Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights

0:01 Welcome to Stories of Art. I'm Alastair Souk. And I'm James Fox. A gigantic bird-headed monster, with a cooking pot for a crown, appears to be sitting on the toilet. It's busy stuffing a naked human being into its beak. A man who, as he disappears down its throat, seems to be farting a flock of blackbirds.

0:28 Below, other unfortunate people are emerging from the creature's backside, encased in an enormous balloon-like turd, before tumbling into a cesspit. Welcome to hell, folks, and welcome to the diabolical world of Hieronymus Bosch, who painted this nightmarish scene more than 500 years ago. Hello. Alistair, has there ever been a weirder artist than Bosch?

0:55 I, at risk of sounding a bit square, perhaps, I just wanted to say that I've never taken LSD. I've never done IASCA. Mescaline, none of this. But I think it's fair to say that the paintings Hieronymus Bosch creates in the 15th century into the 16th century, they are ferociously strange, hallucinatory, like the most psychedelic, aggressive sometimes trip I think it could be possible to imagine.

1:23 And that is why he is so great. He is this original inventive artist. And these forms, hybrid, strange, menacing, monstrous forms, come tumbling out of his imagination and appear throughout his work. And subsequently, in later centuries, have proved enormously influential. I think particularly, actually, in the 20th.

1:46 We'll talk about that later. But, you know, I love, for example, the works of Studio Ghibli. Yes. And if you think of a film like Spirited Away, with all of those monsters teeming over that bridge into that hotel, whatever it is at the centre of the film, it is pure Hieronymus Bosch. And he's famous for these macabre, diabolical scenes.

2:07 And there were some big controversies around his work as well. And I know we're going to talk today about probably his... Most famous work, would you say? The Garden of Earthly Delights, his biggest, biggest piece, a triptych. I mean, there are very few freaks in the history of art, you know, figures who seem to crash land from nowhere, who do things like no one else and then kind of just vanish and we never see them again.

2:29 And Bosch is one of those freaks. And art historians like me, we hate outliers. We're always trying to put people into context. We're always trying to find precedence. We're always trying to prove that someone isn't quite as unique as we think. But Bosch just is unique. I think this is very interesting, just to take a step back for a second, because this question of the outlier thing versus the context, I'm imagining that we're going to put him in context.

2:51 And you will be giving a very good and authoritative detailed description of the town he came from, which... is, first of all, very difficult to pronounce. How do we call it, his hometown? I think it was, at the time, Sertegenbosch. Sertegenbosch, although I think it's pronounced in the Netherlands today, Denbosch.

3:10 I think that's a shortening, isn't it? And he takes his name after this town. But, you know... We'll get into what this town was. For now, it's worth saying it's basically an artistic backwater at the time. And so we can do all of that context stuff. But ultimately, at the end of it, I think you have a case here of, you say, outlier.

3:29 I'd say just genius. This is unaccountable. And as I'm sure we will get into, there are all of these debates about... whether he was a heretic or an orthodox in his religious beliefs. But fundamentally, he's creating stuff that just nobody had created before. And that's kind of extraordinary. And he himself is a mystery.

3:49 We know next to nothing about him. We don't know when he was born. We don't know how he trained. We don't know what he looked like. We don't know what he thought about the world. And what we're going to try and do in this episode, Alistair, is to try to piece together the mystery of Hieronymus Bosch's life and then to explore that great work, The Garden of Earthly Delights, one of the weirdest pictures in the history of art, in order to try to get to the bottom of Hieronymus Bosch.

4:14 Can I add a disclaimer before we get into it? Because at risk of promising our audience that we're going to solve the mystery of the Garden of Earthly Delights, I just wanted to mention there's a very famous German art historian called Panofsky, Erwin Panofsky. And his line on Bosch is about decoding Bosch.

4:31 As he said, we have bored a few holes through the door of the locked room. but somehow we do not seem to have discovered the key. And I think, I know it sounds slightly anticlimactic before we've begun, I don't think we can promise the key, but it is fascinating trying to get in and actually see what's going on there.

4:48 We'll try and drill some more holes. And just to say, we're doing this subject in response to popular demand. Many of you have messaged in requesting an episode on this subject. This then is the story of Hieronymus Bosch and his garden of earthly delights. Alistair, I'd like to bring our listeners and our viewers back to the middle of the 15th century, to the 1450s.

