of a spit on which is a naked human and in the other a long-handled basting spoon. In earlier manuscript illumination this action is performed by a clearly defined demon; Bosch’s innovation is the For the Turin-Milan Hours and the portrait of Margaret van Eyck, see Cuttler, NP, pp. 103, 106–107 and fig. 119. 54 Ch. D. Cuttler, ‘Two Aspects of Bosch’s Hell Imagery’, Scriptorium, 23, 1969, p. 313, note. 55 Cuttler, ‘Two Aspects,’ figs. 102–105; Cuttler, NP, p. 31, fig. 34. 53

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substitution of an apparently human, or at least close to human, figure. Also new is the heavyset, dark-faced woman in a white headdress and long white apron about to hammer a naked human form bent over an anvil and held by a black, winged demon; in earlier Flemish manuscripts the hammering is done by anthropomorphic demons, either naked or hair-covered. Though she has no clearly demonic physical characteristics she metes out punishment for the labelled sin of Accidia (Sloth), and the little man is placed next to the cauldron of Avaricia (Avarice) in which several sinners are boiling. Is this the first appearance of such motifs in Bosch’s art, or are these two figures transplanted from a work conceived later on in Bosch’s development despite evident overall borrowing here from earlier manuscript tradition? The fantastically conceived demon that mixes human and animal parts appears in Bosch’s art differently from earlier Flemish fifteenth-century painting. The early winged, black type descended from the Byzantine eidolon manner (seen in the Byzantine Temptation of Saint Anthony from the Theodore Psalter of 1066),56 is found in a Hell scene of the Limbourgs.57 There demons of modified anthropomorphic forms show pronounced zoomorphic reptilian characteristics, borrowed from Italian models, of scaly stomach plates, with the claw feet of raptors, bat wings, leonine heads bearing ram’s horns, and tusked faces. Bosch’s demonic forms, however, present a strikingly different variant. His demons, though often nude, may wear human clothing and so seem, in part, thoroughly normal human beings, but when the termini — hands, feet, heads — are zoomorphic it gives his demons an arresting, noticeably different effect. They are more natural, less foreign to what we know, and thereby more effectively terrifying as we gradually realise their horrifying nature. The implication is inescapable: evil is a palpable part of the everyday world. Certainly of a later date and thus further along in the development of Bosch’s fantastic types is the Last Judgment triptych in the Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna, the chief extant example by which we can assess Bosch’s treatment of that very popular fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century

56 Temptation of Saint Anthony, Theodore Psalter, 1066, British Library, Add. MS. 19352, folio 151 (British Museum photo 1093). 57 Folio 108, Très Riches Heures of Jean de Berry, Musée Condé, Chantilly, Cuttler, NP, p. 31, fig. 34.

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theme (Fig. 4–6). Unfortunately, the work is suspect as a genuine work by Bosch. It has been badly treated over the course of time, and while there is a copy in Berlin painted on limewood — not oak — by the Cranach workshop with several modifications, the Vienna work is distinctly different in size from the Last Judgment triptych ordered from Bosch in 1504 by Philip the Handsome (249 x 304 cm against 163 x 247 cm); the subject of the wings is also different). The Cranach shop copy has been dated on stylistic grounds to between 1520 and 1525,58 thus it cannot help to determine the authenticity of the Vienna panels, which contain numerous elements close to Bosch in subject and style. But the Vienna central panel shows the earth after the resurrection of the dead and after the final judgment, which makes one ask why angels in heaven to the left and right trumpet on incredibly long instruments (the uppermost angel on the left side turns its face toward its companion instead of blowing), a call to judgment that has already taken place. A few souls rise toward a small golden opening in the upper left-hand corner (is the area occupied by Christ, angels, Mary, John, and the apostles not Heaven?). Hands together in prayer, each soul is aided by an angel but turned away from Christ. Such a conceptual departure from the norm of Last Judgment scenes seems foreign to Bosch’s nature and norms. Add to this the realisation (by many) that the central panel shows all the world as no different from the now obviated Hell panel, presented just the same, and we are faced with a conundrum. How can this representation be reconciled with traditional Last Judgments? They normally present the resurrection of the souls of men and women to be judged by Christ, with the blessed rising to heaven on one side and the damned moving to Hell on the other, as in such famous Last Judgments as Rogier van der Weyden’s Beaune Altarpiece, and Hans Memling’s Gdansk Altarpiece. Furthermore, the Vienna left wing is a Creation panel, a theme out of place in a Last Judgment triptych. Clearly something is amiss with the Vienna triptych. Confusing the issue even further, the triptych for Philip the Handsome was to have the traditional Paradise and Hell for wing panels (despite this, the Cranach shop copy also shows the Garden of Eden on its left wing). Bosch’s fantastic figures, combining elements of beast and human, are outstanding examples of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century demonology. No

Bax, op. cit., p. 319, concluded that it had been copied from another version and not the Vienna Last Judgment. 58

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other artist even approaches his achievement. Whenever demons appear in his art their purpose is clear: they are instruments of the Devil and their principal reason for being in Last Judgment panels is to escort to their fate in Hell men and women who have turned from the true Christian way, as in the Hell panel of the Haywain and Garden triptychs, and to torment them, or cut their throats, as in the Hell panel in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, the right wing of the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony triptych, and the Vienna Last Judgment central panel (though in this the demon stabs its victim in the back of the neck, instead of cutting his throat). But Bosch’s anthropomorphic demons are rarely seen as tempters in his panels; their purpose is chiefly to act as accessories (they pull the haywain to the Hell of the right wing) or as examples of the ways in which sin can be committed, and as instruments of punishment in scenes of Hell. In the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony demons act as tormentors in the scene of aerial temptation or they embody the Seven Deadly Sins and the Five Senses which the saint, we know, will overcome.59 In the Garden triptych demons mingle with naked men in the right wing Hell panel as they move in aimless masses to and fro in the landscape, and in the Haywain Hell panel demons enter into the action, again accompanying the human sinners; indeed they are the builders of Hell’s prominent tower. In Creation panels, however, they play the traditional role of fallen angels; then they are flying insects or reptiles falling from heaven in the left wings of the Haywain triptych and the Vienna Last Judgment. A related conception of demonic forms can be found in the Temptation of Saint Anthony panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece, Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar, by Bosch’s equally great contemporary, Grünewald; there, however, demons actively combat angels. The two motifs I have characterised as Bosch’s innovations in the Tabletop Hell roundel appear again, slightly modified, in the central panel of the Vienna Last Judgment, the ‘hammering’ action repeated twice, as though once were not enough. Now the action shows aproned demonic ‘women’ with animal heads, one of whom acts as a farrier. Only here and in the Tabletop are there women as demons.60 The naked man on a spit is also repeated twice in the central panel, as is the cowled man without other garments, while in Vienna the foreground variant also wears boots; the Cuttler, 1957, augmented here in chapter 2. Normally Bosch’s demons suggest by their actions the shape and movements of human beings but they are not sexually explicit. 59 60

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other shows a pimply face and a ball-studded stomach — ornamentation, it seems, for ornamentation’s sake.61 The closer one looks, the more one finds in the Vienna Last Judgment essentially exact reproductions of motifs found in other works by Bosch. The sleeping Adam of the Creation panel recurs reversed in position along the left edge of the centre panel. Though he is found in like fashion in Speculum humanae salvationis paintings of much earlier date, in the Vienna centre panel the figure clearly derives from the Haywain’s Creation panel.62 The swarming insect-like demons that fall from Heaven in that panel appear again in the skies of the Vienna Creation panel. To cap this series of borrowings — it is difficult to consider these repetitions as manifesting a lack of imagination on the part of an artist like Bosch — the background of the centre panel, with figures in windows and doorways silhouetted against the light of burning hellfires, has been inspired by the Hell panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights, where the arms of a windmill are suggested by four equally spaced radiating bands of light, another instance of Bosch’s innovating genius. It is a mark of his inventiveness that is nowhere matched in the Vienna panel, which more and more impresses as a work produced shortly after Bosch’s death either by his relatives or pupils, or by followers with access to his cartoons and drawings. Piling detail on detail, evocative motif on evocative motif, they people their work with surefire fantastic, hallucinatory images, with human beings in aimless movement over a darkened world, its background buildings 61 The motif of the naked man on a spit being basted is one of the common actions in Hell scenes of the early fifteenth century (see M. Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry, The Late Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke, London, New York, 1967, 2, figs. 787ff.; also see comparable scenes in Cité de Dieu manuscripts). The Vienna triptych’s demonic spit turner with pimpled face and studded stomach is considered by Bax to show the ‘Spanish pox’, that is, syphilis. See his p. 454 for references to the disease. 62 The sleeping Adam of this scene is in the manner of the Netherlandish model found in the Speculum, at variance from German treatments, of which a characteristic example is Master Bertram’s Creation of Eve scene from the Grabow Altarpiece, 1379, in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg (Cuttler, NP, fig. 70). The Speculum model appears earlier in French manuscripts, for example, in illuminations added by the Boucicaut shop to the name manuscript of the Egerton Master, London, British Library, MS Egerton 1070 of ca. 1409–10 (M. Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry, The Boucicaut Master, London, New York, 1968, pp. 95ff., fig. 205). A later example of this figure, essentially that used by Bosch, occurs in Heinrich Quentell’s Cologne Bible of 1478–79. Bosch’s source could have been either the French model, spread into the Netherlands and inherited from his parent and grandparent, the Speculum, or the Cologne Bible.

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silhouetted against flames that proclaim the world as transformed into Hell on the Day of Judgment. Christ damns with his left hand and seems to bless the resurrected with his right, even though only one naked soul is visible close to the foreground. An angel leads it away at the left as a demon aims an arrow at its back, a theological absurdity in this context; the angel as guide indicates favourable judgment has already been passed; the motif, however, is known in a woodcut of a Christian pilgrim about to be shot by a skeletonised demon archer that Gibson related to the Tabletop.63 But pilgrimage is not Last Judgment. In heaven angels at the right trumpet the judgment but produce no souls rising from their graves in response, for there is only darkness along the right border at the top, and the lower part of the panel is a demonic melee. The concentration of the demonic activities on the punishment of only one sin, gluttony, is foreign to Bosch’s normal procedure.64 The Vienna Hell panel’s even greater jumble of motifs and capricious scale leads to the conclusion that we are looking at the work of a pasticheur intimately acquainted with the works produced by Bosch; probably working in the shop, that worker was competent enough to present to many the illusion that the work was designed and painted by Bosch himself. Parallel situations in Netherlandish art can be cited, most striking the excellent painter who, according to dendrochronology, was responsible after Rogier’s death for the Granada portions of the Granada-Miraflores Altarpiece. Another is the Bouts shop master known as the Master of the Munich Taking of Christ. There are without doubt many more situations of a like nature in the history of Netherlandish painting of this period, for the quality of execution is often sufficiently high to deceive scholars. The development of Bosch’s fantastic demonic imagery leads from the tradition-bound early conceptions putatively visible through the veil of later transformations in the Tabletop, and particularly its Hell roundel, to the next stage (discussed in the next chapter) represented by the white-faced, Gibson E 268, pp. 224–225, fig.15. A paper delivered at the Medieval Institute meeting in Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 7, 1994, by Donna Cottrell, ‘Hell’s Kitchen in Bosch’s Vienna “Last Judgment”: Food for Thought’, derived from her master’s thesis, Case Western Reserve University, interprets the centre panel foreground as a combination of the activities by demons of a kitchen — cutting, slicing, cooking, roasting, basting, grinding, etc. with human beings the ingredient, their punishment for the sin of gluttony. The paper assumed that the idea was Bosch’s invention. 63 64

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armoured, beetle-like ‘clerical’ demon (possibly a reference to the humanfaced locusts of Revelation 9:7–9) at the lower right of the Berlin Saint John on Patmos (Fig. 5–1), c. 1485–90. The little demon reinforces the apocalyptic aspect of the scene, also visible in the detail of the burning ship in the background. The next step in Bosch’s development of demonic combinations is found in the Death of the Miser, ca. 1500, a wing panel from a triptych whose central subject is unknown (Fig. 4–7).65 A tiny white-haired old man dressed in a black cowl leans on the parapet and looks out at us. Except for his elfin size and sharply pointed delicate wings, nothing is unusual about this figure though the meaning of his presence is not apparent. Behind him and reaching out from under an open chest (inside it a snout-headed naked demon in a dark cap holds out a salver into which the miser drops a coin) is a frog-headed demon with a humanoid body but claw feet (under them is a meathook like that in the Tabletop Hell roundel [Fig. 6–1c]). The demon holds up a letter or, more likely, a promissory note or bond. Overhead another demon looks down over the bed canopy while another demon — now there are four — emerges from under the drapery to hand a sack, clearly full of money, to the man in bed so close to death. Now Bosch populates his pictorial world with telling, fantastic demonic images that are combinations like no others. From here on Bosch achieves an integration of the fantastic and the actual, always at the service of reinforcing his basic meaning. It is a vantage point from which we can survey all the fantastic combinations that constitute the arresting spirit of Bosch’s marriage of the animal, the reptilian, and the human. Their sole purpose is to accent and echo the base character of all sinners whose salvation must come from exercising their will to overcome the evil forces present in this world. Demons constantly try to lead humans from the true path they must follow to achieve salvation. Should the human race fail in its endeavours, for evil forces are ever present 65 The panel is related dendrochronologically to the Paris Ship of Fools, the New Haven, Allegory of Gluttony, and The Pedlar in Rotterdam; all three come from the same plank. See Anne Morganstern, ‘The Rest of Bosch’s Ship of Fools’, Art Bulletin, 66, 1984, pp. 299–302; John Hand and Martha Wolff, Early Netherlandish Painting, Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1986, 16–32. According to Peter Klein, ‘Dendrochronological Analysis of Works by Hieronymus Bosch and His Followers’, the effective felling date is 1486, Hieronymus Bosch, New Insights into His Life amd Work, ed. J. Koldeweij, B. Vermet, B. van Kooij, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, NAi Publishers, Ludion, Ghent, 2001, pp. 121–131, fig. 131.

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and ever active, then all humanity ends up in Hell; there demons of incredibly variegated aspects and powers will have license to make sinners suffer untold tortures in a stygian world without end. This is the message of the Haywain, and even the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony, though its right wing amplifies the worldly temptations rather than reaches the ultimate conclusion: Bosch exhorts humankind by holding out hope for salvation through belief and emulation of Saint Anthony (as an imitatio Christi ), and by the message of the Garden of Earthly Delights. Unique in the character of his visions and the quality of their execution, in manner equalled by no one of his contemporaries, Bosch shows the widespread dangerous and threatening forces of evil in our world. He points out that humanity’s potential to overcome the animal exists side by side within beleaguered mortals who must conquer the corrupting forces of daily existence to achieve the high goal of salvation. Such a moral imperative conditions Bosch’s art, gives it strength, and justifies his existence as an artist.

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Saint John on Patmos NY painting of our period portraying Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos does more than show the saint busy writing his Revelation on a Mediterranean island. Each contains, either directly or otherwise, knowledge of its contemporaneity. Bosch’s picture (Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museum, Berlin) (Fig. 5–1) is no different in this from like works of the period. One thinks of the right wing of Memling’s Altarpiece of the Two Saints John in Bruges (Fig. 5–2) (also called the Marriage of Saint Catherine Altarpiece, after the subject of its central panel), and of Joos van Cleve’s Saint John on Patmos, at the University of Michigan Museum, Ann Arbor (Fig. 5–3). Apocalyptic elements are present in both, the belief in the imminent coming of Christ a probable reason for their existence, particularly in Memling’s motif-laden picture.1

A

1 For Memling’s Saint John, 1479, see Dirk De Vos, Hans Memling, Antwerp, 1994; Bosch’s picture is unrelated. Joos van Cleve’s painting shows a youthful Saint John with several books around him, interrupted as he writes in one while looking open-mouthed at the vision of a standing, aureoled Virgin and Child at upper left. A water landscape is seen in the background, suggestive of early Herri met de Bles’s work, though no boats are burning, nor is there any suggestion of the Seven Churches of Asia addressed by the saint. The apocalyptic elements are not strongly emphasized, possibly because the picture was painted several decades after the advent of the fearful year of 1500. See John O. Hand, Joos van Cleve: The Complete Paintings, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2004, catalogue number 56, pp. 83–84, 147–148, 189, fig. 83 (here Fig. 5–3). Jos Koldeweij, Complete Paintings, p. 74, considers the Berlin panel ‘probably bordering on certainty’ to have been part of the now lost Confraternity of the Virgin altarpiece, once in Saint John, ’s-Hertogenbosch, known from town documents. He pairs the Berlin panel with the Saint John with the Lamb, Madrid, Lázaro Galdiano Museum. Koldeweij’s theory

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Bosch’s painting is a worthy addition to the roster of works specifically related to Apocalypse and its anticipated fearsome aftermath. Like Joos van Cleve, Bosch had his predecessors, particularly Martin Schongauer, for of all his contemporaries Schongauer is the artist whose numerous, widely circulated engravings can be shown to have influenced Bosch. Their treatments of Saint John on Patmos reveal stylistic and iconographic relations, and a temporal relationship is even possible; the year of their births sometimes has been assumed to be the same: 1453.2 However the relationship is essentially iconographic. Schongauer apparently rounded off his artistic education by a trip to the Netherlands about 1465 (but he would have been only twelve years old if born in 1453, too young to be a journeyman). Whenever he went, he fell under the spell of Dirk Bouts’s art. Bosch’s earliest works also indicate Bouts’s influence but are much more fluid in assimilating the style of Rogier van der Weyden as codified and even rigidified by Bouts. Further, Bosch, trained in ’s-Hertogenbosch by his family, was closer to the centers of Netherlandish style than his German contemporary, whose initial absorption of Netherlandish art’s lares and penates possibly came through either training under, or observation of, the transplanted Rogierian style of the long lines of his fellow townsman in Colmar, the artist Caspar Isenman. Schongauer, eager assimilator of Netherlandish style, not only absorbed and united it with his training by his German goldsmith father but also spread his version of the style through the high quality of his many engravings. These served to make him widely renowned by his death in 1491, twenty-five years before Bosch’s death in 1516 (suggesting that Bosch was the younger man).

raises a question, i.e., why is there a donor originally in the Madrid panel (now visible only by reflectography) but none opposite on the Saint John in the Wilderness panel, as his reconstruction of the altarpiece (from documents) would lead one to expect? 2 For Schongauer’s birthdate, and the error made by Julius Baum, Martin Schongauer, Vienna, 1948, in assuming Schongauer’s ownership of half a house in Colmar in the Rustergassen in 1469 instead of 1477, see Albert Châtelet, ‘Schongauer: premières observations’, Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, Colloque 4, 1981, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1982, p. 149, n. 4. Though Dürer wrote on the drawing of a blessing Christ (London, British Museum) that it was made by ‘Hupsch Martin’ in 1469, and in 1517 also wrote on a now lost drawing that it was made by Schongauer in 1470 when he was a ‘jung gsell’, i.e., an apprentice, there is no way to verify the accuracy of Dürer’s datings and then was even doubted by art historian Jacob Rosenberg (for the drawing, see, among others, Baum, pp. 17, 47, and fig. 119).

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That Bosch was aware of Schongauer’s engravings early on shows in at least five works: his early Ecce Homo in Frankfurt (Fig. 5–4); the Saint John on Patmos in Berlin (Fig. 5–1); the Haywain triptychs in Madrid (Figs. 1–1a-d) and the Escorial; the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony (Figs. 2–1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6); and in the Garden of Earthly Delights, certainly the griffin (Fig. 3–1a), among the animals circling the central pool and the dragon tree on the left wing behind Adam (Fig. 3–20) are taken from Schongauer’s engravings of the Griffin (B. 93; Fig. 5–6) and the Flight into Egypt 3 (B. 7; Fig. 5–5). Bosch’s Ecce Homo may date from about 1485, his Saint John on Patmos possibly as early as 1490, and the original Haywain triptych close to 1500. Bosch’s Ecce Homo creates a typical Netherlandish arrangement, with the figure of Christ on a platform at left above the heads of the crowd below at the right. The theme, based on the Gospel of John (19:4–15), developed from a simple presentation scene in Ottonian art to a full-blown drama in the fifteenth-century scene of the scourging of Christ. Occasionally combined with the Crowning with Thorns, Christ is then given a purple robe and a reed scepter in mockery and is buffeted by soldiers. Christ of the Ecce Homo is often represented with crossed hands, sometimes bound, but also unbound as in Schongauer, with head bent in resignation. In Bosch’s picture Christ’s hands are bound, his body bent over more than in Schongauer’s engraving (B. 15; Fig. 5–7). As in the engraving the suffering Christ is assaulted verbally by the crowd of jeering spectators. Both artists contrast the figure of Christ to the bestial attitudes of the crowd looking up from below. Schongauer accentuates the drama by crowding his fewer figures into a small space with three steps leading to Christ at the top of the platform; Bosch’s more ample spatial composition omits steps and, as revealed by cleaning and x-rays, once had kneeling donors in front of the platform. His image recalls the same scene on folio 69 of the book of hours by the Master of Mary of Burgundy, Oxford (MS. Douce 219) (Fig. 3–7), illuminated possibly as early as 1476 for Engelbert II of Nassau, but completed about 1480–85 for Philip the Handsome. The Master of Mary of Burgundy shows a procession leading away in the background, the March to Calvary; Bosch presents a bridge over a river with a similar public square beyond. Schongauer throws a screen across the back of the foreground. The

3

R. A. Koch, ‘Martin Schongauer’s Dragon Tree’, Print Review, Tribute to Wolfgang Stechow, 5, 1976, pp. 117–118, no. 6, fig. 4, also here chap. 3, n. 85.

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relationships are so general in these works that a single specific influence cannot be strongly asserted; the model was too well known. That it was Netherlandish we may surmise because Schongauer’s German contemporaries and predecessors employed a slightly different iconography, preferring to place Christ closer to the level of spectators who witness more often than they jeer. (The Boston Museum of Fine Arts triptych, with the Ecce Homo as its center panel — a work from Bosch’s shop of the 1490s — shows an erect Christ frontally placed on the platform before a flight of steps, with the crowd on either side creating a central visual path for the viewer). Schongauer’s Temptation of Saint Anthony (B. 47; Fig. 5–8), has recently been called the Tribulation of Saint Anthony, though ‘temptation’ is a more accurate translation of Latin ‘tentatio’ for the saint’s vicissitudes.4 My research on the theme of Saint Anthony’s temptations is now complemented by that of Jean Michel Massing,5 who cites Dirk Bax’s quotation of the Dutch translation of the 1478 Legenda aurea, which specifically speaks of the aerial elevation of the saint by devils who ‘cast him up into the air, they hurled him down again, in such a manner that they almost brought him to death’. This, Massing believes, shows the influence of an artistic form on a literary one.6 However, the specific language of the Dutch translation contains no mention of an element common to several contemporary artistic renderings of the theme, the pulling down of Saint Anthony’s scapular toward the lower left by demons. This is found in Schongauer’s engraving, in a contemporary German woodcut of ca. 1470 of Anthony’s torments,7 and in the Master of Mary of Burgundy’s aerial temptation of the saint in the Madrid Vostre Demeure book of hours, folio 191r, of ca. 1490 (Fig. 2–4).8 4 ‘Temptatio’ or ‘tentatio’, we recall, means a trial, a test, also an attack, to all of which Saint Anthony was subject. 5 Jean Michel Massing, ‘Schongauer’s Tribulations of Saint Anthony: Its Iconography and Influence on German Art’, Print Quarterly, 1, no. 4, 1984, pp. 221–236. 6 Massing, p. 236, note 87. The Dutch version of the Legenda aurea was printed by Gheraert Leeu at Gouda. 7 Illustrated in my unpublished dissertation, ‘The Temptations of Saint Anthony in Art from Earliest Times to the First Quarter of the Sixteenth Century’, New York University, 1952, fig. 70; also Massing, fig. 125. The woodcut is in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. 8 Vostre Demeure book of hours, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS E XIV Tesoro (Vitr. 25–5), fol. 191r; for its relationship to Bosch see Charles D. Cuttler, ‘The Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony by Jerome Bosch’, Art Bulletin, 39, 1957, p. 112. It is also discussed in

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The influence of this illumination, or another of similar nature, in which demons under the saint’s garment physically elevate him into the air (though there is no pulling of Anthony’s scapular), suggests that Schongauer’s influence on Bosch’s aerial Lisbon Saint Anthony, if present here, is indirect at best. There were, after all, other models. However, another motif from the same engraving seems a direct influence on Bosch’s Haywain and Lisbon triptychs: the transformation of a zoomorphic form into an anthropomorphic one. It appears in a characteristic Boschian metamorphosis in the long slender nose shaped like a musical instrument played on by the Haywain demon on top of the hay (Fig. 1–1c); smoke emerges from the nose of the hooded figure immediately behind the kneeling temptress in the Lisbon triptych’s central panel (Fig. 2–3).9 Human bodies or portions of them that end in animal parts distinguish Bosch’s demonic forms from those of Schongauer, whose much more animalistic, zoomorphic creations seem to imply a natural world in opposition to the world of human beings; in Bosch’s art the limits between the two worlds dissolve, as his composite figures often calmly perform demonic acts as though they live a normal existence in our world. Not so with Schongauer, whose excursion into this un-natural natural world occurred only once in his career. But Bosch’s smoking musical-instrumentnosed creature was without doubt influenced by Schongauer’s engraved and equally long-nosed, spiny-backed, fishlike form. Bosch clearly liked the formal idea, a confirmation of Schongauer’s influence on Bosch’s Saint John on Patmos.10 On the exterior Bosch painted scenes from Christ’s Passion in the circle surrounding the pelican-cum-phoenix on a rock bending over its young to feed them with its blood (Schongauer has no influence here).

Cuttler, 1952 (p. 79, fig. 71) as inspired by a combination of influences from Master E. S. and Schongauer. Also see Otto Pächt, The Master of Mary of Burgundy, London, 1948, pl. 22b. 9 Cuttler, NP, figs. 253, 255. 10 Max Dvorák was the first to make the connection, according to W. Fraenger, Hieronymus Bosch, tr. H. Sebra, New York, 1983, p. 428, n. 84 (German edition, Dresden, 1975). Fraenger illustrates (p. 249) the Schongauer engraving, the undated version by Master E. S. (L. 151), and Master B. M.’s copy of Schongauer in which the seated saint looks down toward the lower right corner and writes on the scroll on his lap, but does not look at the Virgin and Child in an aureole in the sky to the right; the gnarled tree behind John is clearly derived from Schongauer’s print.

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5−1. H. Bosch, Saint John on Patmos, ca. 1485–90, front side of panel, 24¾ x 17 in. (62.9 x 43.3 cm). Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

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5−2. Hans Memling, Saint John on Patmos, Saint John’s Altar, right wing, 1479. Panel, 67¾ x 31⅛ in. (172.0 x 79.0 cm). Hospital of Saint John, Bruges.

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5−3. Joos van Cleve, Saint John on Patmos, ca. 1525. Panel, oak, 28 5/16 x 27⅞ in. (72 x 71 cm). University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, museum purchase, 1958/277.

215

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5−4. H. Bosch, Ecce Homo, ca. 1485–90. Panel, 28 x 23 ⁹/16 in. (71.1 x 60.5 cm). Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt.

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5−5. Martin Schongauer, Flight into Egypt (B. 7), ca. 1470–75. Engraving, 10 x 7⅝ in. (25.3 x 19.3 cm). British Museum, London.

217

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5−7 (opposite page). Martin Schongauer, Ecce Homo (B. 15), ca. 1485–90. Engraving, 6⅞ x 4 in. (17.3 x 10.2 cm). British Museum, London.

5−6. Martin Schongauer, Griffin (B. 93), ca. 1480. Engraving, 3⅞ x 5½ in. (9.9 x 14.0 cm). British Museum, London.

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5−8. Martin Schongauer, Temptation of Saint Anthony (B. 47), ca. 1470–75. Engraving, 12¼ x 9 in. (31.2 x 22.8 cm). British Museum, London.

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In the Netherlands the growth of the subject of Saint John on Patmos shows rising interest in the natural world and in apocalyptic themes at the same time. Like the subject of Saint Jerome in the Wilderness it testifies to the increased absorption in landscape by artists and public which becomes so important in northern European art late in the fifteenth century.11 Saint John retired to the island of Patmos to write his apocalyptic Revelation. When illustrated, Saint John is shown at the beginning of his text, seated in the act of writing on Patmos shortly after his debarkation (Revelation 1:9–11). The theme’s visual roots revert to an early ninth-century Carolingian Apocalypse manuscript, the Juvenianus Codex, apparently of Roman manufacture. Saint John is shown in bed, with an angel hovering over him to the lower right of a Christ in Majesty.12 The probably contemporaneous Trier Apocalypse is different. John is right of centre and seated, holding a scroll, as a youthful unbearded Christ stands to the left of an angel trumpeting down to John. A building, probably one of the seven churches of Asia to which he wrote, is behind John to the right. Fish swim before him to indicate that he is on the island of Patmos.13 Ninth-century and later Spanish Beatus manuscripts do not contain this scene. John on Patmos is next seen in an illuminated Apocalypse with Commentary of Berengaudus (Longleat House), of English manufacture around 1100.14 Again John is seated in a chair in profile. His accompanying angel points upward. John holds up his pen and scraper and looks up to the figure of Christ in Majesty, surrounded by symbols of the Evangelists and flanked by the Lamb and the Dove standing on a scroll in the frame above (Fig. 5–9). What has not been remarked before in this miniature are two decorative ‘scrolls’ resting at the bottom; they are wave forms to

11 See Walter S. Gibson, Mirror of the Earth, The World Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting, Princeton, New Jersey, 1989, pp. 6ff. 12 Rome, Biblioteca Vallecelliana MS B 25.2, fol. 675r, according to Peter K. Klein, ‘Introduction: The Apocalypse in Medieval Art’, in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard MacGinn, Ithaca, London, 1992, pp. 171–172, fig. 9; Gertrude Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 5, Die Apokalypse des Johannes, Gütersloh, 1991–92, 2, pp. 13, 240, fig. 12, identifies the manuscript as Roman; Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS B 25, II, fol. 67r. 13 Schiller, pp. 13, 241, fig. 15, Trier, Stadtbibliothek, MS 31, fol. 3v. 14 Michael A. Michael, ‘An Illustrated “Apocalypse” Manuscript at Longleat House’, Burlington Magazine, 1984, 126, pp. 340–343, fig. 26.

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indicate that John’s vision of Christ in Majesty is taking place on the island of Patmos. Here is the first post-Carolingian visual reference to John writing on Patmos. Another appears in a Beatus manuscript from Lombardy of the twelfth century;15 its imagery may have drawn on the assumed Roman tradition represented by the Juvenianus Codex. John appears twice in a single miniature, asleep on the left, and seated writing on the right. No water is shown. Another miniature of John on Patmos at his writing desk, in a Bible moralisée after 1230 from the Ile de France, belongs to the well-known Anglo-Norman Apocalypse manuscript style and may be its earliest example: in the Douce Apocalypse in Oxford of 1270–74, Saint John reclining on Patmos is interrupted by an angel pointing heavenward but what he is to see is not rendered.16 As usual the text tells John to write down what he sees; this model persists in Apocalypse representations as late as the 1480s, as a southern French manuscript indicates.17 Saint John reclining and looking up, as in the Douce Apocalypse, is gradually replaced in the succeeding centuries by the earlier type of John seated on the ground writing his Revelation. This is preferred in the thirteenth and fourteenth

15

Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS theol. lat. 28561, fol. 2r, Schiller, vol. 2, fig. 19. The John on Patmos miniature from the Bible moralisée (London, British Library, MS Harley 1527, fol. 116v, shortly after 1230) shows John in a circular frame looking up to a descending trumpeting angel at the right. He is surrounded by seven buildings, all with towers, the seven churches of Asia to which John wrote letters. Water flows in and around them and him (Schiller, vol. 2, pp. 13, 232, fig. 21). See also A. G. Dodwell and W. O. Hassall, The Douce Apocalypse (MS. Douce 180, Oxford, Bodleian Library), New York, 1961, p. 16, pl. 1; Schiller, vol. 2, fig. 24, for another representation of Saint John on Patmos. Artistically less impressive than the Douce Apocalypse is the slightly earlier Apocalypse, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Auct. D.4.17, fol. 3, English, 1250–60 (M. Smeyers, ‘Een Middelnederlandse Apocalyps van omstreeks 1400 [Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, ms. néerl. 3], Hoogtepunt van het pre-Eykiaans Realisme’, Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgie’, Klasse der Schone Kunsten, Academiae Analecta, Brussels, 1993, 53, 1, 27, fig. 10: Smeyers seems unaware of the Longleat House manuscript). The angel’s scroll shows the message to John. Patmos is surrounded by water and identified by name. 17 Also see the Saint John on Patmos in the Apocalypse, formerly Basel, Burckhardt-Wildt Collection, illustrated by Suzanne Lewis, ‘The Apocalypse of Isabella of France: Paris, Bibl. Nat. ms Fr. 13096’, Art Bulletin, 72, 1990, p. 244, fig. 29. For the Apocalypse manuscript from southern France of the 1480s (in Latin with French translation) see Nigel Thorp, The Glory of the Page: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from Glasgow University Library, London, 1987, p. 117, no. 59 (Apocalypsis, MS Hunter 398 [V.2.18]). 16

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centuries and becomes the numerically dominant type. A variant appears in the fourteenth century — John examining his pen18 — an instance of the growing personalization of experience, to result in the fifteenth-century development of the book of hours. Saint John in the act of writing, a dominant French theme in the fourteenth century, spreads in the fifteenth century into the southern Netherlands, and by mid-century becomes popular in Germany, apparently under Netherlandish influence.19 John examining his pen is a less popular motif — not yet found illustrated in German art — than the scene of John writing his Revelation. In the Netherlands there is a rich development of variations upon the theme of John on Patmos seated on the ground, particularly in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The saint’s symbol, the eagle, added earlier, is even given a task; it sometimes holds in its beak John’s inkpot and penholder or one end of his scroll. Instead of a vision of Christ in Majesty the saint occasionally receives a vision of the apocalyptic Woman, sometimes without the Child. The vision can be replaced by the Trinity or the heavenly host, the seven-headed beast, or a combat of angels with the dragon, with or without an angel to point out the vision to the saint. Memling’s apocalyptic vision on the right wing of the 1479 altarpiece (Fig. 5–2) (Hospital of Saint John, Bruges), mentioned above, has more elements, and is the most diverse of all.20 Surprisingly there is no eagle 18

Lewis, figs. 38, 40. An outstanding example is the name painting of the Master of the Vision of Saint John, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, WRM. 113, shortly after mid-fifteenth century; the lamb receives the book from an enthroned God the Father in the inner circle, which also encloses the symbols of the four Evangelists. In the outer circle are the twenty-four Elders. Below is a seemingly Rhenisch landscape with donors (Burgomaster Scherfgin [† 1455/56] of the church of Saint Laurenz and his wife, Bela Hirsch) kneeling at the right. Saint John, presumably on Patmos, sits at the left, book in hand, looking up to his vision. The watery landscape behind him includes several birds, and an angel flies down with a scroll (illustrated in I. Lübbeke, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Early German Painting, 1350–1550, trans. M. T. Will, London, 1991, p. 325, fig. 2: in color but wrongly identified in F. Van der Meer, Apocalypse, Visions from the Book of Revelation in Western Art, New York, 1987, p. 73). 20 Cuttler, NP, fig. 212; good color illustrations in Van der Meer, pp. 258, 262, 267, and De Vos. Despite Memling’s attempt to ‘paint a full picture’ of Revelation there is, it seems, no continuation of the model provided by the Angers Apocalypse tapestries (Cuttler, NP, fig. 10, p. 14, and n. 7), nor in previous northern painting or illumination can one find any attempt to portray Dante’s vision (canto 29; seven old men symbolize the Revelation) seen in the tapestries of the Petrarchan Triumph of Eternity with the Nine Worthies. 19

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companion, nor a popular anecdote of a small devil who steals the saint’s inkpot and pours its contents on the ground — or tries to, an action borrowed from the legend of Saint John Chrysostomos. Such a mischievous intent appears first in a French Bible historiale of about 1380,21 then becomes popular in Flemish illumination. An illumination of ca. 1435–40 by the Zweder Masters even has the devil behind Saint John’s back stealing the inkpot while the saint is engrossed in examining his pen (which he holds in his left hand — in actuality he is about to sharpen it with a knife in his right).22 The attempted (or actually successful) theft or upset of the saint’s inkpot seems absent in later French and German manuscripts.23 Gertrude Bing found that Netherlandish and German blockbooks commonly show John seated on an island that looks like a round block rising out of the water.24 The printmaker’s model was probably derived from 21 Bible historiale, French, ca.1380, Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, MS W. 126, fol. 195v; J. G. Van Gelder, ‘Der Teufel stiehlt das Tintenfass’, Kunsthistorische Forschungen Otto Pächt zu seinem 70. Geburtstag gewidmet, Salzburg, 1972, pp. 173–188, fig. 7. 22 John’s eagle is absent, Patmos does not seem to be an island, and no town with a church tower is visible; Masters of Zweder von Culemborg, Egmont Breviary, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, M.87, f. 107, ca. 1435–40; James Marrow, Henri L. M. Defoer, Anne S. Korteweg, and Wilhelmina C. M. Wüstefeld, The Golden Age of Dutch Manuscript Painting, New York, 1990, pp. 112ff., fig. 53. 23 For example, Simon Marmion’s Saint John on Patmos, Horae, ca. 1460–65, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, HM 1173; James Thorpe, Book of Hours, Illuminations by Simon Marmion, San Marino, n.d., pl. 1. The angel is absent but the saint’s eagle is nearby. No writing tools are evident. Golden rays create an aureole in the sky overhead which the saint does not see. Also see the Fronleichtnamsaltar of 1496 by Henning van der Heide, Lübeck, Sankt-Annen Museum (Max Hasse, Lübeck Sankt-Annen Museum, Die Sakralen Werke, Lübeck, 1970, 2nd ed., pp. 133ff., fig. 50). A mixture of French models, possibly conveyed through Flemish art, and German examples seems responsible for the work in Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, no. 113 (124 in the 1910 catalogue, p. 45), by the Master of Saint John’s Vision (see n. 19). John sits on a promontory at the lower left with a book on his lap and his pen in hand. He looks up at the vision of the Lamb taking the book from God the Father, who is surrounded by the symbols of the Evangelists; the twenty-four Elders and the seven candlesticks are also shown. An angel flies down to John, holding the scroll that enjoins him in Latin to write what he sees (‘Scribe quod tu vides’), that conventional aspect of John’s vision. 24 Gertrude Bing, ‘The Apocalypse Block-Books and Their Manuscript Models’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5, 1942, 146ff., cites Schreiber’s conclusion (upheld by recent research) that two of the earliest blockbooks of the Apocalypse are German of about 1465. In Netherlandish as well as German versions (and earlier in France) Saint John is shown on a morsel of land surrounded by water. An angel is seen outside this area. In contrast to the Anglo-Norman Apocalypse model there is no boat.

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manuscript illumination; in the Limbourgs’ Très Riches Heures, John on his tiny round island looks back over his shoulder as a boatman rows away from him (Fig. 5–10). The setting is also more complex than in printed works; a city, supposedly one of the seven cities of Asia, fills the background, and Christ, enthroned above with the Lamb on his lap, is flanked on either side by the crowned elders of the Apocalypse. Three angels immediately below Christ trumpet the message to John, his eagle standing in front of him.25 Less progressive than the Limbourgs’ illumination is the design of the scene of John still reclining on Patmos in the richly illustrated twenty-three-page early Flemish masterpiece of the art of the Apocalypse, ca. 1400 (Paris, B. N., néerl. 3).26 Seated in reflection at water’s edge, he is approached by a hunched-over boatman intent on beaching his craft, a motif that is also traditional and can be traced back to an Apocalypse manuscript of ca. 1250 (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M 524, fol. 3r).27 Three demonless German engravings, two by the Master E. S. (Lehrs II.217.150, signed E. S. and dated 1467, Fig. 5–11; Lehrs II.219.151, Fig. 5–13),28 and one by Schongauer (B. 55; Fig. 5–12) are important in relation to Bosch’s Berlin picture. Schongauer’s John on Patmos seemingly stems from Master E. S. and models already established in German blockbooks that show Patmos as a land mass with the saint at water’s edge. Bosch too follows this model rather than the island-block-in-the-water type of the Limbourg miniature and numerous subsequent Flemish and French representations. In the Master E. S. dated engraving of 1467, there is not only a town in the distance and Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child through the water, but also a church in the town on the high cliff to the left. Saint John faces left, with his inkpot and pen case on the ground before him; he has paused

25 Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS. 65, fols. 17, 25v, J. Longnon, R. Cazelles, and M. Meiss, The Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, New York, 1969, pp. 181, 184, pls. 15, 20; also M. Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Boucicaut Master, London, New York, 1968, figs. 302, 354, for related examples of the same decade. Most recent: see R. Duckers, Pietor Roelofs, et al., The Limbourg Brothers, Nijmegen Masters at the French Court, 1400–1416, Ludion, 2005, p. 26–27, 113–119, etc. 26 F. Van der Meer, pp. 203–235, 357; figs. 1–22, esp. fig. 2. For a detailed discussion, see M. Smeyers, pp. 15–44, fig. 11. 27 Schiller, vol. 2, fig. 44. 28 A. Shestack, Master E.S., Five-Hundredth Anniversary Exhibition, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1957, unpaginated (ca. p. 10), no. 33.

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in his reading, for no pen is visible, and overhead is a vision of the Virgin and Child, which he cannot really see as he looks up. His eagle is before him. In the undated work (L II.219.151, Fig. 5–13) by Master E. S., Saint John now faces right, holds book and inkpot before him, and dips his pen. He looks up to a vision of the Virgin and Child, with twelve stars in her crown. His eagle is nearby and a town with a prominent church tower is in the distance. Distracting narrative and anecdotal elements are eliminated. If either of these images by Master E. S. influenced Schongauer it was probably this undated version. Schongauer’s Saint John has paused in his writing to look up at the vision of the Virgin and Child; here also she is crowned with twelve stars and he holds the pen delicately in his fingers, but no inkpot or pen case is visible. His eagle stands before him. The gnarled trunk of a single tree is prominently placed almost on centre just behind the saint. Though Master E. S.’s figures are both in almost three-quarter view, Schongauer’s Saint John is in strict profile. Hieronymus Bosch’s Saint John on Patmos has similarities to Schongauer’s work — but also marked differences. Saint John, also in profile, holds his pen even more expectantly. Schongauer’s gnarled tree is not as close and is less obtrusive, behind the saint’s back. The tree is balanced by an all-blue angel on the hill. It points toward the non-starry-aureoled Virgin and Child in the heavens above. Surprisingly the Virgin sits, not stands, on the upturned crescent moon and holds the Child on her lap before her (a singular instance of this in John on Patmos iconography at this period). To the angel’s right is a bay with boats; one is in flames, a contrast to Schongauer’s boat calmly sailing by. Behind the angel is an estuary and in the far distance a town with a tall church tower and bastion, leading one writer to imagine that Bosch had painted the town of Arnheim and another Nijmegen.29 The dramatic interplay of figures and landscape is different from Schongauer’s use of landscape as strictly a foil for the figure.

29

J. Six, Amtliche Berichte aus dem königlichen Kunstsammlungen 1917/18, 39, p. 261, cited in the 1931 Berlin catalogue (Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der Gemälde im KaiserFriedrich-Museum und Deutschen Museum, Berlin, 1931, 9th ed., pp. 54–55). Six thought it made for a priory of the Knights of Saint John at Arnhem, but their patron saint was Saint John the Baptist, not Saint John the Evangelist. Karl Wescher, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 2, 1933, p. 139, thought the background showed Nijmegen.

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5−9. Saint John on Patmos, English, illumination, from Apocalypse with commentary by Berengaudus, ca. 1100. 8½ x 4¾ in. (21.3 x 11.9 cm). MS 2, Longleat House.

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5−10. Limbourg Brothers, Saint John on Patmos, 1416. Illumination, from Les Très Riches Heures de Jean de France, Duc de Berri, Ms 65 Horae, fol. 17, 6¾ x 4⅜ in. (17.1 x 11.1 cm). Musée Condé, Chantilly.

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5−11. Master E. S., Saint John on Patmos (Lehrs II.217.150), 1467. Engraving, 6⅛ x 5/3 in. (15.3 x 10.8 cm). British Museum, London, E. 122.

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5−12. Martin Schongauer, Saint John on Patmos (B. 55), ca. 1480? Engraving, 65/32 x 4½ in. (15.5 x 11.5 cm). British Museum, London.

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5−13. Master E. S., Saint John on Patmos (Lehrs II.219.151), ca. 1460–65? Engraving, 8⅛ x 5 9/16 in. (21.2 x 14.2 cm). British Museum, London.