5:18 We're in the Duchy of Brabant, which is modern-day Netherlands, Belgium. And as you travel northeast from the great commercial centre of Antwerp, you enter this kind of flatland of marshes and swamps and bogs. And about 60 miles northeast of Antwerp, rising out of the bogs like a kind of mirage, is the city of Seertegenbosch.

5:42 And this is a prosperous place, provincial but prosperous. It has a population in the 1450s of about 15,000 people. Still exists. I mean, I've been there. Still exists. Den Bosch. Did you like it? It didn't leave an enormous impression. I saw an amazing Bosch exhibition there, which did. But the town itself felt at risk of offending people fairly nondescript.

6:02 Yeah, well, in the 1450s, there were about 15,000 people living there, and one of them was a boy called Hieronymus van Aachen. Yes. Although all of his friends and family knew him as Youn. Now, he is from a family of artists. In fact, every man in the family is an artist. His grandfather is an artist.

6:20 His father is an artist. His four uncles are artists. His two brothers are artists. But they're pretty minor provincial figures, aren't they? I mean, they're... They really are, which makes it all the more remarkable that Yoon, the youngest, would emerge as one of the great figures in the history of art.

6:36 He is born probably around 1450. We don't know exactly when. He's the fourth of five children. He's the youngest of three. boys. And we know next to nothing about his childhood. We do know that in February 1462, when he's about 12, his father buys a house on the eastern side of the Market Square, right in the centre of Sertgenbosch.

7:00 And this house still exists. Did you visit it when you went? I did not, I must confess. Okay, so this house was probably their home and their workshop. It was refurbished relatively recently. It's now a little museum. You can go and visit it. And the next fact we know is totally tantalising. Because in the following year, in the summer of 1463, a catastrophic fire sweeps through the city of Sertgenbosch.

7:27 And I have gone down a rabbit hole on this. I spent much of last week going through Dutch municipal records and translating them with various forms of software. And I was able to piece together this fire. Right, right. So it breaks out on the 13th of June. in a cloth dyers workshop south of the market square.

7:47 It then moves through the narrow streets north, past the market square where Bosch's family live, and then onwards north to the harbour. And it is catastrophic. I mean, hundreds of buildings are destroyed. I read somewhere even 4,000. Is that a lie? I think that's incorrect. I think it was that hundreds of buildings were destroyed, but the city itself only had a couple of thousand buildings.

8:08 So a large proportion of the city was destroyed. So people are displaced. Oh, yeah. And there is some tantalising evidence to suggest that actually Bosch's family home, the Van Aken family home, was itself damaged. during the fire, because I told you earlier that the building was refurbished recently.

8:26 When they refurbished it, they found that part of the timber structure, the roof joists, the spiral staircase that runs up the middle, and the floors all date to 1463, the year of the fire. So that's either a coincidence or perhaps it was damaged during the fire and and then rebuilt later that year. So the question I have for you...

8:46 Yes. ...is, given that Bosch went on to produce these amazing scenes of Infernos... Yes. ...do you think it's too far to imagine that perhaps this fire played some role in his creative imagination? No. No. I think that, as you say, there are very few facts that we have about Bosch's life. And we've already rubbished the idea that providing context can provide insight into him as an artistic genius.

9:15 But in the case of The Fire, I think it is too tantalising to dismiss. Because when you look at his work, he depicts a lot of... Visions of hell, last judgments, and quite often you find these scenes, these vistas in them of, as you say, infernos. And the thing is, when you look at them, they are remarkably realistic.

9:39 Yeah. You know, we're going to see one later because on the right panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights that we'll discuss in the second half, without this being a spoiler, that is one of his prime examples of a vision of hell. And in the background, you can see all of these buildings which are being burnt.

9:56 It's an amazing passage of painting. Yeah, and there's soot everywhere. There's smoke. There are lots of people marauding around. I mean, I mentioned displaced people before. And I... think, here he was, what would he have been? About 13. I think it's safe to assume that he's already in the trade, being taught to paint by his father, by that wider family, in that workshop on the eastern side of the Market Square.

10:22 And everything is imperiled. His entire world is like the rug is pulled from under his feet. It must have been traumatic, shocking. It must And you just feel, and I don't think this is too much, that he is channeling his memories of that. It's informing and shaping his worldview and he's channeling them into the paintings that he creates, don't you think?

10:47 I so agree. I so agree. If I were 13 years old... And I was watching a fire tear through my city and seeing buildings destroyed, buildings owned by people I knew and perhaps loved, and watching people die and hearing people scream and then seeing those flames approaching my own home and perhaps engulfing my own home.