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At lower left a baleful dark bird glares across the foreground, over an inkpot and pen case on the ground beside John, at a fantastic demonic beetle with a shiny round stomach, its extra wing tips ending in upraised hands, a white-faced cleric’s head with glasses well down its nose, and a burning pot sitting on its hooded head. A hooked stick (a meathook, commonly used by devils in Flemish illuminations) rests against the bank. The figure is probably the most unusual reference to the human-faced locusts of Revelation 9:7–9. It seems as though the eagle, which also has been identified as a partridge, has sufficiently scared the little fiend into giving up any attempt to snatch or empty the saint’s inkpot. The scene implies the defeat and imminent flight by the little demon. Bosch was surely aware of Schongauer’s engraving when he created his picture, for as in the engraving Patmos is no longer an island (as in Flemish illumination, for example, the Egmont Breviary).30 Flemish tradition has had a further effect — note the inclusion of the angel; the bird that is now a restraining element deterring the demon, seen in a new, unusual form; the more marked inclusion of boats because one is burning (as in Memling’s altarpiece); and the more exciting landscape background, with one of the seven churches of Asia, we assume, in the distant city. All, including the Virgin and Child, is infused with a greater drama, thus adding apocalyptic meaning. Bosch’s sympathy for the engraving was probably conditioned by the basic design of Schongauer’s form close to and parallel to the picture plane, a preferred compositional method for Bosch which he frequently used as a contrast to the deep recession of his backgrounds. In sum, Bosch has created a scene of Saint John on Patmos whose component parts are chiefly French and Flemish in origin and emphatically apocalyptic in feeling. But Bosch has added awareness of a seated woman holding her child on her lap, transforming her from a traditional standing — and thus more hieratic and more remote — Apocalyptic Virgin into a warmer mother and child to whom viewers can relate; the Virgin Mary, so necessary as intercessor for humanity’s salvation at the Last Judgment. Bosch incorporates wayward demons to contrast with the Virgin’s humanity; by comparison, Schongauer’s Saint John adheres to a less volatile, more circumspect, conservative, and less apocalyptic iconography to demonstrate once again why the Flemish artists set the direction for

30

Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, M 87, fol.107, ca. 1435–40 (see n. 22).

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German art of the fifteenth century. However, Schongauer’s high artistic quality spoke to Bosch, whose own language, quality, and inheritance was richer and attuned to the dramatic apocalyptic neo-Gothicism of the age. Furthermore, Bosch’s art marks a clear emphasis on the Virgin Mary, mother of the godhead, and intercessor for humanity, patroness of Bosch’s confraternity, at the coming Last Judgment.

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The Tabletop of The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things and The Tree Man The Tabletop

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HE painted tabletop, representing The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (47¼ x 59 in., 120 x 150 cm), now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid (Figs. 6–1a–c), is usually considered the earliest of Bosch’s preserved works.1 If so, it is also the first to show his involvement with the apocalyptic spirit of his age. Its place in the roster of pictures attributed to Bosch, however, needs investigation: whether it is from his hand, and whether it is justifiably accorded the position of the first painting of the period to portray genre scenes in a religious context. Because it moralises on sin and salvation, it is also relevant here and worthy of investigation, and so would warrant consideration as his earliest work.

1 W. S. Gibson, ‘Hieronymus Bosch and the Mirror of Man: The Authorship and Iconography of the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins’, Oud Holland, 87, 1973, pp. 205–226; R. H. Marijnissen and P. Ruyffelaere, Hieronymus Bosch, The Complete Works, Antwerp, 1987, pp. 329–345; N. Bibot, ‘Les sept péchés capitaux de Jerome Bosch. Étude iconographique. Un etat de la question’, Revue des archéologues et historiens d’art de Louvain, 1984, 17, pp. 302–03; R. van Schoute and M.C. Garrido, ‘Les péchés capitaux de Jerome Bosch au Musée de Prado à Madrid. Étude technique. Premières considérations, Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, colloque 6, 1985, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1987, pp. 103–106; E. de Bruyn, ‘Het Madrileense Tafelblad: een icongrafische benadering’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 1991, pp. 9–60; G. Schussler; ‘Das gottliche Sonnenauge unter der Sünden. Zur Bedeutung der “Mesa de los Pecados Mortales” des Hieronymus Bosch’, Münchener Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, 3rd ser., 1993, 45, pp. 119–150; Gibson, E 259–70: Garrido and Van Schoute, 2001, pp. 76–91.

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6−1a. Bosch follower, Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things, after 1500. Painted tabletop, 47¼ x 59⅛ in. (120.0 x 150.0 cm). Museo del Prado, Madrid.

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6−1b. Bosch Follower, Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things, after 1500. Center detail. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

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6−1c. Bosch Follower, Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things, after 1500. Corner details. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

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The tabletop was a favourite of Philip II of Spain, who kept it and a now lost companion piece of the Seven Sacraments in his bedroom in his palacemonastery-office, El Escorial, thirty-one miles from Madrid. In Felipe de Guevara’s (†1570) Comentarios de la Pintura of about 1560 it is discussed immediately following mention of a pupil of Bosch: who, either out of reverence for his master or in order to increase the value of his own works, signed them with the name of Bosch rather than his own. In spite of this fact his paintings are very praiseworthy, and whoever owns them ought to esteem them highly; for in his allegorical and moralising subjects he followed the spirit of his master, and in their execution he was even more meticulous and patient than Bosch and did not deviate from the lively and fresh qualities and the colouring of his teacher. An example of this kind of painting is a table in the possession of Your Majesty, on which are painted in a circle the Seven Capital Sins in figures and examples; and while this is admirable in its entirety, it is especially the allegory of Envy which in my opinion is so excellent and ingenious . . .2 The painting and its companion appear in inventories of pictures sent to El Escorial by Philip II in 1574 (‘Una tabla en que está pintado los Siete pecados morales . . . de mano de Gerónimo Bosqui’), then given to El Escorial in 1593.3 Fray José de Sigüenza’s Historia de la Orden de San Gerónimo of 1605 also mentions the picture as being in Philip II’s bedroom in El Escorial immediately after discussing work attributed to a pupil. Both accounts have raised doubts in the minds of many scholars whether it is truly a work from Bosch’s hand, or if he even had a part in its design and/or execution.4 De Sigüenza’s inexact description of the Seven Deadly Sins panel indicates ‘en el contorno están siete circulos en que se veen los siete pecados capitales’.5 As at the centre of a giant eye, at the centre of three concentric W. Stechow, Northern Renaissance Art, 1400–1600; Sources and Documents, ed. H. W. Janson, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1966, p. 20. 3 J. Folie, ‘Les Œuvres authentifiées des primitifs flamands’, Bulletin de l’Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique, 1963, 6, p. 236. 4 Gibson, E 268; Marijnissen and Ruyffelaere, 1987, pp. 329–45. 5 Folie: ‘In the corners are seven circles in which are seen the seven deadly sins’. She is obviously incorrect; there are only four corners. Most recent is the discussion and bibliography of Laurinda Dixon, Bosch, London, Phaidon Press, 2003, pp. 41ff. 2

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circles, Christ in a loincloth stands in a sarcophagus, looks at the spectator and shows his wounds; below is the injunction ‘Cave, cave, Dominus videt’ (‘Beware, beware, God is watching’). Christ as Man of Sorrows, a devotional image at least as early as the twelfth century, was popular in painting and prints in the fifteenth century.6 (A related work is Geertgen tot Sint Jans’s Man of Sorrows.7) Occasionally crude in execution but telling in design and conception, the depictions of the Seven Deadly Sins surrounding the central image are presented as genre scenes. Strongly physical rather than allegorical, it is apparently the earliest preserved northern painted panel so treated, and Bosch becomes the inventor of the idea with his earliest preserved work. This may be considered unusual. Placed in compartments the Sins rotate about the centre, and show their outcome in roundels of the Four Last Things at the panel’s four corners: Death in the upper left-hand roundel shows a dying man in bed, probably based on illustrations to the popular, widely circulated moral treatise, the Ars moriendi, (the Art of Dying [Well], i.e., with Christian resolution). In the upper right-hand roundel is the Last Judgment; below it at lower right is the Entry of the Saved into Paradise. In the Hell roundel in the lower left-hand corner, demons punish figures in Hell whose labelled actions characterise the Seven Deadly Sins. Below the central figure of Christ, Anger (Ira), labelled, is given pride of place. This too is unusual. Also labelled, the remaining sin scenes are arranged counter-clockwise: Pride (Superbia), at this period normally considered the chief sin but here displaced: Luxury (Luxuria); Sloth (Accidia); Gluttony (Gula); Avarice (Avaricia); and Envy (Invidia). There are borrowings from past representations,8 for the most part in costumes and shoes. 6 G. Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 2, pp. 143–210; also English edition, 2, pp. 197–229. 7 The placement of Christ standing in a sarcophagus showing his wounds, Aartsbisschoppelijk Museum, Utrecht (Cuttler, NP, fig. 204), parallels the Escorial painting. Dated ca. 1495, it is a much more dramatic picture incorporating elements that draw upon the emotions associated with the Flagellation, the Road to Calvary, the Crucifixion, the Entombment and the Resurrection. The Escorial picture is not as far advanced in emotional involvement with the Christ figure. 8 K. Renger, Lockere Gesellschaft, zur Ikongraphie des Verlorenes Sohnes and von Wirtshausszenen in der niederländischen Malerei, Berlin, 1970, relates an anonymous panel in the Antwerp museum of the Scenes of Charity and the Seven Deadly Sins (p. 74) to Bosch’s Gluttony scene and to an earlier treatise, the Somme le Roi; the Tabletop Ira scene to D. V. Coornhert, Recht Gebruyck ende misbruyk van tijdelijke have, nr. 2, ed. of 1620, figs. 59–60.

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Anger (Ira) is an unusual scene. It takes place out of doors though the figures and the indoor furniture suggest that it is based on an interior scene moved outside; brawling peasant genre scenes appear frequently in midand later sixteenth-century outdoor Flemish paintings but are unusual if not absent in fifteenth-century work. If originally designed by Bosch as an outdoor scene it becomes a surprising anticipation of later conceptions, thereby justification to consider the scene a Bosch design. In the scene of Pride, a primping woman seen from the back, a roundtopped jewel case on the floor beside her, looks into a mirror held out from behind an armoire by a naked black demon wearing only a rich but outmoded headdress that matches her own (a comparable headdress is seen in the Prayer on the Shore scene in the Turin-Milan Hours associated with the van Eycks, and Jan van Eyck’s portrait of his wife, Margaret, of 1439, Groeningemuseum, Bruges).9 In the Luxury scene the male lover in the tent also wears a costume of the 1430s — particularly marked by baggy sleeves — yet the other male lover, reclining at scene centre and awkwardly holding a shallow dish of wine, wears the blunt-toed type of shoe normally datable after 1490; his hat is equally late. The nearby Fool, however, wears the pointed shoe of the early fifteenth century. Also late are the shoes and hats of men in the scene of Avarice and one of the figures at the end of the bed in the Death roundel; however, the hat and costume of the Envy gallant, with the hawk on his wrist, and wearing clogs of the 1430s when others wear shoes, again indicates an early date as well as derogation of the privileges of an elevated social class. The pouch off his hip contains a claw, a demonic instrument one would think inappropriate here, but not out of place if the painter was using the figure as a condemnation of a sin. (The man in the doorway with a long bone in his hand seems equally culpable of the sin of Envy). The gallant’s sleeves are again the early bag-type seen on the lover in the tent of Luxury,10 another return to the costume of two generations earlier in contrast to the late fifteenth-century headdress of one of the holy women in (also see his fig. 57); the Luxuria scene to a De Passe engraving (his fig. 74); and to the Sloth scene (his fig. 86). On p. 135 he speaks of the ‘bedde der wellusticheyt’ (bed of voluptuousness) though Bosch’s figure is not in bed. Paintings made after the work investigated are to my mind always in question. 9 For the Turin-Milan Hours and the Portrait of Margaret van Eyck, see Cuttler, NP, pp. 103, 106–107 and fig. 119. 10 Note to the author from Prof. Anne van Buren, for which I am most appreciative.

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the Last Judgment roundel, as in paintings by Geertgen tot Sint Jans and the Virgo Master. Even more surprising is the man with a sack on his back at the extreme right in the Envy (Invidia) scene. He has removed his doublet and we see hanging strings that tie his shirt to his hose at the waist, also a feature of male costumes in the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, for example, the bagpiper to the left in the Vienna Peasant Wedding, and the peasants tying a bundle of twigs (copied ca. 1653, Birmingham, Barber Institute of Art, Fig. 6–2). The Tabletop sack-carrier’s costume is unusual, for it appears in no other attributed Bosch work. The multiplication of strings at the back to tie shirt and hose together is not seen earlier.11 Early costume also marks the foremost demon holding up a mirror to the naked couple in the centre foreground of the Hell roundel. The demon sports a Burgundian mid-century woman’s headdress. No other painting attributed to Bosch includes such a wide repertory of earlier fifteenth-century costume details or such a late motif as the multiplication of tie strings on garments more than forty years after Bosch’s death. Vandenbroeck and Gibson have pointed out the appearance of archaising costume in paintings attributed to Frans Verbeek (a known Bosch emulator of shortly after the mid-sixteenth century).12 Whoever designed the Tabletop drew from a full repertory of shop drawings or models dating back through several generations; these earlier costume details cannot be found in a search of the works of Bosch’s contemporaries. A parallel in the Tabletop to borrowed costume motifs appears in some attributed pictures generally considered later in Bosch’s career; an instance is the lighted doorway approached by naked souls at the upper left of the Tabletop Hell roundel. The motif either anticipates or copies the like image in the upper right-hand side of Bosch’s Hell panel from the Garden of The style of strings attaching hose and upper garment is first visible on the executioner in the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist on the left wing of Memling’s 1479 Saint John Altarpiece in Bruges. For a description see M. Madou, ‘Kleding en mode en het oeuvre van Memling’, Essays, Hans Memling, ed. D. De Vos, Groeningemuseum, Bruges, 12 Aug.–15 Nov. 1994, pp. 54ff, fig. 9. Working-class men seen from the back are rare in art of this period, but clearly there was a style change from Memling to Bruegel in men’s garments. 12 P. Vandenbroeck, ‘Verbeek’s Peasant Weddings: A Study of Iconography and Social Function’, Simiolus, 14, 2, 1984, pp. 100, 111, 118, figs. 4, 8 (note the dress and hair style of figures to right of centre); also, W. S. Gibson, ‘Verbeek’s Grotesque Wedding Feasts: Some Reconsiderations’, Simiolus, 21, 1/2, 1992, pp. 29–39; see esp. p. 31 and n. 12. 11

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Earthly Delights triptych (Fig. 3–11). Other parallels are found in the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts Last Judgment (Fig. 4–6), often dated before 1508, the year Lucas Cranach made his trip to the Netherlands; there, presumably, he saw Bosch’s work and was to paint a copy later, about 1520–25. In Cranach’s copy, on lindenwood, now in the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, he also borrowed from the Haywain and the Garden of Earthly Delights triptychs. These are normally dated later than the Last Judgment triptych (Bax, however, thought it one of Bosch’s latest works).13 Stylistically the Vienna Academy triptych cannot be correlated with such a late work as the Ghent Carrying of the Cross or even the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. Three motifs in the Tabletop Hell roundel — the little cowled ladle-holder, the sinner on a spit, and the demonic woman hammering a victim at the forge — are also seen but multiplied in number in the Vienna Academy Last Judgment central panel. Such repetition within a single panel seems out of character for our ever inventive painter. A technical report on the Tabletop by Roger van Schoute and Maria del Carmen Garrido14 stated that the nature of the painting’s wooden support had not been identified, an indication of its problematic nature. Now it has been identified as black poplar.15 Though the authors declare that the panel is assembled from four pieces of wood, ‘à joints vifs’ (translatable as ‘butt 13 D. Bax, Hieronymus Bosch and Lucas Cranach: Two Last Judgement Triptychs; Description and Exposition, trans. M. A. Botha, Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen; Afdeling Letterkunde, Amsterdam, n.s., 117, pp. 319, 321ff; Bax considered the Vienna Last Judgment one version of at least two from the workshop of Bosch, and further thought the Cranach copy in Berlin as having changes that make it a copy of another close version but not the Vienna Last Judgment. He considers the work to have been made in the last years of Bosch’s life, 1515–1516, and cites (pp. 321–322) like motifs in earlier works by Bosch, such as the Tabletop, the Haywain, the Lisbon Temptation of St. Anthony, the Paradise scenes in Venice and the Garden triptych, and others; also see Unverfehrt, p. 78. 14 Van Schoute, and Garrido, ‘Les Péchés capitaux’, p. 103; augmented discussion in C. Garrido and R. Van Schoute, Bosch at the Museo del Prado, Madrid, Museo del Prado, 2001, pp. 77–94. 15 However, Prof. van Schoute told me on March 12, 1993, that the wood, though unidentifiable, was definitely a hardwood. A recent publication, Hieronymus Bosch, The Complete Paintings and Drawings, J. Koldeweij, P. Vandenbroeck, B. Vermet, AmsterdamRotterdam, 2001, p. 178, calls the wood cypress, which is not a hardwood; C. Garrido and R. van Schoute, 2001, identify the wood as black poplar, a softwood, thus not possible to date by dendrochronology: ‘The nature of the wooden support makes it an exception within Flemish painting and Bosch’s art. Perhaps it should be taken as such’ (p. 80). Of

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joints’), which they say characterises some Italian paintings in the Prado Museum, it is also the practice of Spanish panel painters of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, according to Jacqueline Marette; she discusses and illustrates the method.16 The joints are filled on the front face, which is abnormal for Flemish fifteenth-century painting since wooden ‘nails’ are normal in the Netherlands; however, there is a similar use in a Flemish panel of ca. 1520. The cautious wording by Garrido and Van Schoute in 1985 is not an outright conclusion of the Tabletop as the product of either a Spanish or an Italian milieu, but it is difficult to accept this departure from the Flemish norm of oak panels held together with butterfly keys. Still, in 2001 the painting was accepted as by Bosch. There is a corollary they do not mention: an old painting could have been scraped down, reassembled if necessary and then reused, either to copy or to make an original composition. Since not every Flemish or Dutch panel employs butterfly keys, a northern origin is not impossible. The panel could have been acquired by de Guevara either from his ‘Bosch pupil’ or from a copyist or a moderniser in the Netherlands a decade before that Spanish patron died in 1570. The Prado Tabletop occupies a unique position on another count. Most unusual is the fact that there are no known exact or close copies of it, either from Bosch’s own hand or by close followers. However, there is a related later work in a Swiss collection with distinct differences. The signature on that panel, ‘jheronimus bosch’, cannot be believed, given the picture’s obviously later painting style; the lettering style, however, is not distant from that of the Tabletop, thereby casting more doubt on the latter (one writer has said that any painting that has a signature is not by Bosch). When first on the market, in 1935, the ‘copy’ was said to have come from a Spanish convent.17 recent interest is the Renaissance Quarterly review, summer 2005, pp. 648–649, by Laurinda Dixon in Frédéric Elsig, Jheronimus Bosch, La question de la chronologie, Travaux d’ Humanisme et Renaissance 392, Librairie Droz, Geneva, 2004. She points out discrepancies in the author’s arguments and concludes: ‘The problems of attribution and chronology are, however, far from solved’. The Elsig book is also reviewed by Larry Silver, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 361, pp. 193–195. 16 Jacqueline Marette, Connaissance des Primitifs par l’étude des bois, du XII e au XVI e siècle, Paris, 1961, p. 113, pl. 18, fig. 71. I thank John Beldon Scott for reminding me of this work. 17 It was sold from the Spanish Art Gallery, London, at Sotheby’s, lot 52, Nov. 27, 1963, having been exhibited by Tomas Harris Ltd., London, as early as 1935 (‘Exhibition of Early Spanish Paintings’, no. 4; in 1969 it was illustrated as no. 137, pl. 116, in vol. 5 of the

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On a panel 34 by 22 inches (Fig. 6–3) are painted activities interpreted as representing sins of ‘vanity, lust, avarice, sloth, gluttony, usury and violence’. Only three of these have analogues in the Prado picture.18 Usury, a venal sin but not a deadly one, is prominent in the foreground, where a woman with a child at her side approaches a table with coins on it; a cowled moneylender behind it is ready to give her money for the belt she offers. This scene is related to engravings of the mid-sixteenth century and later, such as Frans Huys’ Lutemaker, which shows a similar pose.19 The central scenes are backed by hills and rivers, a town to left of centre and another town on a high hill at the left edge of the back of the middleground. The angle and L shape of the building on the extreme left in the middleground are distantly related to the house behind the Anger scene of the Tabletop. An irregular circle cut off vertically at the sides emulates imprecisely the Tabletop oculus to enclose the scene of the sins. A Hell scene is barely visible in the dark corners below, a rocky ledge in the centre. Above, also outside the central space, is a dark curved landscape, its foreground edge topping the irregular circle. In this upper landscape in the centre, Christ hangs on the cross, as an angel at the left points away from him for no decipherable reason. At the right a seemingly demonic figure on a ladder placed against a tree pulls a nude man up behind it to be hung from a branch higher up. (If the victim is one of the two thieves, the other is missing; in any case the association of this action with the crucified Christ English edition of Friedlaender). Sold by A. Spencer Samuels & Co., New York, in 1965 to Bob Jones University Museum, Greenville, South Carolina, it was deaccessioned to pass through several hands to be sold again on January 21, 1982, no. 20, from Sotheby ParkeBernet, New York, to an anonymous Swiss collector. (My thanks to Mme Micheline Comblen-Sonkes, now retired from the Centre International d’Étude de la Peinture Médiévale, Brussels, for the information on its most recent sale). An early article on the picture by William Gaunt (‘Hieronymus Bosch, A Fifteenth Century Surrealist’) appeared in The Studio, Oct. 1938, vol. 16, pp. 191, 196. 18 The woman seated on the ground to the left holds a hand mirror and has a roundtopped jewel chest alongside her. The mirror, chest and headdress recall the Prado Superbia scene, though no demon is present. Second, the man with a sword, restrained by a woman from further attack on the man on the ground some distance away, may be related to the Prado Ira scene. Third, atop a flat, grassy summit of the roughly octagonal pinnacle of rock, two lovers sit on the ground before a tent with a large tree silhouetted behind it; a table is interposed between them and the tent, recalling the Prado Luxuria scene. 19 F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450–1700, Amsterdam, n.d., v. 9, p. 164; the design is attributed to Cornelis Massys.

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is unusual). The action is also seen in the Tabletop Hell roundel at the righthand peak of the background, though the Swiss picture does not show Hell. More trees are seen in this upper space. The creation of scenes within a roughly circular form seems to parallel the device of the hollow-bodied bird-man on the Hell wing of the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. Obviously the Prado Tabletop is not a direct model for the Swiss work; it employs several of its motifs, but differently arranged, some from later work by Bosch. No other version of the Tabletop is known; there are, however, copies of details. Closest to the Tabletop is a poor-quality copy of the Anger scene in the Galleria dell’Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (Fig. 6-4). Once attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Younger and then to Martin de Vos, stylistically it is several generations later than Bosch’s lifetime.20 The Swiss collection’s picture, because it is said to come from a Spanish convent, might be of Spanish manufacture under the influence of the Prado Tabletop, whereas the Bergamo Anger scene, a close copy painted on panel, was undoubtedly made in the Netherlands but well after Bosch’s time, as seems equally true stylistically of the Swiss panel.21 The Tabletop Hell roundel also found imitators; the motif of the canopied bed with a reptile on the bedspread recurs in a number of panels after Bosch.22 There are no extant copies known to me of the Tabletop roundels of Death or the Entry into Paradise (the Last Judgment roundel is too common iconographically). What these imitations demonstrate is 20 No. 1003; from the Morelli collection 1891. It has been associated with Martin de Vos (Licia Ragghianti Collobi, Dipinti fiamminghi in Italia 1420–1570: catalogue, Bologna, n.d. [ca. 1990], pp. 55–56, fig. 94). 21 According to E. Larsen, Hieronymus Bosch, New York, 1998, cat. 6, colour pls. 49, 50, pp. 114–115, it is owned by the Fine Arts Foundation, Switzerland (no further location given). We read on p. 49, ‘Several pigment, dendrochronological, and radiocarbon examinations have been performed, which confirm grosso modo a date of execution corresponding to the years of Bosch’s career. According to our style-critical analysis we date the painting around 1470–75’. No detailed technical information is given; dendrochronological information is mentioned but not furnished: since radiocarbon dates normally have a plus or minus range of 250 years such information is rather useless for dating panels. 22 The motif is reversed in the foreground of the right wing of a Last Judgment triptych formerly in Ghent, L. Maeterlinck Collection; it leads the way qualitatively. Among others is a single panel, with the bed reversed, in a private collection in New York; two figures are in bed in the Tabletop but only one is in bed in these imitators. A second nude in the latter work stands outside the bed with arms raised in horror (Unverfehrt, cat. 13, pp. 244–245, figs. 204, 205).

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knowledge of elements of the design of the Tabletop, as in the Swiss collection’s Sins panel, and the later sixteenth-century Bergamo Anger excerpt. The copied details around the canopied bed of the Hell roundel are repeated in modified form in the Vienna Academy Last Judgment triptych. The Tabletop’s original design thus was known in the Netherlands, but the Prado Tabletop’s method of construction and that it is not painted on the normal oak of Netherlandish panels suggests that the Prado Tabletop itself is based on a now lost original — and what we have today can be a work by a Netherlandish or even Spanish ‘pupil’, mentioned by de Guevara and de Sigüenza. The exceedingly uneven character, perplexing to so many scholars, suggests that other versions of the Tabletop were created in the Netherlands from a lost early original from Bosch’s shop, probably after his death, no one of which now survives. The varieties of costume old and new revealed by the Tabletop — headdress, baggy sleeves and clogs of the 1430s, Burgundian headdress of mid-century, shoes and headdress of the start of the new century — may be a conscious characterisation of the individuals so attired as sinful members of society. Such a conclusion seems supported by the portrayal of the demon in the Prado Pride scene because it mocks the headdress of the primping woman. A reproving morality is employed here; such an attitude can be found in diatribes in the literature of the period against ostentatious dress; in the Envy scene a further indication of sinfulness seems indicated by the demonic instrument, the hook in the pouch, on the hip of the clogwearing dandy. Since not all the figures in the scenes of the sins are dressed in garments of the 1430s, it may be that there was an insufficiency of pertinent shop drawings; thus other figures show clothing, shoes and headdresses of the turn of the century and later, revealing thereby the solution the painter took to historicise his scenes (commonly painters updated costume when using older models). Here, however, is an attempt to archaise where possible, which seems to parallel a like historicising in the paintings of Frans Verbeek. Combine these moralising anachronisms with a mixture of demonic types and actions in the Tabletop Hell roundel, and one can conclude that though probably based on an early original work by Bosch of around 1475–80, or even originally painted then, the Tabletop must be either a work updated in the early sixteenth century, or the work of an emulator. The Prado Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things as an original, fully authentic early work by Bosch no longer seems possible. The

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problematic nature of the work’s early style, and later details of costume, accentuated in the investigator’s eye by the unidentified nature of its support, bring into question both a Netherlandish origin and creation in Bosch’s own shop. The butt joining and filling on the front face of its panels are also suspicious. However, an outright confirmation of the Tabletop as the product of a southern milieu, which could be either Spain or Italy because of departures from a Flemish norm, seems only partially possible. De Guevara’s and de Sigüenza’s statements about a reverent pupil, never identified by them as Netherlandish or Spanish, seems indirectly to have found support. The vicissitudes of time have caused the disappearance of an original, whole copies, and almost all replicas in whole and in part of the Tabletop Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things panel; the accident of an irregularly sheltered, on occasion unprotected, royal seclusion for the one surviving version has set out the problem I have attempted to resolve here.23 And I remind the reader that M. Gossart in 1907 thought the Prado picture a work by a copyist of the time of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.24 It is difficult for a scholar today to concede the invention of genre scenes to a pasticheur one thinks of as lacking sufficient creativity to make such a giant step: one may say, hoping for certainty, that Bosch was the creator of a presumed lost original copied in the Prado Tabletop. The strings of the costume of the Envy scene sack-carrier are probably an unconscious update or a figural addition to the composition, at the same time that the copyist paralleled Verbeek’s use of older costume, possibly to condemn sinful ostentation. We see in the Tabletop an already developed concept of artistic form — no youthful unresolved minor details, nothing experimental. Only in execution does it anticipate later mastery of idea and medium. De Guevara was not wrong, it seems, in calling the Tabletop a work by Bosch’s best pupil. The Prado picture, then, was either an updated original or, less likely, made close to Verbeek’s day after a now lost early original by Bosch; the loose copy in Switzerland is another version of a Bosch work for stylistic reasons, as is certainly true of the Bergamo Ira detail. 23 That the Escorial was not an impregnable haven for pictures is evident from de Sigüenza’s report of the existence of the now lost companion piece of the Seven Sacraments, and at least seven more paintings attributed to Bosch in the inventories have since disappeared from the Escorial; see Folie, pp. 236, 238–239, also recent reports on the subsequent history of Bosch’s paintings in the Spanish royal collection (see the Prado 1996 catalogue). 24 M. Gossart, Jérôme Bosch. Le ‘faiseur de Dyables’ de Bois-le-Duc, Lille, 1907, p. 60.

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6−2. Pieter Bruegel the Younger, Two Peasants Tying a Bundle of Twigs, ca. 1653. Panel, 14⅜ x 10⅝ in. (36.5 x 27 cm). Barber Institute of Art, University of Birmingham.

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6−3. Bosch Follower, Seven Deadly Sins, ca. 1575–1600. Panel, 34 x 22 in. (86.3 x 55.8 cm). Private collection, Switzerland.

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6−4. Bosch Follower, Anger (Ira), ca. 1575–1600. Panel, 8⅝ x 119/16 in. (21.9 x 29.2 cm). Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti, Bergamo, no. 1005.

6–5 (opposite). Bosch follower, Tree Man, ca. 1520–30? Drawing, pen and bistre, 10⅞ x 8⅜ in. (27.7 x 21.1 cm). Albertina Museum, Vienna.

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6−6. H. Bosch (?), The Field Has Eyes, the Forest Has Ears, ca. 1520? Pen and brown ink on paper, 8⅝ x 5 in. (21.5 x 12.7 cm). Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. KdZ 549.

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6−7. Bosch follower (?), The Owl’s Nest (Landscape with Owls), ca. 1520? Drawing, 5½ x 7¾ in. (13.4 x 19.7 cm), Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam.

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The central warning of the Tabletop, that God is watching human behaviour, presents with a conventional hand the attitude towards salvation offered later in Bosch’s career, and with greater subtlety, in the Haywain and Temptation of Saint Anthony triptychs. In the Garden Christ is visually not as obvious as saviour, for there his role also accents the place of the Virgin.

The Tree Man attributed to Bosch Drawings by Bosch are even more of a challenge to authenticate than are his paintings, if that were possible. Some of the attributed drawings and underdrawings have been thought made by an artist who was right-handed, and others made by an artist who was left-handed. Of course the artist could have been ambidextrous. But there is no documentary evidence or hard and fast conclusion on this subject with which one can feel comfortable. Not all attributed drawings show the characteristics necessary for that position. However, some many-figured drawings attributed to Bosch are certainly copy sheets by followers creating ‘banks’ of motifs for future use. Many drawings of the fifteenth century made by Netherlandish artists were working shop drawings, used for repetitions and discarded when worn out. Artists’ drawings, already being collected in Italy by the first quarter of the sixteenth century as art objects in themselves, were rarely preserved at the same time in the North as revelations of an artist’s hand, that is, for their intrinsic artistic value. Gerard David and Jan Gossaert are Bosch’s Netherlandish contemporaries with whom a number of apparently authentic drawings can be associated. Gossaert signed drawings with signatures that changed as he aged (recalling the numerous versions over time of Shakespeare’s spelling of his name). Several drawings attributed to Bosch are also signed, but the genuineness of the signature is always in question, as is the case with his attributed paintings. By the third quarter of the sixteenth century, the drawing had become an art work produced as such and valued for itself in the North as well, as for example Pieter Bruegel’s landscape drawings. Also, collectors later attached artists’ names to drawings in their possession, either for identification or for pecuniary reasons, which adds to problems of authentication.

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The number of drawings attributed to Bosch exceed those for David and Gossaert and the reason is not hard to find. Many copies of Bosch’s work were produced after his death. In the third quarter of the century Pieter Bruegel was thought of as another Bosch: some of his engravings are signed as invented by Bosch (e.g.,The Big Fish Eat the Little Fish, based on a reversed drawing signed ‘brueghel’, dated 1556, in the Albertina Drawing Collection, Vienna, signed in the print, ‘Hieronymus Bos inuentor’, and engraved by Pieter van der Heyden). As with the numerous paintings that emulate Bosch’s art in the Netherlands, so with drawings: used as studies of individual figures and small groups of figures, or even larger numbers, they may reflect original compositions by Bosch, or portions of original compositions. He became a source for a large number of paintings, some preserved in pictures Gerd Unverfehrt relegated to the Bosch following.25 Some compositions are complete in themselves, giving rise to the belief that they are original compositions by Bosch. Drawings whose stylistic character is clearly different from Bosch’s drawing style, compared with paintings showing portions of their underdrawing (in some cases because the paint itself has become transparent over time), have been assumed to copy studies for paintings by Bosch.26 However, this allows no room for individual invention and/or modification by a copyist, and must result at times in a certain degree of scepticism as to the creator. A number of drawings induce doubt of an origin by Bosch, especially when sheets of drawings are filled with images in rows, almost all the same size, of predominantly beggars, cripples, and odd lots of society. It is not a hard task to see in such drawings the fascination of a follower, excited by Bosch’s prolific invention which inspired him to think of Bosch as a ‘faizeur des dyables’, wanting to create in what he thought was the same vein, but lacking a sufficiently high measure of purpose and creativity. It is necessary to repeat that some followers have a potential for imaginative creation and are not of necessity entirely dependent on a major creative artist. Emulation was part of an artist’s training, a fact sometimes forgotten by scholars. The drawing of our title (Fig. 6–5) has been attributed to Bosch, although it is signed lower left with Bruegel’s name and despite its close identification with the central image of the Hell panel of Bosch’s Garden of 25 Unverfehrt; also see, Nancy Corwin, ‘The Fire Landscape’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle, 1976, passim. 26 Ludwig von Baldass, assisted by Günther Heinz, p. 62.

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Earthly Delights triptych. A pen drawing in bistre in the Albertina Drawing Collection, Vienna, which Tolnay early and late thought ‘anticipates the main motif of the Hell panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights; after further study of the original, I now consider the sheet to be an original by Bosch’s hand, from his late period’.27 No watermark has been published to help date it. An earlier opinion had favoured the landscapist Herri met de Bles though in 1905 Romdahl believed the signature ‘BRVEGEL’ to be genuine, as Tolnay tells us, but in 1935 Beets proposed Lucas Cornelisz. de Kock as its creator.28 However, many scholars have agreed with Tolnay; for example, Baldass in 1943 and 1960. Though Otto Benesch had some doubt in 1928,29 he had none in a later publication.30 Assessment of the drawing as by Bosch was echoed by Charles van Beuningen in 1973.31 For Otto Kurz in 1967 the drawing was ‘a variant on a detail in the Garden of Delights put into a landscape of the later sixteenth century’32 and Fritz Grossmann in 1973 wrote that ‘the drawing technique of the tree trunk has no parallel among Bosch’s drawings, but is closely related to the tree in Bruegel’s drawing of the Landscape with Saint Jerome of 1553, . . . where also the deer is comparable’.33 Grossman, in rejecting an attribution to Bosch, did not go so far as to attribute the Tree Man to Bruegel. He was, Charles de Tolnay, Hieronymus Bosch, New York, 1966, pp. 323, 331, 389. The drawing size is 27.7 x 21.1 cm. Tolnay records that the work has been attributed by Frimmel to Bles; Romdahl to Bruegel (the signature is now considered false); Bastelaer as not by Bruegel; Friedländer attributed it to Bosch, followed by Benesch, Baldass, and Combe. Marijnissen does not discuss the drawing nor has the paper’s date been published. 28 N. Beets, ‘Zestiende-eeuwsche kunstenaars, IV, Lucas Corneliszoon de Kock, 2, Teekeningen van Lucas Cornelisz en van Pieter Cornelisz (vervolg)’, Oud Holland, 52, 1935, p. 226, attributes the Tree Man to Lucas Cornelisz. as well as the drawing (Berlin) of The Seeing Field and the Listening Forest, usually given to Bosch. A drawing of the Adoration of the Magi in the Vienna Academy attributed to Lucas Cornelisz. (J. Meder and J. Schönbrunner, Handzeichnungen alter Meister aus der Albertina und anderen Sammlungen, Vienna, 1908, v. 12, no. 1398), however, shows no resemblance to Lucas Cornelisz.’s drawing style. 29 Gibson, F 1, F 3–6. 30 O. Benesch, Master Drawings in the Albertina: European Drawings from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Greenwich, Conn. [1968], no. 125, p. 351, with bibliography. 31 Gibson, F 7. 32 O. Kurz, ‘Four Tapestries after Bosch’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 30, 1967, p. 156 and n. 35. 33 F. Grossmann, ‘Notes on Some Sources of Bruegel’s Art’, Album Amicorum J. G. van Gelder, ed. J. Bruyn, J. A. Emmens, E. de Jongh, and D. P. Snoep, The Hague, 1973, p. 149, and n. 20 (‘O. Benesch, Albertina Catalogue, 11, 1928, no. 26, pl. 7 [for the first time 27

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however, one of a few scholars to suggest a related work, though unfortunately there are both stylistic and qualitative differences between the deer in Bruegel’s Landscape with Saint Jerome and the Tree Man’s deer, as well as in the landscape itself; the tree shape in the Bruegel drawing was related by Tolnay 34 to work of Titian. The Tree Man has been little discussed in sufficient detail in these acceptances and rejections. That it is closely related to the figure in the Hell panel of the Garden is not in question. But before accepting the drawing as a work from Bosch’s hand the viewer should be aware of trivialising. The tree man himself has a jug added on top of his hat from which a ladder extends and on which a man climbs (an irrelevance corresponding to no other image by Bosch). Further, a multiplication of details meant to be suggestive and evocative — such as the row of spikes on the rim of the hat, holes in the ‘legs’ and cords strung from place to place, and a flag flying a crescent to call to mind the danger of the infidel Turk (more of a threat after Bosch’s death than before) — seems to create diversion rather than depth of feeling. The tree man of the drawing is for all intents and purposes merely an evocative element at the centre of a composition whose landscape forms, birds and animal, are fillers without strong representational or symbolic significance. The painted figure is emblematic of corruption in Hell; the drawn figure has been changed into a titillating monster that emulates without profundity the work of a man the copyist thought of as chiefly a creator of demonic forms. This figure participates in a scene whose other elements are unrelated to any such dominant conception; for example, what do the deer in the foreground and the crane at lower right add to the larger meaning of the whole? Nothing, judging from everything we know about Bosch’s way of thinking, for his demonic forms are not exalted for themselves as here; his elements are always interconnected. No other drawing attributed to Bosch is as compositionally complete as this; had it been made by Bosch after the Garden of Earthly Delights Hell panel it would have had more of the elements surrounding the figure in the painting, not the placid attributed to Bosch]; Master Drawings in the Albertina, o.c. no. 125 with bibliography until 1962. Benesch’s attribution was generally accepted, . . . [but the drawing] was given to Bruegel by A. Romdahl, Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen 25 (1905), p. 126, and recently reclaimed for him by O. Kurz, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 30, 1967, 156’). 34 Charles de Tolnay, Die Zeichnungen Pieter Bruegels, Mit einem kritischen Katalog und 188 Abbildungen, Zurich, 1952, no. 9.

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landscape elements seen in this drawing, which add nothing, it seems, to the intrinsic moral drama the whole should convey. Moreover, spikes in a row around the rim of the disk in the Tree Man drawing are also found not once but three times in the painting frequently doubted as authentic, the Vienna Last Judgment’s central panel (Fig. 4–6) — in the round platform slightly to left of centre, in the spiked squirrel cage below, and in the angular tilted platform at the extreme right edge. Such repetition within a picture is not characteristic of Bosch. Tolnay’s notion that this Tree Man ‘anticipates’ the painting is difficult to accept; for one reason, it was worked up as a composition using several sizes of pen, not as an anticipatory study. Most telling of all, extraction of the figure from its relevant milieu results in a lack of religious meaning; now there is nothing apocalyptic about it. When this drawing is compared to the The Seeing Field and the Listening Forest, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett (Fig. 6–6), or the Landscape with Owls, in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam (Fig. 6–7), a relationship can be noted, though the Tree Man drawing is not qualitatively as satisfying. In both, the slight variations in the use of line, and their competence in rendering bird forms, are very close to the spirit and skill of drawings one could readily imagine, as many have, as created by Bosch himself — even though the renderings of owls in all three drawings are unequal to the quality of such portrayals in the Garden of Earthly Delights. The ambience but also the distance from Bosch’s own hand in creating these works is further visible in their close relation to the similar landscapes in a painting by a Bosch follower, the Cure of Folly, Prado Museum, Madrid.35 To my mind Fritz Grossman and Otto Kurz were not wrong. A date about 1520–30 for the Albertina drawing seems to agree in openness and subordination of detail with a similar development in landscape painting by Herri met de Bles.36 Baldass, pl. 11. A recent publication, edited by Fritz Koreny, Early Netherlandish Drawings, from Jan van Eyck to Hieronymus Bosch, Rubenshuis, Antwerp, 2002, pp. 169–172, considers many Boschian drawings, many not treated here, but he includes the three that are. These he too considers late work, but by Bosch himself. It seems that of the elements he chiefly considers, Bosch's loose, free style of drawing is apparently without forerunners or fellow travelers, and any followers worth mentioning (p. 166). But he does not say that it is also evident in the style of many painted works of the latter part of the second decade of the sixteenth century. A review of this beautifully illustrated, rich, important book cannot be attempted here; the reader, however, is highly encouraged to do so. 35 36

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VII

Influences

T

HE world Bosch grew up in was of one of transition, characterised by the gradual transformation of a dominant late medieval spirituality into a humanism that was to be slow in reaching its apogee, a development well expressed by Johan Huizinga. The first lines of the last chapter of his ever relevant The Waning of the Middle Ages, first published in 1924, are particularly apt: The transition from the spirit of the declining Middle Ages to humanism was far less simple than we are inclined to imagine it. Accustomed to opposing humanism to the Middle Ages, we would gladly believe that it was necessary to give up the one to embrace the other. We find it difficult to fancy the mind cultivating the ancient form of medieval thought and expression while aspiring at the same time to antique wisdom and beauty. Yet this is just what we have to picture to ourselves. Classicism did not come as a sudden revelation, it grew up among the luxuriant vegetation of medieval thought. Humanism was a form before it was an inspiration. On the other hand, the characteristic modes of thought of the Middle Ages did not die out till long after the Renaissance.1

The gradual pace of change may best be expressed by Erasmus, in his teens coming to school in 1484, in conservative ’s-Hertogenbosch, then 1 J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Dawn of the Renaissance, New York, Anchor repr., 1954, p. 323.