11:05 I would be traumatised by that for life. And I know that fires were a more common occurrence back then, but they were also more scary back then because you couldn't fight them so easily. Yes. And it's an interesting question, which of course can never be answered because the fire did happen. But without the Inferno, would his work have been quite so intense?

11:23 I think perhaps that's what it's giving, this real sense of almost spiritual fear, crisis, intensity. Yeah, totally agree. So anyway, let's carry on briefly with the story of his life. So the next thing we know, I presume that after that inferno, he is working within the family home and workshop alongside his father and his brothers.

11:43 So I think he's first mentioned as a painter in 1480 to 81. Yeah, now interesting. In that year, 1480-1481, Hieronymus Bosch gets married. Yes. So it's quite late for someone of that period. He's in his early 30s. And he gets married to a woman called Alade van der Meerven. And she is from a different social circle.

12:04 So he is artisanal, lower middle class. She is the daughter of some wealthy merchants. I think her parents have died and so she's inherited a very large sum of money. She's very rich. She owns some land outside of Sertigenbosch. And so this is a real social upgrade for Hieronymus Bosch. There's a nuance to this that I found quite interesting.

12:23 Supposedly in those days, you mentioned the family home for Bosch was on the eastern side of the market town. I think after the marriage, don't they settle on the north side? Totally different there. Very, very posh. It's where all the smart people lived on the northern side of the market. It's currently a Levi's store.

12:38 Is it? So they're only 20 metres apart from where the family house is, but it's a completely different social circle. So he moves, he leaves the family workshop. Although that's interesting, James, because something I'd read is there's a debate about whether he sets up in the new place or is still commuting 20 metres back to the family workshop.

12:58 Because I think there's a school of thought that perhaps he continues to paint and is part of that sort of family set up there. He does sell his share of the property to one of his brothers. So it's possible that he is moving separately. What we do know is that after he gets married, he begins to move in very different social circles.

13:17 Yes. And this brings us to this really fascinating organisation, which is called the Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady. Yes. This is a very important fraternity that really governs the politics and the economy and the religion and society of Sertig and Bosch. Very important organisation. There are lots of people who are members.

13:37 He himself becomes a member in the mid-1480s. But right at the top of this organisation, there is a small number of sworn brothers. Yeah. Do you know, I was looking into the sworn brothers, the sworn members, and I thought, I'm sure this is a fact that it will tickle you. Yeah. And more than half were either priests or the Latin magistrate, academics.

14:00 Yes. There you go. Once upon a time, people like you were valued very highly. Those days have gone. But there were no artists or craftsmen until Bosch. No, it was completely unheard of that an artist would be in this elite class of people within Sertgen Bosch and hard. Certainly his family members, none of his family members had ever managed to get in to become sworn brothers.

14:20 So in 1488, he becomes a sworn brother. And we know that after he gets elected as a sworn brother, in the summer of 1488, he hosts a banquet. And one of the curiosities of the historical record is that though we know next to nothing about Hieronymus Bosch, we do know what he served his guests that night.

14:40 Do we really? Yes, we do. carrots, wine, and ginger, pepper, and saffron. And I can imagine how expensive those spices would have been in the 15th century. And we also know that 10 years later, Bosch hosts another banquet, and this time he serves them two swans. Right. So I think the point about all of this is to stress that we often, when we look at Bosch's work, we think he must have been some weirdo painting in a dungeon in the middle of nowhere.

15:12 Yeah. That is not who Hieronymus Bosch was. He was rich. He was one of the richest people in Sertigan Bosch. He was well-connected. He was cultivated. He was probably quite charming. He was sophisticated. You've been looking at the culinary records of the Bosch household. I was looking with great interest into his tax records, James.

15:31 Yes, good. This is to bolster everything you've been saying, but there are... For historians, 14 documents which relate to financial transactions by Bosch and his wife from the period 1474 through to 1498. And there were further tax records for 1502-3, 1511-12 that show that he was in the wealthiest top 10% of the citizens of Bosch.

15:56 Stetigan Bosch. Thank you very much. And I think that this is significant for another reason as well, because he is effectively independently wealthy. Yes. Quite often what you see he's doing is you mentioned some of the land that his wife had inherited or owned. And I think there are occasions where he's selling it off to raise cash.

16:13 So in a sense, he doesn't need to work. Apart from... On his own terms, maybe. So it comes back to that other point about he's in the backwater, but he's tremendously original. You wonder whether, because you're in a backwater, you're maybe not subject to all of the influences you might be if you were in, at this time, say, Antwerp, as you mentioned, or in Bruges or in Ghent.