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after two years, in 1487, sent to study for the priesthood at Steyn. Only in 1495 did he achieve his goal to go to the university in Paris, attracted by the humanist learning that was his life as a scholar from then on. Surely, he and Bosch must have known of Savonarola, who early produced a tract called ‘Contempt of the World’, defied the pope, instigated the ‘bonfire of the vanities’ in Florence in two different years, the last shortly before he was denounced and hanged and his body burned at the stake. The year was 1496, the end of Christ’s reign as King of Florence, to be replaced by the return of the Medici. Of all the terrifying events of the era, this was another that Erasmus, and Bosch in ’s-Hertogenbosch, undoubtedly knew. Bosch’s Hell scenes alone suggest he was well acquainted with comparable acts in the North, responses to witchcraft trials and other manifestations of justice rendered by secular and ecclesiastical powers. It should not be forgotten that ’s-Hertogenbosch and its numerous religious institutions were part of the diocese of the very conservative bishop of Cologne, who was not receptive to humanism. In Bosch’s art, however, some specific influences of Italian art and thought seem apparent, despite what seems to be their general avoidance. The Haywain and the Temptation of Saint Anthony show a distinct, occasionally adverse response to Italian engravings. Still unresolved is possible proof of northern origin for the relevant Italian planet engravings. The increasing popularity in the North of classical authors and writers of Italian and for new approaches, classical and medieval, to religious thought and texts is undeniable. But no Italian paintings can be cited as affecting Bosch’s work, though Lorenzo Costa’s Triumph of Death painting contains elements similar to those of the Haywain entourage. While northern humanists gradually move toward greater precision and clarity of classical language, aided by the new art of the printing press, Italian concepts of painting hardly manifest themselves in any degree in northern pictorial expression until the sixteenth century. Philip of Burgundy made a trip to the Vatican in 1508, and his painter, Jan Gossaert from Mons, whose early work is based on late fifteenth-century Flemish art, accompanied him to record antique art. His trip was as important for Flemish art as Dürer’s trips to Venice were for German art. The North before then had more effect on Italy than the reverse, when German builders affected Italian Gothic style, as at Milan cathedral. (Yet as early as 1420, instead of northern solutions to church vaulting, Filippo Brunelleschi, architect of Florence cathedral’s great dome, introduced

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classical ways for its construction when he was made a capomaestro). About mid-fifteenth century a vogue for what Italians called Burgundian costume began to appear in Italian paintings and Florentine engravings. Furthermore, a wave of stylistic orientation to the North is undeniable in adaptations past mid-century by Italian painters of northern ways of treating landscape and copying settings (e.g., those of Hans Memling), and of naturalism (as in the concepts of light visible in Leonardo’s unifying art), painting techniques, employed by Piero della Francesca particularly, and portraiture, which inspired numerous Italian artists from at least the midfifteenth century.2 Previously in these pages the early appearance of the illustrated triumphal procession in both North and South has been pointed out. The pageantry of triumphal entries of French and Flemish rulers carried over into art. From their descriptions it seems the Triumphs of Petrarch was not the only available model. That all northern triumphs emulate those of Italy is questionable; Petrarchan triumphs are not distinguished in tapestry until the third quarter of the fifteenth century, evidence of the slow intrusion of Italian pictorial models into northern art and thought. Northern triumph illuminations of the early fifteenth century seem separately conceived, as in a triumphal chariot modelled on farm wagons, not Roman quadrigas, in, for example,‘Virgil honours Augustus and invokes the earth goddess’ (nude, crowned, riding in a four-wheeled box wagon pulled by several lions).3 Bosch, for one, was aware of Italian triumph and astrological engravings but changed them into forms compatible with his unique northern temperament. Italy’s transformation of its antique past in union with recognition of human potential within a Christian faith, one succeeding the other, is analogous to using antique spolia; witness the Trajanic inscription inserted roughly at eye level into the external southwest apsidal corner of the

Charles D. Cuttler, ‘Le Rayonnement des primitifs flamands: en Italie’, Les Primitifs flamands et leur temps, B. de Patoul and R. van Schoute, eds., Louvain-la-Neuve, 1994, pp. 606–612; for Leonardo see D. A. Brown, Leonardo da Vinci: Origins of a Genius, New Haven, 1999; for Venice see B. Aikema and B. L. Brown, Renaissance Venice and the North: Cross Currents in the Time of Bellini, Milan, London, New York, 1999, 2000, passim. 3 C. 1411, attributed to the Roman Texts Workshop; M. Meiss, et al., French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry, The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries, New York, 1974, plates volume, pl. 245. Also see the text volume, chapter 2, p. 2, and n. 28. 2

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Romanesque cathedral of Pisa at the same time as authors of new books and searchers after antique texts were at work in monastic libraries. Of these, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) is the archetypical universal man of the Italian Renaissance. Possessed of great knowledge, intimate with the classics, rational and scientific, practicing the arts of architecture, painting, sculpture, and music, writing on ethics, law, mathematics, and religion, he wrote Latin verses that were even mistaken for new discoveries of the antique. His thinking was based on the concept of virtue, not on fortune’s whims, through exercise of the will and the pursuit of nature and reason. In Della Pittura (On Painting), of 1435 or 1436, the famous phrase ‘man the scale and measure of all things’ is attributed to Pythagoras.4 His De Re Aedificatoria (On Building), of about 1450 and later, and De Statua (On Sculpture), probably of 1464, treat geometry, perspective, pictorial composition based on classical literary models, artistic practice and town planning, all on a theoretical and then a scientific basis, creating thereby a previously nonexistent theory of art.5 His immensely important theory of vanishing-point perspective may have developed from acquaintance with Brunelleschi and knowledge of Masaccio’s fresco in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Little here is in tune with the eschatology of Bosch’s awareness and concern for Apocalypse and its implications for the world’s end. Such ideas had already been explored in Italy in the fourteenth century in Giotto’s Last Judgment frescoes in the Arena Chapel, Padua, and Andrea and Nardo di Cione’s Hell frescoes in S. Croce, Florence, and the Strozzi Chapel of S. Maria Novella, of which Bosch seemingly was unaware, if he went to Italy. No one is comparable to Alberti in the North; Petrus Christus, though overall far less important than Jan van Eyck, first achieved vanishing-point perspective in his pictures possibly as early as the mid-fifteenth century; it

L. B. Alberti, On Painting and Sculpture, tr. C. Grayson, London, 1972, pp. 52–54. Baxandall, pp. 125ff.; an aspect of Alberti’s humanistic approach is ‘the assumption that an art is systematic by definition and teachable through rules’ (p. 135). 6 For an updated history of vanishing-point perspective, see H. Pauwels, ‘L’espace et la perspective’, Les Primitifs flamands et leur temps, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1994, pp. 244–253, bibliography, pp. 635–636. For Petrus Christus see M. W. Aynsworth, with M. P. J. Martens, Petrus Christus, Renaissance Master of Bruges, N.Y., 1994, exhib. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 47–48 and n. 52; J. Spenser, trans., Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, New Haven London, 1956, 1966, 1971, p. 14; D. Marsh, ‘Leon Battista Alberti at the Millenium’, review essay, Renaissance Quarterly, 58, 3 (Autumn), 2002, pp. 1028–1037. 4 5

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is suggested the concept was conveyed to Christus by way of Italian patrons or painters, although John Spenser proposed that Alberti may have been in Bruges about 1431, at which time Jan van Eyck was very much alive.6 Italian painting’s emphasis on an idealised human nude close to antique proportions, in an antique setting if the subject permitted, became almost the sina qua non; however, naturalism, influenced by northern discoveries, was the competing mode. Northern fifteenth-century painting presents no such classicising. The naturalised world is epitomised early in the fifteenth century in Jan van Eyck, the Master of Flémalle (both may have been to Italy), and followers of their new vision. Naturalism was also the vehicle for the emotional yet still Gothic spirit of the artistic thought of Rogier van der Weyden and his emulators. In Flanders a classically aware art has to await the late fifteenth century for Memling’s (†1494) cautious introduction of inconspicuous classical motifs and about 1520 for Joachim Patinir to disguise a Judgment of Paris as a temptation of our famed medieval healer Saint Anthony Abbot. And Patinir’s almost naked classical Charon ferries a soul to the infernal regions, his goal a Boschian burning land with a prominent gape-mouthed tower (both paintings in Madrid, Prado Museum, ca. 1520–24).7 Such examples of the progression of artistic form toward classicising models and attire strongly shaped northern sixteenth-century painting.8 In place of an influential theoretician like Alberti, there is instead Erasmus, no painter, but the North’s outstanding Christian humanist, who said, ‘Sancte Socrates ora pro nobis’ (Saint Socrates pray for us). He led the reception in the Netherlands of the new methods of humanist thought, at first by dignifying popular proverbs and folk maxims with antique precedents (proverbs were so much a part of northern tradition that Bax could declare Bosch their portrayer).9 Erasmus’s Veterum maximeque insignium paroemiarium id est adagiorum collectanea . . . was published by Philippi in Paris in June 1500, the editio princeps of a collection of 818 maxims and proverbs in Latin, on seventy-six pages,10 about the time Bosch’s See now Larry Silver’s backward look, ‘God in the Details: Bosch and Judgment(s)’, Art Bulletin, 83, 4, 2001, pp. 626ff. 8 Cuttler, NP, figs. 570, 572. 9 D. Bax, Ontcijfering van Jeroen Bosch, ’s Gravenhage, 1949, English trans. by M. A. Bax-Botha, Hieronymus Bosch: His Picturewriting Deciphered, Rotterdam, 1979. References to proverbs occur frequently; pp. 19ff. of the translation (subsequent references will be to the translation). 10 M. M. Phillips, The ‘Adages’ of Erasmus, Cambridge, 1964, pp. 41–61. 7

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Haywain was painted. Erasmus’s adages became a handbook for humanists and would-be humanists: Aldus printed it in Venice in 1508, now with 3,260 proverbs, the augmented work including adages from Euripides and other Greek as well as Latin writers. Eventually it was enlarged to 4,251 adages.11 Humanism indeed makes its way into the northern cosmos in Erasmus’s adages. Proverbs by no means broke upon the North unexpectedly, having had a previously ample medieval life. In Bosch’s time a proverb collection, the Proverbia communia, was published in centres in Holland in the 1480s and 1490s.12 Gerardus de Leempt published it as Proverbia seriosa in Dutch and Latin in a single volume at ’s-Hertogenbosch in 1487; one cannot doubt that Bosch knew it.13 Erasmus’s own proverb collection had a rival in Polydore Vergil’s Proverbiorum libellus of 1498. Both collections confirmed to the North its own interests. For Erasmus, the Netherlands’s greatest Christian humanist, antique literature contained nothing incompatible with Christianity: ‘Greater learning could not corrupt; it would only purify’. He projected a new program of education to resolve the problems of Christian society and achieve harmony for all.14 The new scholarship emphasised that the Vulgate New Testament was originally written in Greek, not Latin, with errors in its translation. In 1455 Granozzo Manetti made a revised translation. Lorenzo Valla also made a translation, which Erasmus retranslated and published in 1505. Erasmus’s Latin translation of 1516 is more classical, with the Greek printed side by side, line for line. In a 1519 second edition he added his own commentary, marking inaccuracies (nevertheless, traditional scholars strongly opposed it). Northern humanism laid stress on letters both ancient and new, as Erasmus demonstrated, but it was not fully in bloom much before him. His predecessors, as defined by Anthony Grafton, were: The new men (and their enemies) [who] called themselves ‘humanists’: by this they meant not that they were especially moral or indeed that Phillips, pp. 62–65. M. Sullivan, ‘Bruegel’s Proverbs: Art and Audience in the Northern Renaissance’, Art Bulletin, 73, 1991, p. 436. 13 Incunabula in Dutch Libraries: A Census of Fifteenth-Century Books in Dutch Collections, Nieuwkoop, 1983, 1, catalogue no. 3811. 14 W. H. Woodward, Desiderius Erasmus: Concerning the Aim and Method of Education, New York, 1964; Classics of Education 19. 11 12

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they were humane, but simply that they defined themselves as experts in the studia humanitatis, the humanities. This term encompassed a quite specific range of subjects: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, the arts that gave command of Latin, the language of learning, and oratory, history, poetry and moral philosophy, the forms of thought and writing that improved the character of the student.15 And there were fifteenth-century Flemish patrons of the humanists: one, Jan Crabbe (1457–1488), abbot of Ter Duinen abbey at Koksijde near Bruges, was an ardent patron of art and letters, owning among a number of Italian humanist and humanist-scripted manuscripts one of Petrarch’s religious and moralising works, copied about 1470 with an illumination from the shop of the Master of Margaret of York.16 Had Bosch read Erasmus’s Adages they could have served for some proverbs proposed by Dirk Bax and for Paul Vandenbroeck, who suggested in 1981, 1987, and 2001 that Bosch had early humanist interests, which he characterised as ‘pre-Renaissance’,17 to indicate Bosch’s ‘prehumanism’ in the Haywain triptych. That Bosch created a repertory of themes used later by Bruegel the Elder is not in question.18 A. Grafton, A. Shelford, and N. Siraisi, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery, Cambridge, MA and London, 1992, 1995, pp. 28, 30. 16 Bruges, Grand Seminary, ms. 113/78; L. M. J. Délaissé, Le Siècle d’or de la miniature flamande, Le mécénat de Phillipe le Bon, Brussels, Amsterdam, 1959, exhib. cat., no. 166, p. 134; Vlaamse kunst op perkament, Bruges, 1981, no. 82, p. 181–182, pl. 73; also, N. Geirnaert, ‘Classical Texts in Bruges around 1473: Cooperation of Italian Scribes, Bruges Parchment Rulers, Illuminators, and Bookbinders for Johannes Crabbe, Abbot of les Dunes Abbey (CUL Ms. Nn.3.5A)’, in Fifteenth-Century Flemish Manuscripts in Cambridge Collections, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 10, 2 (1992), pp. 173–181; A. Arnould and J. M. Massing, Splendours of Flanders: Late Medieval Art in Cambridge Collections, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, July-Sept., 1993, exhib. cat., p. 204 et seq. (on Jan Crabbe, Rudolf Agricola, monastic libraries, and the introduction of humanism in Flemish lands). There are early fifteenth-century French examples of Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortunae and well-illustrated examples were made at Rouen in the early sixteenth century. 17 P. Vandenbroeck, ‘Over Jheronimus Bosch. Met een Toelichting bij de Text op Tekening DdZ in het Berlijnse Kupferstichkabinett’, Archivum Artis Lovaniense, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis van de Kunst der Nederlanden, opgedraagen aan Prof. Em. J. K. Steppe, ed. M. Smeyers, Leuven, 1981, 151–188. Cited in Sullivan, p. 438ff., n. 92. For 2001 see Vandenbroeck’s contributions to the Rotterdam The Complete Paintings... and the accompanying book of essays, New Insights.... 18 Sullivan, pp. 431–440. 15

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After first differentiating types of Upper Rhine German humanists — ‘biblical’ humanists like Gansfort, or ‘folk’ humanists, like Schwarzenberg, who used proverbs and with whom he felt Bosch was sympathetic though not himself a humanist19 — Vandenbroeck delved into socioeconomic, almost Marxist, theory to assume parallels in Bosch to these humanists, conceiving that they deferred to ‘capitalists’ like the Fuggers as conservative bourgeois when compared with vernacular poets and agitators of the cities’ lower classes. The humanists, he thought, rejected the common folk as being ‘uncivilised’. But Vandenbroeck lacks concrete evidence to tie these ideas to ’s-Hertogenbosch and Bosch; assertion is not proof. The illustration of proverbs, either northern or imported or both, brings the matter onto firm ground. Sebastian Brant and contemporaneous writers Thomas Murner, Jakob Wimpheling and others from the Upper Rhine region are considered by Vandenbroeck as the source for what he calls Bosch’s ‘pre-humanism’.20 But earlier concepts of sin and folly in Bosch’s art (e.g., the Louvre painting Ship of Fools) give weight to Edwin Zeydel’s introduction to his translation of Brant’s Ship of Fools: that Brant ‘expresses the view of a noted forerunner [italics mine] of German humanism but one who, not in sympathy with the ideas which were paving the way for the Reformation, wanted to conserve and strengthen the status quo throughout the Christian world’.21 Bosch’s art is in agreement with Brant’s Christian moralising imagery, not with the tenets of Italian or northern humanism; using the term ‘pre-humanism’ only confuses matters. In short, Bosch’s individualistic method and his personal symbolism are still in the service of moralising Gothic allegories. ‘Pre-humanism’, if at all, can only be applied to him in chronological terms. There is no clear use by Bosch of Erasmian proverbs to hint at or assert contemporaneity.22 P. Vandenbroeck, Jheronimus Bosch, tussen volksleven en stadtcultur, Berchem, 1987, pp. 122ff. 20 Ibid., p. 22, n. 69. 21 E. H. Zeydel, The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant, translated into rhyming couplets with introduction and commentary, New York, 1994, vii. Carl Nordenfalk calls Brant ‘a Christian of the old sort, considering the whole of mankind liable to God’s wrath on the day of judgment’. (‘The Five Senses in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1985, 48, p. 11). 22 According to E. Bernstein, ‘Group Identity Development of German Humanists’, in Laudem Caroli, Renaissance and Reformation Studies for Charles G. Nauert, J. V. Mehl, ed., Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 49, 1998, p. 47, humanist reform of the University of Cologne only took place after Bosch’s death; it is important to remember that 19

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If contemporaneous Netherlandish accounts are searched for knowledge of Bosch and humanism, or even ‘pre-humanism’, there is a void. The earliest recorded Netherlandish commentator, Domenicus Lampsonius in 1572, at least a generation after Bosch, wrote the following: Jeroon Bos, what is the meaning of your frightened face, of your pale features? It looks as if you imagined all the spirits from hell were flying round your ears. I could think you had listened to the roaring depth of Pluto’s domain; I could imagine the gates of hell had been opened to you. You were so eminent an artist that you were able to paint all that has been enclosed in deepest hell.23 Carel van Mander in 1604 talks of the wondrous and strange fantasies which Jeronimus Bosch conceived in his mind and expressed with his brush, of spooks and monsters of Hell, often less pleasant than gruesome to look at. . . . Somewhere I saw his Flight into Egypt in which Joseph in the foreground, asks a peasant the way and Mary rides a donkey; in the distance is a strange rock in an odd setting; it is fashioned into an inn which is visited by some strange figures who have a big bear dance for money, and everything is wondrous and droll to look at. . . . Also by him . . . is a representation of how the patriarchs are redeemed from Hell. . . . It is amazing how much absurd deviltry can here be seen; also how cleverly and naturally he rendered flames, conflagrations, smoke and fumes.24 ’s-Hertogenbosch’s numerous religous establishments were under the rule of the diocese of Cologne, whose conservatism governed the University of Cologne. Undoubtedly this was reflected in the conservative brotherhood to which Bosch and his wife belonged. Also see Peter Macardle on Antonite humanism (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 57, 1994, pp. 362–363): he conceives the Rhineland (a chapter of the Order of St. Anthony was in Cologne) as ‘a relative desert of Klosterhumanismus’ before about 1530, thus a decade and more after the death of the greatest painter of St. Anthony’s temptations. 23 Published in Antwerp in 1572 by Hieronymus Cock (Carel van Mander, Dutch and Flemish Painters, translated from the Schilderboeck and introduced by Constant van de Wall, New York, 1936, p. 66); also K. Van Mander, The Lives of Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, H. Miedema, ed., Doornspijk, 1994, fols. 216v, 217r. 24 Wolfgang Stechow, Northern Renaissance Art, 1400–1600, Sources and Documents, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966, p. 21.

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Van Mander’s comments, like those of Lampsonius in keeping with the view of Bosch as a ‘faizeur des dyables’, suggest a possible confusion (as later in his account) with the art of Pieter Bruegel. There is only a slight classical allusion from these two commentators (in Lampsonius’s reference to Pluto), otherwise the comments could have been written a century or more earlier without reflecting a humanistic approach. Outside the Netherlands Spanish commentators seem closer in time to Bosch’s death in 1516; Ambrosio de Morales, for one, may be as early as 1549 (or as late as 1586).25 Not a humanist, he saw Bosch’s Haywain as a weighty symbol, a wagon of vanity and nothingness (de nonada), a moralising view also found in the writings of Felipe de Guevara of ca. 1560 and Fray José de Sigüenza in 1604. De Sigüenza related the Haywain, we recall, to Isaiah 46 (‘All flesh is grass . . .’) and Psalm 103 (‘As for man his days are of grass, as the flowers of the field so he flourishes’). Tolnay (1937, 1966) related the Haywain to a Flemish proverb comparing the world to a haystack from which each plucks what he can. Others have added interpretations of the Haywain triptych in much the same spirit, stressing Christian morality because of Christ’s appearance showing his wounds in the sky above the hay wagon.26 Dirk Bax also stressed the morality of Bosch’s work; he thought that Bosch satirised all social classes from high to low, but did not often censure the members of his own class.27 From the high taxes we now know that Bosch paid (unknown to Bax), we assume he held an elevated position in the ranks of ’s-Hertogenbosch’s citizenry. Bax thought Bosch’s censure was reserved, with ‘contempt for persons from the lower classes who do not lead virtuous lives, a contempt coupled with strong interest in the picturesqueness of their appearance and behaviour (not least of all, their sins)’. He also felt that Bosch considered himself elevated in class with the highest level of membership (sworn brother) in the Confraternity of the Virgin seen as justification. This is not impossible to believe, given the Translated by J. Snyder, Bosch in Perspective, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1973, pp. 31–33. For the variety of opinions see M. Cinotti, L’opera completa di Bosch, Milan, 1966, pp. 9–14; also, P. Vandenbroeck, ‘Jheronimus Bosch’ “Hooiwagen”, enkele bijkomende gegevens’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 1987, pp. 107–142, who returns to Morales. Also, L. F. Jacobs, ‘The Triptychs of Hieronymus Bosch’, Sixteenth Century Journal: The Journal of Early Modern Studies, 31, 4, Winter 2000, pp. 1009–1041. 27 D. Bax, 1979 trans., pp. 370ff. 25 26

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confraternity roster of prominent lay city members and a number of even more prominent lay outsiders. But what was the effect on his art? To believe that, however elevated Bosch became in social class and financial condition,28 he looked down on peasants as well as others below him is not justified by his paintings. Disparaging views of the peasantry in the medieval past were not restricted to a particular attitude, yet scorn for the peasant alone cannot be found in Bosch’s paintings; rejection of what the peasant does is not the same thing.29 Excoriation of sinful acts is not confined by Bosch to the peasant: witness the bribery of judges in the Avarice scene in the Prado Museum Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins (if an original by Bosch); the appearance of townspeople and a member of a class privileged to hawk in its Envy scene; the upper-class amorous diversion in the tent of Luxuria in the same work; or the clearly unpeasantlike appearance of the Miser, a member of the knightly class, who has laid aside his armour, as in the undoubtedly authentic Washington, D.C., panel; another pair of revellers in a tent that displays a coat of arms in the Yale University Art Gallery panel; or the mixed company of the Ship of Fools in Paris, Louvre (how can one determine the social status of its nude swimmers?). Nudity there is not an exalted or honoured state; it recalls the use of nudes not the least bit classical, allegorising sinful behaviour in the Garden, and further pejorative portrayals of nudes in other Flemish paintings and Gothic sculpture. I noted earlier, contemptus mundi was a common medieval attitude, made popular by Innocent III’s De contemptu mundi, sive de miseria humanae conditionis; Bosch’s examples demonstrate his adherence to it. One looks in vain in Bosch’s paintings for a favourable view of antique modes or models from Italian art of the day. I have long contended he was

B. Blondé and H. Vliege, ‘The Social Status of Hieronymus Bosch’, Burlington Magazine, 131 (1989), pp. 699–700. How aware the painter was of his social position is nowhere recorded; what is are the high taxes he and his wife paid, which put them in the top 10 percent of the tax-paying population. 29 R. Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern Europe. Art of the Late Middle Ages, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993), 1, p. 321, concludes that peasants, ‘no matter how virtuous, were assumed to have ignoble bodies . . . low intelligence and inferior character to go with their low status. . . . The image of the peasant as gross and indecent became fixed’. But this is not her only view (for which she gives no evidence), for she cites Hugo van der Goes’ more kindly view and states that he was not alone, and that the influence of a pauperistic movement was widespread (p. 139). 28

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normally averse to the art of the Italian Renaissance.30 Nor am I alone: Gombrich applied Pietro Aretino’s comment on Giulio Romano to Bosch, that nothing is ‘anciently modern or modernly ancient’.31 One finds no admiration for antique sculpture, no attempts to reproduce an antique canon, nor is there a Renaissance approach to the human figure, nor did he clothe it in classical garb, even though he certainly knew Italian prints that emphasise these idealising humanist aspects. Bosch undoubtedly had a hand in the establishment of the program of his paintings, but this does not mean he worked them out in all their detail by himself. He was, as we know, a member of a cleric-dominated society, as was his wife. We could postulate a non-humanist advisor to help if needed for inclusion of specific elements,32 the important part being that their formal nature was molded on a highly personal logic when translated into paint. Bosch’s paintings show no recognisable classical forms in the infrared reflectograms of the Lisbon Saint Anthony triptych or the Garden triptych, nor any such forms abandoned in the final painting.33 No one has found a written source that differs from the standard of saints’ lives and other perfectly conformist religious themes he employs.34 Nor did he exalt, so far as we know, the patron saint of the humanists, Saint Jerome, shown in his painting in Ghent not as a humanist scholar, nor as a sympathetic helper of See chapter 3. E. H. Gombrich, Norm and Form, Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, London, 1966, p. 127, n. 20. 32 But not Fraenger’s putative grand master of a heretical sect. 33 A recent statement appears in R. van Schoute and M. van Schoute Verboomen, ‘L’Opera di Jheronimus Bosch: Studio Technico sulla Base dei Disegni Soggiacenti’ (with reference to earlier publications) in the catalogue Le Delizie dell’Inferno, Dipinti di Jheronimus Bosch e altri fiamminghi restaurati, Venice, Palazzo Ducale, 1992, ed. Caterina Limentani Virdis, pp. 51–60; also, Jerome Bosch, Roger van Schoute and Monique Verboomen, Tournai, 2001, 223. 34 I cannot agree with Vandenbroeck’s statement (1987, p. 22) ‘that Bosch’s iconography fundamentally deals with secular moral precepts’. A Christian morality seen constantly is not secular. Equally off the mark is ‘the gentle patient Christ of his passion scenes, the narrowing of the Christ iconography to infancy and passion [scenes], the reduction of saint iconography to one type only: the lonely, attacked and tormented but firm hermit’ (p. 120). Bosch’s Saint Julia triptych (if it is that saint) in Venice, for one, does not fit this description, nor are his two Saints Jerome (Venice and Ghent) under attack. and the other aspects of iconography are conclusions drawn from existing paintings. One should be wary of drawing conclusions on scanty evidence, particularly conclusions based on copies and other works created after Bosch’s death. Sixteenth-century copiers of Boschian ideas were not 30 31

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a wounded lion, by extracting a thorn from its paw, but as an agonised ascetic in isolation. On the other hand we should not forget that the concepts, emphases and modifications Bosch gave to standard subjects are like no other expressions of his time. His preferences even fell on established models, such as a tale in the Gesta Romanorum of the man who told his gullible wife that he had voided a large black crow which flew away. She then doubled the number when she tells a neighbour; in time the number of crows voided reaches sixty.35 Bosch shows black birds issuing from the anus of the man being devoured by the bird-headed enthroned creature on a stool on the right-wing Hell panel of the Garden triptych, thereby revealing his knowledge of a medieval source not cited previously, to my knowledge. In Bosch’s art humanity is nowhere glorified with the possibility of its perfectability; nor did he present the human figure as an autonomous unit of expression, two essential elements of the humanist outlook. Bosch,

photocopying machines. Vandenbroeck’s assumption that the vast number of copies and variants replicate original works by Bosch is highly questionable. A cautionary attitude should govern consideration of Bosch’s caricaturized tormentors and torturors of Christ in many Passion scenes as, for example, in the Ghent Christ Carrying the Cross, or the London Christ Crowned with Thorns, as expressing a naturalistic — and therefore humanising — attitude because of the accent on ugly faces. Ugly, even grotesque forms go back at least to the early years of the fifteenth century in manuscript illumination (e.g., Meeting of Pilgrim and Envy, Pèlerinage de la vie humaine, Bibliothèque royale, Brussels, and in prints as well as painting: in paint in Francke’s Flagellation scene [Cuttler, NP, fig. 80], or Hugo van der Goes’ peasants of the Portinari Altarpiece, [Cuttler, NP, pl. 13] emulated by Ingmar Bergman in his film The Virgin Spring, or Geertgen tot Sint Jan’s fantastically ugly Asians in his Vienna painting, The Burning of the Bone of John the Baptist ), some long before humanizing and humanistic ideas had spread in the North. Here too Huizinga’s comment is apt. 35 The Gesta Romanorum, one of the most popular medieval books of tales, each containing a religious moral, was even used by Shakespeare for his play Pericles. Known in innumerable manuscript copies and probably compiled in the fourteenth century, it was printed in Latin at Utrecht in 1471 and at Cologne in 1477; a Dutch edition, Die geesten of geschiedenis van Romein, was printed at Gouda by Gerard Leeu in 1481, at Delft by Jacob van der Meer in 1483, by Peter van Os at Zwolle in 1484; a German edition was published at Augsburg in 1489, and Wynkyn de Worde published a reduced version in London. Cited here is chapter 125: ‘Of Women Who Not Only Betray Secrets, But Lie Fearfully’, (Gesta Romanorum, or, Entertaining Moral Stories, translated from the Latin, with preliminary observations and copious notes, by the Reverend Charles Swan, London, 1876, Dover reprint, 1959, pp. 226–227. According to W. Stechow, (‘Shooting at Father’s Corpse’, Art Bulletin, 24, 1942, n. 9, p. 214), Swan’s English translation of the ‘continental’ Gesta was made from the Hagenau edition of 1508; the editio princips was printed at Utrecht ca. 1472.

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rooted in medieval Christian belief, rejected Italian Renaissance concepts. It has been said that he looked back to the generation of the early fifteenth century, to the art of Jan van Eyck. Technically he did not copy Eyckian style or technique but he did conceive of the human figure in a naturalistic space with intimations of natural light and air. This makes him a northerner like Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Dirk Bouts, who employed such stylistic elements in their art, though the figures in his three triptychs are much more etherealised (a sign of their late date). To repeat: nowhere in Bosch’s paintings did he glorify Italian concepts. The triumphal procession, originating in antiquity, is still in Bosch’s art the product of a medieval morality; 36 nowhere did he exalt classical ideas, nor did he make a point of emphasising human emotions. Not an optimist, as has been recognised widely, he adhered to the pessimism characteristic of the waning medieval view of Christianity, which did not recognise the possibility of growth and change in the historical institutions and philosophy of the Church. Studies of the underlying nature of the world, an interest in perspective, anatomy and the science of his contemporaries Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, signs of a humanist art, are not found in Bosch. A trip to Venice by Bosch has been suggested, probably because Cardinal Domenico Grimani in early-sixteenth-century Venice owned several works by Bosch. It has been proposed — in error — that the Saint Julia (probably Saint Wilgefortis) Altarpiece in the Palazzo Ducale was painted by Bosch in Venice.37 Unlike Dürer, who twice made the trip to Venice, there are no drawings of Venice’s monuments nor any reflection of the Venetian scene attributed to him or traceable in his work. No classical architecture, usually present either prominently or in decorative form in the works of artists who travelled to Italy, is found in his art; even Gothic-style

36 Bosch is not alone in this. An instance: the Triumph of Virtue tapestry representing the Ship of Virtues from the series The World, from Tournai as late as ca. 1528–40 (C. J. Adelson, European Tapestries in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN, 1994, no. 8, pp. 92–104) includes traditional northern symbolic personifications in feminine form, in and out of the ship, identified by name: Hope, Mercy, Perseverance, Divine Comfort, Loyal Heart, Faith, Penitence, Charity, Patience, Humility, Goodwill, and Prudence (the latter in the crow’s nest holding a looking glass in her left hand and raising a sword in her right). 37 L. J. Slatkes, ‘Hieronymus Bosch and Italy’, Art Bulletin, 57, 1975, pp. 335–345; also see the C. Limentani Virdis catalogue, Venice, 1992.

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architectural structures hardly appear.38 It is no more certain that he went to Venice or elsewhere in Italy than that he went to Cologne, Brussels, Ghent or Bruges. Bosch was apparently an artist apart; perhaps because of training in his trade by his parent, uncles and grandparent, he had no need nor was he required to leave his home for foreign travel. He may not even have gone to Cologne in 1483 to see the elephant recorded there. If he had, without doubt he would have painted more accurately the elephant on the left wing of the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. Nor does his giraffe in the same panel correspond with one to be seen in Florence after 1487 or in a Florentine print of ca. 1490; Bosch’s giraffe and elephant are, it seems, based on manuscript illuminations.39 Furthermore, Bosch’s lions are little like actuality, yet had he even gone to Ghent, as Dürer did, he could have seen some. The answer to this aspect of Bosch’s life and art seems to be that he never travelled any distance away from his hometown; everything he needed, it seems, was there with a sufficiency of animals and a grand variety of birds. Royalty visited the town several times during his mature life, and Dürer visited ’s-Hertogenbosch four years after Bosch’s death without mentioning Bosch or his pictures in his diary. Apparently they were of little interest to one with strong humanist and classicising ideas. Although the world came to him in the form of commissions for paintings, the precise source of Bosch’s most intriguing programs is still unknown and may always be. Because it transforms the natural world, a supreme example of his intent appears in the Garden of Earthly Delights: in the woodcut frontispiece (Fig. 3–19) to the Liber de Sapiente of the French humanist Charles de 38 Bosch’s buildings are chiefly either domestic architecture or of the Flemish countryside — inns, barns and the like — or fanciful constructions of exotic round buildings with pointed towers that seem to draw on prints, if anything, of buildings of Jerusalem; there seems little knowledge of or interest in a variety of architectural modes, and his domestic architecture usually consists of structures upheld by slender round arched colonnades. Further proof that he did not go to Italy or Venice can be concluded from two things; the Saint ‘Julia’ Altarpiece is painted on oak, and, secondly, his younger contemporary Jan van Scorel in Venice painted a Jerusalem pilgrim’s portrait; the painting — undoubtedly by Scorel — was painted on poplar, as M. Faries (to whom my thanks) informs me. Poplar was the common wood for Venetian pictures. Clearly Flemish artists of the period did not travel with oak panels in their baggage on the off chance that someone might commission a picture. If someone did, he used what was available locally, as the Scorel picture demonstrates. 39 Cuttler, ‘Exotics in Post-Medieval Art: Giraffes and Centaurs’, pp. 166–170.

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Bovelles, Fortuna and Sapientia in profile are seated opposite each other, and the Fool, Insipiens, appears in the medallion above Fortune’s head. Seated on a ball, she holds a short staff surmounted by a miniature wheel of Fortune. Wisdom, in contrast, is firmly placed on the solid seat of Virtus. (Bosch drew upon that woodcut when he created the image in the Hell panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights of the supine armoured man attacked by evil animals, on top of a disk supported on a knife blade before a sentry pillbox [Fig. 3–18]). Fortuna and Sapientia wear the rich contemporary dress of Italian origin often given at the time to allegorical figures. Disregarding such contemporaneity, possibly even in reaction to it, a thoroughly conservative viewpoint expressing the pessimism of his times governs Bosch’s transformation of contemporary humanist ideas in mannerist garb into medieval ones. Fortuna’s instability on the ball on which she sits and the prisms on which she rests her feet in de Bovelles’ woodcut have become an object in Bosch’s Hell. Fortune’s ball has become a disk, and the prisms have become the knife blade; the unwise Fool in the medallion above Fortune’s head, who believes in her, who has gambled and roistered, now dressed in armour that does not protect him, meets his appropriate fate in Bosch’s Hell. Here Bosch decisively rejects contemporary appearances and many things Italian but shows himself to be the most gifted interpreter of his time of a sinful world.

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OSCH lived in a world still medieval in many ways. In process was an early modern world of greater rationality, humanistic outlook, and involvement with the here and now of nature and science. Imaginative, a peerless artist, Bosch chose what he had grown up with. His traditional foundations were reinforced by advanced membership, as a sworn brother, in the important Confraternity of the Virgin in strongly conservative, religious ’s-Hertogenbosch. His training by his artist family, while he was its most talented member, followed the common practice of the era, which he transformed in style, technique, and quality. Three late triptychs reveal Bosch’s outlook and inventive genius to us. The Haywain, probably earliest of the three in its now lost original version, introduces the dominant theme of his last years — salvation through heeding Christ — in a strongly medieval, polemical, pessimistic effort that castigates worldly power by showing an anti-triumphal procession. Temporal corruption dominates through greed and its consequences. Several subthemes go unheeded by all humanity, led by Church and State, religious and secular together. Bosch expresses his pessimism also through the small size of the Christ of the Last Judgment in the sky, marking the apparent futility of the alternative, salvation through Christ’s sacrifice. The fate of the world is seen on the right wing where Bosch incorporates the influence of Dante’s Inferno. Here is the first direct intervention of Christ in the three distinct works that go beyond common christological narrative. This triad is unique in Bosch’s artistic development toward the close of his life. Second is the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony triptych, a work of greater complexity, with dual symbolism previously unrecognised in Bosch’s art, presented on the left wing. He gives the viewer a clue to his meaning in the inscription on the letter spiked on the beak of the skater. It accentuates

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the way for humanity to achieve the goal of salvation, shown by Christ himself on the exterior and again visible in the doorway of the chapel behind Saint Anthony, the legendary founder of monasticism, and greatest of the early sainted followers of Christ. Anthony’s actions tell us how to live a life of emulation of Christ, following the precepts of the Devotio moderna to escape the dangers of Saint Anthony’s fire, the Apocalypse, astrology, and Antichrist by a modern devotion-like imitatio Christi. Despite the surrounding demonic deterrents that warn viewers of the imminent ultimate cataclysm, and threaten Hell’s pangs with tortures of eternal damnation, Bosch’s intricate, complex picture, seemingly almost so complicated as to be undecipherable today, was probably created for a monastic community, the Saint Anthony Hospital Order, and its hospital. His model overwhelmed all others for several centuries. The Garden of Earthly Delights is the most complex of all Bosch’s works. Humanity’s difficulty in practicing Christian morality, thereby escaping Hell’s punishments and achieving eternal salvation, is for the first time in Bosch’s greatest work confronted in an unprecedented, imaginative allegorical way. Masterful to the highest degree, its iconography is so erudite that few have conceived of an artist, even one of Bosch’s genius, thinking in such terms. In working out the details of the imminent coming in the Garden of Earthly Delight triptych, he responded to the prophesies of doom and damnation set out in traditional apocalyptic writing and contemporary exegesis. He completed his task by creating a proliferation of slender nude sinners of both sexes in an allegory of the varieties of sinful behaviour; they so fully inhabit the world that the salvation available through Christ seems, if not forgotten, then unknown. This is indeed pessimism uniquely expressed. Bosch’s ‘garden’ suggests that he castigated the period’s concept of an earthly world paradise and the contemporary idea of the love garden. Just below centre, entwined nude males become a fancifully leaf-capped head, a Hellmouth, about to bite off the head of another man, on his back with knees drawn up. Bosch’s invention here of a surreal double image (with another on the left wing) is alone enough to reveal that the central panel is an allegory for sinful behaviour. It also indicates the late date of its production for no other work by him reveals double imagery. In his garden, gluttony, cuckoldry, homosexuality, misogyny and numerous other immoral acts are visually condemned, and gigantic birds

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ridden by small men and women, white and black, the latter children of impious Ham born after the Flood, show the decline of human size and power as predicted by the book of Second Esdras, an allegory of the world grown old that foretells the imminence of the Last Judgment. On the right wing, sinners are punished in a dark and icy world. Some are immersed in revelry, accompanied by loud music, gambling, cheating with dice, prostitution, altering of documents (probably wills), all epitomised by the ‘tavernous’ central figure of Bad Fortune afloat on turbulent waters. Reacting to Florentine engravings, Bosch reverted in this wing to traditional methods of representation, unlike his sheer inventiveness in almost every aspect of the central panel. A French woodcut of 1510 of Fortune seated on a ball, opposed by Wisdom solidly based on Virtue, is transformed by him into hellish punishment (the date indicates, post quem, the triptych’s creation date of 1510 or later on internal evidence, even though the wooden panels it is painted on date from decades earlier, a not uncommon practice). The left wing is equally exceptional: departing from Bosch’s earlier Paradise panels, its conception depends in part upon the popular moralising treatise, the Speculum humanae salvationis. It explains how and why evil entered the world, and Bosch shows that transformed fallen angels have already penetrated the earth. They emerge as unnatural birds and animals in the foreground with reptiles in the middle ground, where another evil double image, a face in profile, appears to the left of the fountain whose waters are being purified of demons by the unicorn. This is an important act related to humanity’s redemption, according to the Speculum humanae salvationis. Christ’s action, puzzling to many art historians, seemingly presents Eve to Adam. Emphasised by the gesturing figure in the lower left corner of the central panel, it shows the viewer and all humanity, through medieval hermeneutics, the choice between good and evil needed from the beginning for salvation. How, where and when did Bosch know about exotic animals — lions, giraffes, elephants, camels, among others? Much of his knowledge was undoubtedly inherited from family workshop models; actual experience outside his hometown seems to have been quite limited, and his travels must have been very few. But he was fully aware of domesticated animals, and of the creatures of fields and forests of his native region, especially birds.

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Equally impressive are his invented demons, whose astonishing shapes are often so natural the viewer is overwhelmed, convinced of their actuality as tempters on earth to sin and as viable instruments of perdition. And as torturers in Hell they terrorise by their very appearance. Many devices Bosch used to create his hybrid animal forms and demons are seen again in his birds: seemingly they indicate mortality, an example of truth-to-nature used to express exegesis, even though in the Garden triptych they show the greatest variety and number in all his works. Bosch’s integration of the elements that make up his demonic vocabulary reveals the constant danger to humans who try to overcome the immeasurable evils of this world in their efforts to achieve salvation. Christ’s appearances in these three late works are outside normal christological narrative; no comparable works of the era exist. Formally and theologically, Bosch’s art is here unique. Equally expressive of apocalyptic exegesis, the Prado Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, with no contemporary copy and once thought to be an early authentic work by the artist, is not an archaising later Spanish work based on an earlier Bosch lost original, but apparently an early work modernised in costume detail by the shop around 1500, and indeed may be an even later production. The Swiss collection Seven Deadly Sins variant is much later, and the separate panel copying Anger was created almost a century later. The Tree Man drawing, once problematic, does not anticipate but bowdlerises the central image of the Garden Hell panel. Bosch’s Berlin Saint John on Patmos, a vision of the Virgin and Child of the Apocalypse, was built partially upon motifs from Schongauer’s engraving of the same subject, combined with earlier French and Netherlandish illuminations. The result is a fuller, richer work of greater artistry endowed with strong emphasis on the apocalyptic spirit. A reminder of the important part played by the Virgin, humankind’s intercessor at judgment, it is probably a panel from a dismembered triptych. Our artist became the model for numerous works close to his style, some so close they have been taken to be authentic; one such is the Vienna Academy Last Judgment. Most likely shop work, it is a cacophonic pastiche of motifs, completed after Bosch’s death in 1516. Bosch’s relationship to his external world and its changing character was influenced by both prints and their humanistic ideas he rejected, a fact important for greater comprehension of his outlook and his art. Although

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he knew many prints of the day, no classicising elements can be discovered, and no trip to Italy can be adduced from his paintings; from them only one trip — to Cologne — can perhaps be concluded. Trained by his family, apparently with no need of the wider world, possibly trained too as a cleric as well as a painter, and living all his life in very conservative ’s-Hertogenbosch, Bosch found that the world came to him by intent or by accident. Though little affected by many currents of his time, nothing prevented his creating a unique variant of the neo-Gothic style of the late fifteenth century. Isolation, if it was that, had no deleterious effect on his art, judging from his greatest, apocalyptic, triptych, the Garden of Earthly Delights. We are inevitably drawn back to the centre panel, where the pointing figure in the lower left-hand corner leads our eye back to the figure of Christ, the saviour of the Speculum humanae salvationis, holding the wrist of the first Eve. This is more than a marriage. Following the concept of medieval hermeneutics, she is instrument and pathway for humanity’s salvation by penance for sin through the Virgin Mary, the second Eve, intercessor at the judgment for humankind’s salvation. Her significance in the drama of redemption is signally acknowledged here, in contrast to her omission from the pessimistic Haywain. A wealthy patron of Bosch’s confraternity, for whom this triptych may have been painted, received a creation from the zenith of the artist’s life and progress, a conception and expression of the way to eternal life: here Bosch’s pictorial genius illuminates theology. Bosch’s outlook in contemporary terms was staunchly conservative: the evidence is found particularly in the Garden where his response to questions of morality is recognisable in today’s terms as negativity: dancing, adultery, homosexuality, gambling, forgery, miscegenation, and rape, the last clearly intended on the right side of the Garden’s background pool; there a nude black male climbs out of the water into a small boat holding a white, nude female backed up against the opposite end of her craft. In northern Europe at this time blacks were slaves. Bosch, a sworn brother of his confraternity, did, I have assumed, share the attitudes of his fellows, all undoubtedly as conservative as their dominant ecclesiastical superior, the bishop of Cologne. But Bosch also absorbed the theological concept of medieval hermeneutics, that method of understanding ideas and forms shared by creator and recipient. Such a concept incorporates a desire on the part of the creator to couch his ideas

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in forms assimilable by those whose thoughts and ideas are, if not perfectly shared, at least understood by viewers of works of art, or in the written word. This to my mind explains the appeal down to our own day since Bosch created his complex but basically understandable works; it also explains why he provided the key on the beak of the skater in the Lisbon triptych, and the double images in the Garden triptych; the message was there to be read. Following Bosch’s death in 1516, painters capitalised on the terrifying aspects of his Hell scenes and the temptations of Saint Anthony: Jan Provost’s Last Judgment (Detroit Institute of Arts) shows that Bosch was known in Bruges; Joachim Patinir’s Prado Museum Temptation of Saint Anthony and Charon Ferrying a Soul Across the River Styx to a Boschian Hellmouth shows he was equally well known in Antwerp as early as about 1520. Quentin Metsys assisted in Patinir’s painting of the Temptation of Saint Anthony, and it is undoubtedly through him that Boschian motifs of fantasy and genre appear in Metsys’s followers, such as Marinus van Reymerswaele, and become a staple in the pictures of a large numbers of emulators in the 1530s and 1540s — Jan Mandijn and Pieter Huys rise above the average — and are continued in the pictures of Frans Verbeck and above all Pieter Bruegel the Elder, greatest of his followers. Innumerable Hell scenes, classical and Christian, as well as fire landscapes, were subsequently painted on both sides of the Alps, and large numbers of Saint Anthony’s Temptations spread Bosch’s influence long after he died. Pieter Bruegel’s dynasty, of which his grandson David Teniers was a prominent seventeenth-century member, also fed at Bosch’s table. In France in the same period Jacques Callot’s great etching, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, is unthinkable without the model of Hieronymus Bosch.1

1 In addition, there are also Aertgen van Leyden (particularly his picture Lot and His Daughters, Paris, Louvre), Jan Metsys, Herri met de Bles, Lucas Gassel, Gillis Mostaert, Jan Bruegel I, and a large number of paintings and drawings by unknowns in Antwerp workshops, who painted scenes either originated by Bosch or inspired by him, until the middle of the seventeenth century. Additional scenes of similar nature are Sodom and Gomorrah, the Burning of Troy, Aeneas, Job, and various sins. They prepared the way for the popular night scenes on both sides of the Alps in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (see among many studies those by Unverfehrt [Gibson A 119], Corwin [Gibson D 101], Castelli [Gibson G13], Bauer [Gibson D 40]), and W. S. Gibson, ‘Bosch's Dreams’, Art Bulletin, 74, 1992, pp. 204–218.

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Interest in his art renewed in vigour with the widespread endeavours of surrealist painters, poets, writers, filmmakers, and more, and the Rotterdam exhibitions of his paintings of 1936 and 2001. Hieronymus Bosch was and is compelling in his inventiveness, the drama of his forms, and the beauty and expressiveness of his style: with his apocalyptic outlook, inimitably fascinating, he continues to be the Lowlands’ most artistically and intellectually challenging artist of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. As I have said elsewhere: though Bosch had denied the Renaissance by asserting a truly medieval outlook, in the end he responded to the new spirit, his very individualism showing he could not transcend the rising forces of his day. The ultimate conclusion from Bosch’s art is that like Sophocles’ Oedipus, Camus’ Sisyphus, or Faulkner’s Dilsey, humanity must endure, for Bosch’s faith added hope.