16:37 Does it give you a freedom to be the weirdo that you might be inside? And similarly, does financial independence allow that kink to come to the fore as well? Yeah. I think it's tempting to conclude that probably in both cases it does. Tax returns, municipal records, menus, let no one accuse us of not doing our homework.

16:57 Yeah. But anyway, let's turn to the work of Hieronymus Bosch. I think the first thing to say before we get into it is there's not much. So I think we did an episode a few months ago about Vermeer, where we said, I think, 36, 37 paintings survive. It's considerably fewer than that for Bosch. So we think maybe about 20 pictures.

17:15 25. 20, 25 pictures, seven of which have been signed, some really fantastic drawings as well. Yeah. And it's very difficult to construct a chronology of those works because most of them aren't signed and dated. We don't have records surrounding the commissioning of them. But I think the first really Boschian masterpiece is a picture that we're very lucky to have, is in the National Gallery in London, and it's called Christ Mocked.

17:40 Now, we should just say something about the dates, because I got a bit concerned about this on WhatsApp, James, because I was looking at it. In fact, I went to look at the painting yesterday. Did you? I did. And it's a stunning work. The National Gallery dates it as 1510. Now he dies Bosch in 1516. So they'd sort of see it as a late work.

17:58 But and I did ask them, unfortunately, they haven't replied so far. So we can correct this in the future. But whether there's sort of debate about it, you're suggesting that there are scholars who think it should date from this earlier phase of his career. Yes, the National Gallery dates it 1510, so late work, very tentatively, it must be said.

18:18 I've never felt that's quite right. It doesn't seem like a late work to me. And indeed, in 2016, to mark the 500th anniversary of Bosch's death, there was a huge Bosch research project where they brought all the great Dutch scholars and scholars from all over Europe That's why I was in the town, to review that show that was the culmination of that project.

18:37 Yeah, in 2016. And they produced a catalogue resume off the back of it, and they concluded that this is actually an earlier work, and it dates to the 1490s. And I'm inclined to agree with them on that. mean it's interesting that we've done the tax records, we have the technicalities of the day out the way.

18:54 Maybe we should actually talk about the picture because it's a really great painting and it is called, as you said, Christ Mocked. Christ appears very pale, slightly effeminate tilt to his head, standing vertically in the middle of the picture and he's surrounded by four men, two behind and two who seem to be kneeling in front of him.

19:16 And it's a very claustrophobic work, isn't it? Everyone feels jammed up together as though they're playing this strange fancy dress version of the game Sardines. And what's happening is Bosch is conflating two episodes from the so-called Passion of Christ, where Christ is mocked and also Christ is forced to wear a crown of thorns.

19:36 And the two men in the background who are – one of them is wearing green, the other has green oak leaves in his hat and a huge spiked S&M style bondage dog collar – they are trying to crown Jesus Christ with the crown of thorns. And beneath you have these two figures whose clothes are much more red, who seem to be in one case touching his hands, perhaps about to rip off his white robe – And there's a real sense of menace, violence, also slight madness.

20:09 If you look at the face at the bottom left, he looks slightly demented. There's a star and a crescent on his red headdress, which associates him with perhaps someone from the Eastern Mediterranean. You have these unusual emblems devices. I mentioned the oak leaves. I've already mentioned the dog collar worn by the man at top right.

20:27 But the guy at the top left... has this really strange arrow that plunges through his headdress almost as though it's kind of puncturing his brain somehow. And it has this blunt, it doesn't have a sharp tip, but this triangular wedge shape to the metal tip, which would have been used in hunting to hamstring an animal.

20:47 Ah, right. And so you have him with his armoured fist. You have, I guess the other thing about it to say is that for all of the sense clearly of mockery, violence, a sense of anarchy... There is also, I think, in the expressions of these figures, some ambiguity. I don't think they are entirely just louts who are going about their business.

21:09 And I think perhaps as a result, there's a sense almost of... some tragedy, which is a note that's introduced as a result of that. I think this is just a masterful painting. As you say, it is so tight, it's so claustrophobic, you're thrust right up against the action. It's almost as though you're trapped in a cupboard with these characters.

21:30 And I think compositionally, it is just so, so impressive. You said, and I think you're wrong here, you said that Christ is right in the middle. He's not in the middle. If you notice, his head is slightly off centre. And what is at the centre of the canvas is the crown of thorns, which isn't yet on his head.