But there is much more: a Bosch industry flourished in copying his compositions, in whole and in part, varying in the degree to which they confuse the eye interested in works close to the master, some probably emanating from the shop after his demise. Devoted to this aspect is the publication Jérôme Bosch et son entourage, Helene Verougstraete and Roger Van Schoute, eds., Le Dessin sous-jacent et la technologie dans la peinture, colloque 14, 13–15 September 2001, Bruges-Rotterdam, Uitgiverei Peeters, 2003 (there are seventeen essays in part 1, fourteen in part 2).

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List of Illustrations Chapter One. Dante, Petrarch, Triumphs and Bosch’s Haywain Fig. l−la. H. Bosch (?), Haywain, exterior, ca. 1495–1500? Panel, 57⅝ x 44¼ in. (147 x 112 cm) (closed); 52⅜ x 39⅜ in. (133 x 100 cm) (center); 57 x 22⅛ in. (147 x 56 cm) (each wing). Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Fig. l−lb. H. Bosch (?), Haywain, interior, left wing. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Fig. l−lc. H. Bosch (?), Haywain, interior, central panel. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Fig. l−ld. H. Bosch (?), Haywain, interior, right wing. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Fig. 1−2. Triumph of Love, Trionfi of Petrarch, Florence, 1457. Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Fonds italien, no. 545, f. 11v. Copyright BN, Paris. Fig. 1−3. Triumphs of Petrarch, ca. 1470–1500. Florentine engraving, 8⅞ x 10⅝ in. (20.4 x 27.1 cm). Albertina Museum, Vienna. Fig. 1−4. Lorenzo Costa, Triumph of Death, 1488−89. Fresco, Bentivoglio Chapel, S. Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna. Fig. 1−5. L’Église Triumphant, Le chemin de paradis, 1473–74. French illumination, 10¾ x 7 11/16 in. (27.3 x 19.5 cm). Free Library of Philadelphia, MS. Lewis E 110, folios 40v, 41r. Library photo. Fig. 1−6. La loy de Grace, Le chemin de paradis, 1473–74. French illumination, 10¾ x 7 11/16 in. (273 x 195 mm.). Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, Brussels, Ms IV 823, insert after folio 103. Library photo. Fig. 1−7. Triumph of Fame over Death, Triomphe de Pétrarque, Rouen, ca. 1500–10. 13⅜ x 10¼ in. (34 x 26 cm). Bibliothèque nationale, Paris,

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Ms. Fr. 594, fol. 178v. Copyright BN, Paris. Fig. 1−8. Triumph of Love, ca. 1500–10. Flemish tapestry, 14¼ x 19 ft. (4.31 x 5.80 m). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gobelin Collection, Vienna. Fig. 1−9. Triumph of Fame over Death, ca. 1500–10. Flemish tapestry, 13⅝ x 17⅞ ft. (4.14 x 5.42 m). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gobelin Collection, Vienna. Fig. 1−10. Triumph of Eternity over Time, ca. 1500–10. Flemish tapestry, 13⅝ x 17⅞ ft. (4.14 x 5.65 m). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gobelin Collection, Vienna. Fig. 1−11. Keeping Secrets, from Brant’s Das Narrenschiff, 1494, chap. 51, Bergmann von Olpe, Basel. Woodcut, 8⅝ x 6⅛ in. (22 x 15.5 cm). Fig. 1−12. H. Bosch, Haywain, right wing, interior, foreground detail. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Chapter Two. The Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony Fig. 2−1. H. Bosch, Temptation of Saint Anthony, exterior wings, ca. 1500–05. Panel, 51⅞ x 20⅞ in. (131.7 x 53 cm) (each wing). Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. Copyright museum. Fig. 2−2. H. Bosch, Temptation of Saint Anthony, interior wings. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. Copyright museum. Fig. 2−3. H. Bosch, Temptation of Saint Anthony, interior, central panel, 51⅞ x 46⅞ in. (131.5 x 119 cm). Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. Copyright museum. Fig. 2−4. Master of Mary of Burgundy, Events from the life of Saint Anthony, Voustre Demeure Hours, ca. 1490−95. Illumination, 5⅛ x 3 13/16 in. (13 x 9.7 cm). Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, MS E 14 Tesoro (Vit. 25-5), folio 191r. Library photo. Fig. 2−5. H. Bosch, Temptation of Saint Anthony, interior, left wing, detail, skater. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. Copyright museum. Fig. 2−6. H. Bosch, Temptation of Saint Anthony, central panel, detail, Saint Anthony blessing. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. Copyright museum. Fig. 2−7. Luna, ca. 1460. Florentine engraving, 12⅜ x 8 5/16 in. (31.5 x 21.2 cm). F. Lippmann, The Seven Planets, International Chalcographic Society, London, New York, 1895, pl. A7. Fig. 2−8. Saturn, ca. 1460. Florentine engraving, 12 7/16 x 8¼ in. (31.6 x

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21.0 cm). Lippmann, pl. A1. Fig. 2−9. Spiritual miscellany, German, Thuringia (?), 15th century. Bibl. Casanatense, Rome. MS 1404, fol. 30v. Copyright library. Fig. 2−10. Jupiter, ca. 1460. Florentine engraving, 9 11/16 x 6 13/16 in. (24.6 x 17.2 cm). Lippmann, A2. Fig. 2−11. Venus, 15th century. Netherlandish woodcut, 11 5/16 x 8 in. (29.3 x 20.3 cm) (page). Lippmann, C5. Fig. 2−12. Saturn, 15th century. Netherlandish woodcut, 11⅜ x 7 15/16 in. (29.0 x 18.7 cm) (page). Lippmann, C1. Fig. 2−13. Illustration to chapter 61 (‘Of Dancing’) from Brant's Das Narrenschiff, 1494, Basel. 8⅝ x 6⅛ in. (22.0 x 15.5 cm). Fig. 2−14. Witches, 1460–1475. Flemish illumination, 9¾ x 6⅞ in. (24.7 x 17.5 cm) (page). Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Ms. Fr. 961, f. 1. Copyright BN, Paris. Chapter Three. The Garden of Earthly Delights Fig. 3−1a. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, triptych, ca. 1510. Panel, interior: center, 86⅝ x 38¼ in. (190.0 x 175.0 cm). Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum Fig. 3−1b. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, triptych, ca. 1510, interior wings, each wing, 73⅝ x 30¼ in. (187.5 x 76.5 cm). Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−2. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, ca. 1510, triptych, exterior. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−3. Cornelis Galle I, Sic erat in diebus Noë (W. 1), ca. 1625. Engraving, 9 3/16 x 13⅛ in. (23.3 x 34.3 cm). British Museum, London. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−4. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, center panel, detail, double image. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−5. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, center panel, detail, center left. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−6. Master of the Frankfurt Paradise Garden, Virgin of the Paradise Garden, ca.1410–20. Panel, 9½ x 12 3/16 in. (24.1 x 31.0 cm). Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−7. Master of Mary of Burgundy, Ecce Homo, Hours of Engelbert II of Nassau, 1485–90. Illumination, ca. 8⅝ x 6 in. (21.9 x 16.5 cm). Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms. Douce 219, fol. 69r. Author photo.

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Fig. 3−8. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, central panel, detail, foreground. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−9. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, central panel, detail, lower right corner. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−10. Jacquemart de Hesdin, The Fool, Psalter of Duke Jean de Berry, ca. 1380–85. Illumination, 4¼ x 3½ in. (10.8 x 8.9 cm). Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Ms. Fr. 13091, fol. 106. Copyright BN, Paris. Fig. 3−11. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, interior, right wing, detail. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−12. Anon., Presumed portrait of Bosch, Recueil d’Arras. Bibliothèque municipale, Arras, fol. 275. Copyright Bibliothèque municipale, Arras. Fig. 3−13. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, interior, right wing, detail. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−14. Fortuna, 1465–80. Engraving, Florence, 2⅝ in. (6.7 cm) diam. British Museum, London. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−15. Attr. to Peter Vischer the Younger, Fortune, early sixteenth century. Drawing, 6¼ x 5 7/16 in. (16 x 14 cm). Universitätsbibliothek, Erlangen. Fig. 3−16. Cornelis Theunissen, Fortuna, ca. 1525. Drawing. British Museum, London. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−17. The Ship of Fortune, ca. 1460−80. Florentine engraving, 10¼ x 6⅞ in. (25.7 x 17.0 cm). London, British Museum. A. M. Hind, Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum, 1910, Addenda 15, p. 22, A.1.10, D.1.22. Fig. 3−18. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, interior, right wing, detail, guard box. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−19. Fortune and Wisdom, from the Liber de Sapiente, Traité des Remedes, Amiens, Paris, 1509/10. Woodcut, 14¼ x 11½ in. (37.2 x 29.1 cm). Fig. 3−20. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, interior, left wing, detail, Presentation of Eve to Adam. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−21. Creation of Eve, ca. 1460. Florentine engraving, 10 7/16 x 7 in.; 7⅜ in. below (258cm x 178 cm; 186 cm below). Albertina Museum, Vienna. Hind, A II.1, pl. 86. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−22. E. Reuwich, animal page from Bernard von Breydenbach, Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam, Mainz, 1486. Woodcut, 8¼ x 5¾ in.

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(21.0 x 14.7 cm). British Museum, London. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−23. H. Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, interior, left wing, detail. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−24. Master Bertram, Separation of light from darkness and fall of the rebel angels, Grabow Altarpiece, left wing, detail, 1379. Panel, 68⅛ x 66½ in. (178.3 x 169.0 cm) overall; detail, ca. 33½ x 22½ in. (85.0 x 57.0 cm). Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin/Art Resource, NY. Fig. 3−25. Rogier van der Weyden, Seven Sacraments Altarpiece, ca. 1448, interior. Panel, 78¾ x 38¼ in. (118.5 x 97.2 cm); center, 46⅞ x 38¼ in. (118.5 x 97.2 cm); each wing, 46⅞ x 24¾ in. (118.5 x 62.8 cm). Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp. Copyright IRPAKIK, Brussels. Fig. 3−26. Creation of the world (left) and Wisdom (right), from Stammheim Missal, Saint Michael, Hildesheim, ca. 1160. Illumination, each 11⅛ x 7 7/16 in. (28.2 x 18.9 cm). J. Paul Getty Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Ms. 64, folio 10v, 11r. Copyright museum. Fig. 3−27. Prayerbook Master, Fall of Man, ca. 1500. Book of hours, 9 x 6 in. (22.9 x 15 cm). Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, codex 1887, folio 20. Copyright Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Chapter Four. Animals, Birds and Demons Fig. 4−1. H. Bosch Shop, After the Flood, ca. 1500? Panel, 27⅜ x 15 in. (69.2 x 38.2 cm). Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam. Copyright museum/Art Resource, NY. Fig. 4−2. H. Bosch, Epiphany Triptych, ca. 1510. Panel, 54⅜ x 28⅜ in. (138.2 x 72 cm) center; 54⅜ x 13 in. (138.2 x 33 cm) each wing. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 4−3. H. Bosch, Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, ca. 1500–05. Panel, 19¼ x 15¾ in. (48.5 x 40.0 cm). Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 4−4. A. Du Hameel, Besieged Elephant, 1478−94. Engraving, 8 x 13¾ in. (20.4 x 33.5 cm). British Museum, London. Copyright museum. Fig. 4−5. Unknown illuminator, Initial V: Saint Bernard, after 1460. Book of hours, northern Netherlands. Illumination, 6¾ x 4 13/16 in. (163.7 x 12.7 cm). J. Paul Getty Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California,

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83.ML.105, fol. 137. Copyright museum. Fig. 4−6. Bosch follower, Last Judgment, triptych, center, ca. 1516–20. Panel, 64 9/16 x 50 in. (164 x 127 cm) center. Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna. Copyright museum. Fig. 4−7. H. Bosch, Death of the Miser, ca. 1500. Panel, 36⅝ x 12⅛ in. (93 x 31 cm). Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Chapter Five. Saint John on Patmos Fig. 5−1. . H. Bosch, Saint John on Patmos, ca. 1485–90, front side of panel, 24¾ x 17 in. (62.9 x 43.3 cm). Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Bildarchiv Preussicher Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY. Fig. 5−2. Hans Memling, Saint John on Patmos, Saint John’s Altar, right wing, 1479. Panel, 67¾ x 31⅛ in. (172.0 x 79.0 cm). Hospital of Saint John, Bruges. Fig. 5−3. Joos van Cleve, Saint John on Patmos, ca. 1525. Panel, oak, 28 5/16 x 27⅞ in. (72 x 71 cm). University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, museum purchase, 1958/277. Copyright museum. Fig. 5−4. H. Bosch, Ecce Homo, ca. 1485–90. Panel, 28 x 23 ⁹/16 in. (71.1 x 60.5 cm). Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt. Copyright museum. Fig. 5−5. Martin Schongauer, Flight into Egypt (B. 7), ca. 1470–75. Engraving, 10 x 7⅝ in. (25.3 x 19.3 cm). British Museum, London. Copyright museum. Fig. 5−6. Martin Schongauer, Griffin (B. 93), ca. 1480. Engraving, 3⅞ x 5½ in. (17.2 x 14.0 cm). British Museum, London. Copyright museum. Fig. 5−7. Martin Schongauer, Ecce Homo (B. 15), ca. 1485–90. Engraving, 6⅞ x 4 in. (17.3 x 10.2 cm). British Museum, London. Copyright museum. Fig. 5−8. Martin Schongauer, Temptation of Saint Anthony (B. 47), ca. 1470–75. Engraving, 12¼ x 9 in. (31.2 x 22.8 cm). British Museum, London. Copyright museum. Fig. 5−9. Saint John on Patmos, English, illumination, from Apocalypse with commentary by Berengaudus, ca. 1100. 8½ x 4¾ in. (21.3 x 11.9 cm). MS 2, Longleat House. Fig. 5−10. Limbourg Brothers, Saint John on Patmos, 1416. Illumination, Les Très Riches Heures de Jean de France, Duc de Berri, Ms 65 Horae, fol.

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17, 6¾ x 4⅜ in. (17.1 x 11.1 cm). Musée Condé, Chantilly. Copyright Musée Condé. Fig. 5−11. Master E. S., Saint John on Patmos (Lehrs II.217.150), 1467. Engraving, 6⅛ x 5/3 in. (15.3 x 10.8 cm). British Museum, London, E 122. Copyright museum Fig. 5−12. Martin Schongauer, Saint John on Patmos (B. 55), ca. 1480? Engraving, 6 5/32 x 4½ in. (15.5 x 11.5 cm). British Museum, London. Copyright museum. Fig. 5−13. Master E. S., Saint John on Patmos (Lehrs II.219.151), ca. 1460–65? Engraving, 8⅛ x 5 9/16 in. (21.2 x 14.2 cm). British Museum, London. Copyright museum. Chapter Six. The Tabletop of The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things and The Tree Man Fig. 6−1a. Bosch follower, Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things, after 1500. Painted tabletop, 47¼ x 59⅛ in. (120.0 x 150.0 cm). Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 6−1b. Bosch Follower, Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things, after 1500. Center detail. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 6−1c. Bosch Follower, Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things, after 1500. Corner details. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Copyright museum. Fig. 6−2. Pieter Bruegel the Younger, Two Peasants Tying a Bundle of Twigs, ca. 1653. Panel, 14⅜ x 10⅝ in. (36.5 x 27 cm). Barber Institute of Art, University of Birmingham. Copyright Barber Institute. Fig. 6−3. Bosch Follower, Seven Deadly Sins, ca. 1575–1600. Panel, 34 x 22 in. (86.3 x 55.8 cm). Private collection, Switzerland. Fig. 6−4. Bosch Follower, Anger (Ira), ca. 1575–1600. Panel, 8⅝ x 11 9/16 in. (21.9 x 29.2 cm). Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti, Bergamo, no. 1005. Carrara photo. Fig. 6−5. Bosch Follower, Tree Man, ca. 1520–30? Drawing, pen and bistre, 10⅞ x 8⅜ in. (27.7 x 21.1 cm). Albertina Museum, Vienna. Copyright museum. Fig. 6−6. H. Bosch (?), The Field Has Eyes, the Forest Has Ears, ca. 1520? Pen drawing on paper, 8⅝ x 5 in. (20.2 x 12.7 cm). Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. KdZ 549. Copyright Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin. Fig. 6−7. Bosch follower (?) The Owl’s Nest (Landscape with Owls), ca.

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1520? Drawing, 5½ x 7¾ in. (13.4 x 19.7 cm), Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam. Copyright museum.

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Their Contemporaries. New York: G. Braziller, 1974. Mellinkoff, Ruth. Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern Europe. Art of the Late Middle Ages. California Studies in the History of Art 32. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Miedema, Hessel, ed. Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters. Translated by Derry CookRadmore. Doornspijk: Davaco, 1996. Milano, Paolo, ed. The Portable Dante. Translated by Lawrence Binyon and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with notes by C.H. Grandgent. New York: Viking Press, 1947. Morganstern, Anne M. ‘The Rest of Bosch’s Ship of Fools’. Art Bulletin 66, 2 (Dec. 1984): 295–302. Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origin and Character. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. Patch, Howard R. The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927. Reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1967. ———. The Other World, According to Descriptions in Medieval Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950. Patoul, Brigitte de, and Roger van Schoute, eds. Les Primitifs Flamands et leur temps. Louvain-la-Neuve: La Renaissance du Livre, 1994. Pellegrin, Elisabeth. Manuscrits de Pétrarque dans les bibliothèques de France. Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1966. Philip, Lotte Brand. ‘The Prado Epiphany by Jerome Bosch’. Art Bulletin 35, 4 (Dec. 1953): 267–293. Phillips, Margaret Mann. The ‘Adages’ of Erasmus: A Study with Translations. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1964. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. ‘Oration on the Dignity of Man’. In The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, edited and translated by Ernst Cassirer et. al., 223–254. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Pigler, Andrew. ‘Astrology and Jerome Bosch’. Burlington Magazine 92, 566 (May 1950): 132–136. Pinson, Yona. ‘Fall of the Angels and Creation of Eve in Bosch’s Eden: Meaning and Iconographical Sources’. In Flanders in a European Perspective: Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad. Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven, 7–10 September 1993, edited by Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon,

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Index Note: Major works by Hieronymus Bosch and works whose artists are unknown are listed by title.

Adam, 11, 40, 44, 155, 158; in the Garden of Earthly Delights, 139, 156–158, 163, 165–168, 194, 210, 277; in the Haywain, 19, 30; in the Vienna Last Judgment, 204; and the Fall of Man, 126–128, 157, 163–164, 168. See also Eve, Eden After the Flood (Bosch follower), Rotterdam, fig. 4-1, 173, 177, 185 alchemy, 2, 110, 131 Anger (Bosch follower), fig. 6-4, 245–247, 250, 278 Anger/Wrath (Ira), 56, 246–247; represented in the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 239–240, 244–245; represented in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 72, 92–93, 99 animals, 123, 136, 155–157, 160, 169–207, 210, 273–274, 277–278; correlation with sin, 66–69, 74, 79, 92–93, 95, 115, 170; as demonic creatures, see demons; exotic species of, 155,

169, 171–172, 175–179, 277; fantastic creatures, 41, 54–55, 67–69, 74, 89–90, 155–156, 159, 172, 198–199, 201, 203, 206; hybrid forms, 40, 53–54, 78, 128, 170, 173, 184, 197, 245, 278; symbolising the Five Senses, 71, 72n33; in triumphal processions, 33, 35–38, 40–44, 54. See also birds, demons, and individual animals listed by name Anthony Abbot (saint), 58–101, 172, 207, 263, 267n22, 276, 280; frequent appearance in Bosch’s paintings, 59; Hospital Order of, 59, 91n79, 276; role as plague saint, 59; Saint Anthony’s fire, 59, 77, 88, 92n82, 276 Antichrist, 1, 57, 95, 198n51; in Bosch’s Temptation of Saint Anthony, 98–99, 276; medieval belief in, 2–3, 88, 127, 130n49, 167 ape, 79; apelike figures, 88, 92, 170; as symbol of folly, 6, 95. See also demons, folly

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304 Apocalypse, 101, 127, 208–209, 223, 225, 262, 276, 278; apocalyptic eschatology in Bosch’s time, 1–2, 161, 234, 262; and the Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday, 99, 127; and the Garden of Earthly Delights, 102, 127, 129, 161–162, 163n96; manuscripts, 180, 221–222, 224–225; as theme in Bosch’s paintings, 18, 32, 56–57, 99, 102, 129, 168, 209, 232–233 apple, 19, 129, 156 astrology, 1, 4–5, 78, 91, 99; astrological manuscripts, 68, 72, 76; Bosch’s belief in, 2, 5, 94, 261, 276. See also Jupiter, Luna, Mars, Mercury, Pisces, Pluto, Saturn, Temptation of Saint Anthony, Venus Athanasius (saint), 60, 70n28, 77; Vita antonii (Life of Saint Anthony), 59n1, 60; Vitae patrum, 58n1–59n1, 77, 92 Avarice/Greed, 6, 56, 131, 138, 167; represented in the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 201, 239–240, 244, 269; represented in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 69, 75, 79, 99 Bernard (Saint), illumination of initial V, unknown illuminator, fig. 4-5, 181, 190 bestiary, 37, 155, 169, 175, 179–180; Bosch’s use of, 66, 76–77, 88, 178. See also manuscript illumination bird, 79, 89, 96, 123, 156, 160, 169–207; associations with sin, 18, 67, 70, 72, 93–94, 122, 162n94; Bosch’s access to and knowledge of, 183–184, 258,

278; exotic, 178–179; and the Five Senses, 71–72; imaginary species, 178, 184, 193–194, 199; as indicators of ancient times, 127, 129, 273, 277. See also animals, demons, and individual birds listed by name Bosch, Hieronymus: Allegory of Gluttony (Yale University Art Gallery), 13, 206n65, 269; Blessed in Paradise (Palazzo Ducale, Venice), 175; Carrying of the Cross, 242, 271n34; Crucifixion (Brussels), 13; cult of saints, 59, 98; Death of the Miser, fig. 4-7, 6, 56, 192, 206, 269; double imagery, 122, 123, 124, 125, 157, 163, 276–277, 280; Ecce Homo, fig. 5-4, 210, 216; Epiphany (Adoration of the Magi) (Prado), fig. 4-2, 11, 13, 73n37, 173, 186; family of artists, 9, 12, 14, 32, 138, 177, 209, 273, 275, 277, 279; fantastical imagery, 2, 14, 41, 54, 94, 101, 104, 123, 162n94, 205, 206, 280; ‘faizeur de dyables,’ 14, 255, 268; Flight into Egypt, 267; Hermits triptych, Venice, 175; influence on Surrealism, 2, 162, 280; inventiveness, 2, 74, 101, 115, 122–124, 199, 201, 203–204, 239, 242, 255, 276, 277, 281; Italian influence, 32–33, 52, 55, 79, 94, 201, 260–261, 270, 277; Last Judgment triptych (never completed), 13, 110, 176, 202; membership in Confraternity of the Virgin, 9–10, 12–13, 17, 57, 73, 100, 126n40, 138, 167, 168, 208n1, 233, 267n22, 268–270, 275, 279; moralising tone in

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paintings, 14, 16, 54, 60, 67n14, 100–101, 103, 129, 131, 135–136, 207, 234, 238, 246, 266, 268; patronage, 12–13, 110, 183; ‘pre-humanism,’ 265–267; presumed portrait of, fig. 3-12, 12, 121, 131; rejection of Renaissance traditions, 135, 260, 269–270, 272, 274, 281; restoration of paintings, 14–15, 31; Saint Jerome, 175, 177, 270; Saint John the Baptist Meditating (Saint John in the Wilderness), fig. 4-3, 173–174, 187, 193n39, 198n50, 209n1; Saint Julia (Saint Wilgefortis) Altarpiece, 270n34, 272, 273n38; satire, 67, 123, 268; Ship of Fools, 2, 6, 16, 206n65, 266, 269; underdrawing, 15, 16, 17, 31, 139, 255; use of literature, 9, 16, 32, 110, 114, 167. See also Garden of Earthly Delights; Haywain; Last Judgment; Saint John on Patmos; Temptation of Saint Anthony Bouts, Dirk, 11, 161, 183, 272; Bouts shop, 205; influence on Bosch, 209; Last Supper Altarpiece, 138 Brant, Sebastian, Das Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools), 3, 55, 89, 130n49, 184n39, 196n44; Bosch’s use of, 16, 52, 96, 133n60, 266; Keeping Secrets, woodcut, fig. 1-11, 50, 52; Of Dancing, illustration, fig. 2-13, 86, 96 Bruegel, Pieter, the Elder, 9, 68, 74n41, 195, 241, 247, 254, 255, 256, 265, 268, 280; Contest between Carnival and Lent, 74n31; Land of Cockaigne, 195; Landscape with Saint Jerome, 256, 257; Peasant Wedding, 241; The

305

Big Fish Eat the Little Fish, 41n34, 255 Bruegel, Pieter, the Younger, 241, 245; Peasants Tying a Bundle of Twigs, fig. 6-2, 241, 248 camel, 171, 176, 277; sexual connotations of, 172 centaur, 169, 181, 273 cherry, 122–123, 160, 171, 197–198 Christus, Petrus, 161, 262–263 Church Triumphant, in Le Chemin de paradis (Jean Germain), fig. 1-5, 26–27, 40, 44 Cleve, Joos van, 208–209; Saint John on Patmos, fig. 5-3, 208, 215 Cosimo, Piero di, 37n20; and use of double image, 124 Costa, Lorenzo, Triumph of Death, fig. 1-4, 25, 38, 53, 260 crow, 181, 183–184, 193n39, 198, 271 Dante, 19–57, 171, 223n20, 275; Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy), 35, 54–55, 113; Inferno, 55, 171, 275; Purgatorio, 33, 40, 42 David, Gerard, 45n39, 183, 254–255 Deguileville, Guillaume de, Pèlerinage de l’âme, 75, 114, 131n50; Pèlerinage de la vie humaine, 39n29, 94, 131n50, 157, 271n34 demons, 3, 6, 18, 55, 114, 169–207, 211, 232, 257, 278; anthropomorphic, 30, 56, 77, 91, 101, 200–201, 203, 206, 212; Bosch’s naturalistic treatments of, 201, 278; demonology, 203; devil, 14, 92, 158, 224, 232; in the Garden of Earthly Delights, 131, 136, 156, 160, 203, 277; in the Haywain, 19, 30, 53, 203; in the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 239,

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306 241–242, 244, 246; in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 60, 66, 68, 73–77, 92, 94, 98, 203, 276; zoomorphic, 66, 74–75, 94, 101, 200–201, 206, 212. See also animals, birds, Devil dendrochronology, 15–16, 205, 206n65, 242n15; on Bosch’s works, 30n2, 31, 137 Devil Queen, 75, 76n51, 78 Devil, the, 3, 57, 199, 203, 224, 232; devils, see demons; Lucifer, 158–159; and Saint Anthony, 58n1, 70–71, 77, 95, 99–100; Satan, 1, 89, 96, 166 dog, 19, 78, 170; as symbol of Envy, 69; in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 69, 89, 95, 172 double image, 122–125, 157, 163, 276–277, 280 dove, 43, 183–184, 198, 221 dragon, 76, 155–156, 200, 223 drollery, 41, 93, 169, 178n17; Bosch’s use of, 68, 76, 88, 123–124, 178n17. See also manuscript illumination duck, 179, 183, 196; mallard associated with lust, 195, 197 Dürer, Albrecht, 8, 46, 175; Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 98; Nemesis, 133; Saint Anthony Outside a City, 100n113; Small Fortune, 133; Temptation of the Idler (Dream of the Doctor), 71n31; travels of, 8, 260, 272–273; Triumph of Maximilian I, 35 eagle, 40, 198; and Saint John, 44, 184, 223, 225–226, 232. See also John the Evangelist (saint) Eden, 11, 113, 155–156; in the Garden of Earthly Delights, 139,

162, 170, 172, 176–178; in the Haywain, 30, 139. See also Adam, Eve egg, 71, 94; alchemical, 131; evil associations of, 92, 98 elephant, 155, 176–177, 194, 273, 277; association with Chastity, 69; in triumphal processions, 36–37, 43. See also Hameel, Alart du Envy, 56; represented in the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 238–240, 246–247, 269; represented in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 69, 99 Erasmus, Desiderius, 2, 8, 259–260, 263–266; Adages, 7, 263, 265; In Praise of Folly, 7 Eve, 11, 155–160, 163–168, 194, 277; correlation with the Virgin Mary, 156, 164–168, 279; Creation of Eve (Florentine engraving), fig. 3-21, 147, 155; and the Fall, 126, 157, 163; in the Garden of Earthly Delights, 103, 128–129, 139, 156–157, 160, 165–168, 279; in the Haywain, 19, 30. See also Adam, Eden, Virgin Mary Fall of Man, 126, 139, 157–158, 162–165, 168. See also Adam, Eve, Fall of the Rebel Angels Fall of the Rebel Angels, 19, 139, 157–158; fallen angels in Bosch’s paintings, 194, 207, 277. See also Fall of Man Fifteen Signs before Doomsday (anonymous), 4, 99, 127, 130n49 Field Has Eyes, the Forest Has Ears, The (Bosch follower), fig. 6-6, 252, 258 fish, 114, 184, 221; flying fish, 66, 77,

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98, 198; as symbol of Envy, 68–69. See also demons Five Senses, 71–73, 203. See also Temptation of Saint Anthony folly: as sin, 5–7, 130n49, 266; in the Garden of Earthly Delights, 6, 164n96, 197; in the Haywain, 52–53, 55; in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 93–95 Fool, the, 128, 136–137, 274. See also Jacquemart de Hesdin Fortune (Fortuna), 131, 136–138, 262, 274, 277; as allegory, 133–135; and Bad Fortune (Fortuna Mala), 131, 135, 138, 167, 277; Chance, 131, 132, 138; cults of, 132; Florentine engraving of, fig. 3-14, 134, 138, 140; Fortune and Wisdom, woodcut from Liber de sapiente, fig. 3-19, 136, 145, 273; Fortune’s garden, 113; Ship of Fortune (Florentine engraving), fig. 3-17, 135, 143 fox, as demon, 66, 70, 200. See also demons fruit, 73, 195; in the Garden of Earthly Delights, 112–114, 129, 160; in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 92–93. See also apple, cherry, strawberry Galle, Cornelis, I, Sic erat in diebus Noë, fig. 3-3, 108, 129, 130n49 Garden of Earthly Delights, fig. 3-1a-b, fig. 3-2, fig. 3-4, fig. 3-5, fig. 3-8, fig. 3-9, fig. 3-11, fig. 3-13, fig. 3-18, fig. 3-20, fig. 3-23, 6, 11, 16, 102–168, 220, 258; biting motif in, 123, 128–129; Brethren of the Free Spirit interpretation of, 104, 129, 162; commission of, 10, 13, 17; as Eden/earthly paradise, 104, 112–113, 115, 129,

307

139, 162, 170, 172, 176–178; and influence of woodcuts, 115, 136–137, 156n85, 156n86, 273–274; invention of the double image in, 122–125, 157, 163, 276–277, 280; lack of classical motifs in, 269–270; relation to literature, 110, 112, 114; psychoanalytic interpretation of, 104, 162; salvation as main theme of, 2, 102, 122, 138, 160, 163–165, 167–168, 207, 254–255, 276, 279; Schongauer’s influence on, 156, 210; sexuality in, 104, 110, 122, 125, 129, 160, 163, 171–172, 277, 279; as a topsyturvy world, 114n26, 125, 170–171; and the Tabletop Hell roundel, 241–242, 245; and Tree Man, 255–257; unique spatial design of, 160–161; use of animals in, 170–172, 175–178, 273; use of birds in, 179, 183–184, 194–199, 271, 273; and the Vienna Last Judgment, 203–204 Giovanni, Apollonio di, 36, 37n20, 52 giraffe, 155, 176–177, 273, 277 Gluttony, 56, 138, 167, 205; represented in the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 79, 239, 244; represented in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 74–77, 99 goat, 40, 43, 95, 170, 172; Indian goat (capra d’India), 155, 178, 178n17 goldfinch, 182–183, 195, 197; Christian meanings of, 182n34 Gossaert, Jan, 134, 254–255, 260 griffin, 33, 68, 169, 172, 210 Hameel, Alart du, Besieged Elephant, fig. 4-4, 176n13, 177, 188

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308 Haywain, figs. 1-1a–1d, 1-12, 13, 19–57, 72, 100, 123, 183, 242, 268; as anti-triumph, 56, 275; Bosch’s pessimism in, 55, 57, 167–168, 275, 279; compared to the Garden of Earthly Delights, 123, 139, 157, 167–168; departure from Flemish style, 32; existence of evil in, 19, 157, 170–171; and humanism, 265; influence of tapestry design, 38–39, 41, 46, 53, 55; as a Last Judgment, 30, 56–57; salvation as a theme of, 2, 102, 207, 254; Schongauer’s influence on, 210, 212; and triumphal processions, 32–33, 52, 54–56, 260, 275; two versions of, 30, 171n2; and the Vienna Last Judgment, 203–204 Hellmouth, 115, 198, 280; in the Garden of Earthly Delights, 123–125, 163, 276. See also double image hoopoe, 179, 183–184, 195–197; negative connotations of, 196n46, 197 humanism, 4, 7, 12–13, 18, 259–260, 264–268, 275; Bosch’s rejection of, 2, 266, 271–274, 279. See also Erasmus, Desiderius Jacquemart de Hesdin, The Fool, Petites Heures de Jean de Berry, fig. 3-10, 119, 128 jay, 179, 181, 195–196 Jerome (saint), 59, 132, 221; as patron saint of humanism, 270 John the Baptist (saint), 59, 129, 173–174, 226n29, 241n11 John the Evangelist (saint), 43, 59, 208–233 Jupiter, 35, 78n55, 99; Florentine engraving of, fig. 2-10, 83, 89

kingfisher, 183, 195–197 Last Judgment: Bosch’s unfinished triptych of, 13, 110, 176, 202; the Haywain as, 30, 56–57; northern depictions of, 42; roundel of Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 239, 241, 245; sinfulness of man before, 129–130, 197, 277; and the Virgin Mary, 57, 164, 168, 232–233. See also Last Judgment triptych (Vienna) Last Judgment triptych (Vienna), fig. 4-6, 110, 175, 191, 201–205; questions of authorship, 202, 204–205, 258, 278; and the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 242, 246 Limbourg Brothers, 46, 200, 201; Saint John on Patmos, from Très Riches Heures, fig. 5-10, 225, 228; Très Riches Heures, 46, 200, 201n57, 225 lion, 44, 156, 181, 261, 277; lack of naturalism in Bosch’s, 175–177, 273; and Saint Jerome, 271 lizard, 76, 156–157 Love Garden, 113, 128, 130, 194, 276. See also Garden of Earthly Delights Loy de grace, La, Le Chemin de paradis, fig. 1-6, 28–29, 41, 54 Luna, 78, 91n80, 99; Florentine engraving of, fig. 2-7, 79, 80 Lust (Luxuria), 56, 138; represented in the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 90, 239–240, 244, 269; represented in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 99 manuscript illumination, 14, 17, 53–54; and the Garden of Earthly Delights, 124, 170; and the

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Haywain, 52; as models for animals and birds, 171, 180–182, 273; and Saint John on Patmos, 212, 224–225, 232, 278; and the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 200; and the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 60, 69, 74, 93; of Petrarchan triumphs, 35–36, 38, 42, 261. See also bestiary, drollery Mars, 78n55, 89, 92n79, 91n80, 99 Master Bertram, Separation of light from darkness and fall of the rebel angels, Grabow Altarpiece, fig. 324, 150, 158, 204n62 Master E. S., 113n24, 194, 212n8, 212n10, 225–226; Saint John on Patmos, fig. 5-11, 225, 229; undated work, fig. 5-13, 226, 231 Master of Mary of Burgundy, 66, 73; Ecce Homo, Hours of Engelbert II of Nassau, fig. 3-7, 117, 126, 210; Vostre Demeure Hours, fig. 2-4, 211, 227 Master of the Frankfurt Paradise Garden, Virgin of the Paradise Garden, fig. 3-6, 116, 125 Maximilian I, Emperor, 7, 176; humanist court of, 12; Triumph of Maximilian I, 35; triumphal tapestries, 46, 54, 136 medieval hermeneutics: effect on Bosch, 17, 97n104, 280; and salvation, 164, 168, 277, 279. See also salvation Memling, Hans, 261, 263; Altarpiece of the Two Saints John, fig. 5-2, 184, 208, 214, 223, 232; Gdansk Altarpiece, 202 Mercury, 78n55, 99 mermaid/merman, 169; in the Garden of Earthly Delights, 114, 156, 172,

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179, 198–199; in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 66, 88, 198–199 musical instrument, 88, 202, 212; bagpipe, 19, 68; flute, 30; harp, 43, 89, 93; oboe (pommer), 88–90; trumpet, 42–44, 67n15, 73–74, 205 owl, 181, 183, 196–199; negative meanings of, 95, 160, 194, 195n41, 197 Owl’s Nest (Bosch follower), fig. 6-7, 253, 258 paradise garden, 112–113, 115–116, 129, 163n96. See also Garden of Earthly Delights Patinir, Joachim, Charon Ferrying a Soul Across the River Styx, 263, 280; Temptation of Saint Anthony, 11, 123, 263, 280 peacock, 179, 198; as symbol of resurrection, 182; as symbol of vanity, 171 pelican, 181–182; as symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, 179, 184, 212 penance, 157n87, 159–160, 167, 279 Petrarch, 19–57, 137n75, 223n20, 265; De remediis utriusque fortunae, 136, 265n16; De viris illustribus, 35, 39n27, 39n30; I Trionfi, 34–37, 261; Petrarchan triumphs, see triumph, Italian Philip II of Spain, 8, 30; owner of the Garden of Earthly Delights, 103, 111; owner of the Haywain, 31; owner of the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 199, 238 Philip the Handsome, 7–8, 12, 54, 210; and Last Judgment commission, 13, 110, 176–177, 202 pig, 88, 92; pig-headed demon, 78, 94; as symbol of Gluttony, 74, 79.

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310 See also demons Pisces, 4, 90, 130n49 Pluto, 267–268 Prayerbook Master, Fall of Man, fig. 3-27, 154, 165 Pride (Superbia), 56, 137, 167; represented in the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 200, 239–240, 246; represented in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 67, 75, 94, 99 proverbs, 7, 32, 68, 70, 263–266. See also Erasmus, Desiderius rat, 88, 125, 170, 198; as symbol of Hearing, 71. See also Five Senses Reuwich, E., Animal page (woodcut), fig. 3-22, 148, 155 robin, 183, 195–197; as symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, 195 Saint John on Patmos, fig. 5-1, 11, 18, 184, 206, 208–233, 278; influence of Schongauer, 209–210, 225–226, 232–233, 278; interest in natural world, 221 Saint John on Patmos, English illumination from Apocalypse, fig. 5-9, 221-222, 227 salvation, 34, 158; Bosch’s pessimism regarding, 55–57, 167; and the Garden of Earthly Delights, 102, 122, 160, 163, 167, 276–277; and the Haywain, 32, 55–57, 275; as main theme for Bosch, 2, 6, 10, 18, 60, 168, 206–207, 275–278; role of the cult of saints in, 59; role of the Virgin Mary in, 164–165, 167–168, 232, 279; and the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 234, 254; and the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 97, 99–101, 276 Saturn, 44, 72, 91, 99; Florentine

engraving of, fig. 2-8, 79, 81, 88–89; Netherlandish woodcut of, fig. 2-12, 85 Schongauer, Martin, 156, 172, 177, 209–211, 226, 233, 278; Ecce Homo, fig. 5-7, 210, 218–219; Flight into Egypt, fig. 5-5, 156, 210, 217; Griffin, fig. 5-6, 172, 210; Saint John on Patmos, fig. 512, 225, 230, 232; Temptation of Saint Anthony (Tribulation of Saint Anthony) fig. 5-8, 211–212, 220; War Elephant, 176n13, 177 scorpion: and strawberries, 125, 128; as symbol of Lust, 68 serpent/snake, 19, 43–44, 156 Seven Deadly Sins (Bosch follower), fig. 6-3, 239, 243–247, 249, 278 Seven Deadly Sins, 167; correlation with astrology, 99–100; described in the Somme le roi, 67, 79, 92, 131, 137, 239n8; in Temptation of Saint Anthony, 79, 94, 203. See also Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things siren, 88, 155. See also mermaid/merman Sloth, 43, 56; represented in the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 201, 239, 244; represented in the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 70, 72, 93, 99 Sol, 91n79, 99 Somme le roi, Laurent (Frère): relative to the Garden of Earthly Delights, 131, 137; relative to the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, 239n8; relative to the Temptation of Saint Anthony, 67, 71n31, 79, 92 Speculum humanae salvationis (anonymous), 95, 204; influence on Garden of Earthly Delights,

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158–160, 164, 167–168, 277, 279 Spiritual miscellany, manuscript, Germany, Thuringia (?), fig. 2-9, 82, 88 spoonbill, 183, 193, 198 Stammheim Missal, Saint Michael’s, Hildesheim, The Creation of the World and Wisdom, fig. 3-26, 152–153, 164 strawberry, 103; associated with the Virgin, 125, 156, 167, 181; inverted meaning of, 125–126, 128–129. See also fruit, Virgin Mary Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (Bosch follower), fig. 6-1a-e, 18, 66n7, 68–69, 73n39, 90, 199–200, 203, 205–206, 234–254, 269, 278; and lost companion piece of Seven Sacraments, 238; costumes, 239–241, 246–247, 278; Death roundel, 200, 239–240, 245; Entry of the Saved into Paradise roundel, 239, 245; Extreme Unction roundel, see Death roundel; Hell roundel, 200, 203, 206, 239, 241–242, 245–246; Last Judgment roundel, 239, 241, 245; questions of authorship, 238, 243, 246–247 Temptation of Saint Anthony, figs. 21–2-3, figs. 2-5–2-6, 12, 31, 58–101, 114, 125, 133, 139, 183, 270; and astrology, 5, 68, 72, 76, 99; differing from Flemish models, 101; and the Five Senses, 71–73, 203 Florentine engravings as source of, 79, 88–89, 260; liberties taken with story, 97; salvation as theme

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of, 2, 17–18, 59–60, 97, 99–102, 168, 207, 254, 276; Schongauer’s influence on, 210, 212; transforming animals to demons in, 172–173, 198. See also astrology, demons, Five Senses Theunissen, Cornelis, Fortuna, fig. 316, 134, 142 toad, 75, 78; demonic associations of, 92, 98. See also demons Tree Man (Bosch follower), fig. 6-5, 250–251, 254–258, 278; attribution to Bosch, 254, 255; attribution to Bruegel, 256; relation to Garden of Earthly Delights Hell panel, 255–257 triumph, 19–57; of Chastity, 34, 36–37, 43–45, 69; classical, 37; of Death, 34, 36–39 42–43, 53, 93; of Eternity (Divinity), 34, 36–37, 44, 53; of Eternity over Time, tapestry, fig. 1-10, 44, 49; of Fame (Glory), 34–37, 42–44, 46, 53, 139; of Fame over Death, tapestry, fig. 1-9, 43, 48–49; of Fame over Death, Triomphe de Petrarque (Rouen), fig. 1-7, 42, 47; Italian, 36, 38–39, 46, 52, 54, 261; of Love, 34, 36–37, 43, 52–53; of Love, tapestry, fig. 1-8, 43, 48–49; of Love, Trionfi of Petrarch, fig. 1-2, 24, 36; of Petrarch, engraving, fig. 1-3, 24, 38; religious, 32–33, 40; tapestries, 41–42, 44–46, 53–55, 261; of Time, 34, 36–37, 44; carts, 35, 39, 42–44, 53–54, 261; processions, 19–57, 261, 272, 275 unicorn, 155, 169, 172; and Chastity, 35, 37, 43; purifying powers of, 160, 178, 277; and the Virgin, 37 Van Eyck, Jan, 161, 262–263, 272;

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312 Ghent Altarpiece, 182–183; Portrait of Margaret van Eyck, 200, 240; Virgin and Child Altarpiece (Dresden), 182; Virgin and Child Enthroned, 182 Vanity, 74, 93, 171, 268 Venus, 96, 99; Netherlandish woodcut of, fig. 2-11, 84, 89–90, 93 Virgin Mary, 18, 57, 181–183, 226, 254, 267, 275; anti-Virgin in Bosch’s Temptation of Saint Anthony, 198; as the new Eve, 156, 164–168, 279; as patron saint of Bosch’s confraternity, 10, 57, 138, 233, 275; association with strawberries, 125, 156, 181; elephant as symbol of, 69; path to salvation through, 160, 164, 232–233, 278–279; unicorn as symbol of, 37. See also Eve, Last Judgment Virtue, 6, 11, 69, 136–137, 262, 272n36, 277; Cardinal

(Fortitude, Justice, Prudence, Temperance), 33, 35; Chastity as, 33, 43, 69; fall from, 126–127; Knowledge as, 7; Theological (Faith, Hope, Charity), 33, 35; and Vice, 137 Vischer, Peter the Younger (attrib.), Fortune, fig. 3-15, 134, 141 Weyden, Rogier van der, 11, 183, 209, 263, 272; Beaune Altarpiece, 202; Granada-Miraflores Altarpiece, 205; Seven Sacraments Altarpiece, fig. 3-25, 151, 160–161 Wisdom (Sapientia), 136–137, 164, 274, 277; Sapiens (Wise Man), 137 Witchcraft, 1–3, 16, 260; in Temptation of Saint Anthony, 66, 77–78, 92; toad as symbol, 92 Witches, royal manuscript, fig. 2-14, 87 woodpecker, 183–184, 195–197