21:48 It's like a halo. It's like a halo, certainly. But, you know, we did a series a few months ago about Michelangelo, where we said part because it's full of tension and suspense. This is the moment before. The crown has not yet gone on Christ's head. So you've got that sort of drama, that void, right at the heart of the composition.

22:11 Also, the way he uses his different visual ingredients to pull it together. So he uses the greens to connect the top left, top right. He uses the pinks to connect the bottom left and bottom right. He uses hands, this amazing rhythm of hands, to... quite literally actually, hold the painting together.

22:28 It's very odd, the hand thing, because you get almost a column of hands running effectively down the middle of the painting. There's the armoured fist of the guy with the strange arrow in his headdress, which is clutching the crown of thorns. His companion's hand is on Christ's shoulder. Then you see two further hands.

22:43 You see Christ's hands and then the guy on the bottom left, his hand touching Christ's hand. Yeah, quite tenderly. Yes, exactly. Which is, again, that's some of the complexity, I think, to the picture. But that in itself is this strange cascade of body parts that are sort of wriggling almost before our eyes.

22:59 Do you think there's significance to that? I don't know. I mean, it certainly does inject a certain degree of ambiguity. You mentioned it. The thing that I find really the most powerful element of the picture are the sight lines. So when I look at this picture, you can see all those four men. The first thing you see when you look at this picture are these grotesque figures around the side, and all of them are looking in towards Christ.

23:22 And so you follow their sight lines in, and then Christ looks straight out at you. So it's almost like you're being sucked into the picture and then spat out of the picture. So it's extremely... I think, you know, one of the things that's so often misunderstood about Bosch is we focus so often on the monstrous iconography that we often neglect to realise how technically accomplished he was.

23:46 Well, I think as well, I mean, you mentioned that big project that culminated with this 2016 show that I went to see. The thing I remember really concluding is that Bosch is known as a painter of... these sort of bizarre pageants of fantastical hybrid creatures, etc, etc. Actually, the way he constructs his monsters is with a tremendous degree of solidity and reality.

24:10 And here we're not looking at monsters at all, although you do have that slightly unhinged quality of some of the expressions, which gives a bit of a sense of that Boschian delirium that you sometimes find in his pictures. But that sense of solidity of the real world being what he's constructing his pictures from is very plain here.

24:27 Before we go to the break, I just want to talk about one other work. And the reason I want to talk about this painting is because I think it is a proper breakthrough work for Hieronymus Bosch. And this is called The Adoration of the Magi, which he also paints in the mid-1490s. It's in the Prado in Madrid.

24:44 And the reason I think it's a breakthrough work, Alistair, is because this is not a work for Sertig and Bosch. This is a work that is commissioned by a wealthy couple in the metropolis of Antwerp. And so it's a breakout moment for him. And it's one of the reasons why he signs this painting. And the signature is very interesting.

25:06 He becomes, in fact, one of the very first artists in Northern Europe. Van Eyck is probably the first to actually sign his work. And he signs it. He doesn't sign it Hieronymus van Aachen. He signs it Hieronymus Bosch. And And this is really significant. It is fascinating. A little later, there's also a record of...

25:26 He does a very large painting of The Last Judgment, which was commissioned by one of the Dukes of Burgundy, I think, Philip the Fair. And you find a similar thing where elsewhere there's a record of this. I think the record's even in Lille. And it refers to this artist, Hieronymus van Aachen called Bosch.

25:45 And the Bosch thing, the name is very... I mean... It's worth just a moment to think about the name. He's named after Saint Jerome, right? There are two versions of his real name, as it were. Both are throwing to Saint Jerome. The Latinised, originally Greek version of Saint Jerome's name is Hieronymus, hence Hieronymus.

26:03 And I have read, I did not know this, but I found it absolutely fascinating, that at the time, people believed that that word, that name, meant sacred grove or holy wood. which is, of course, a link to Bosch, Bosch meaning wood, which he then calls himself. So there's a double meaning pun thing going on, which he adores in his work.

26:28 You find lots of puns and so on. But yes, the point is that by this point, essentially by around about 1500, he is an artist from this artistic backwater who didn't need to work because he's independently wealthy, but he has an international reputation. And that's why he chooses the surname Bosch, because I think what he's actually doing is he's saying to clients, to rich clients who might be seeing this in Antwerp, he's saying, this is made by a guy called Hieronymus in Bosch.

26:56 So if you want to seek him out and commission something, you need to go to Bosch. So it's like a calling card. It's like you saying... Alistair Hackney or something like that. Yes, how catchy. So this is a really, really important work for Hieronymus Bosch. Let's talk it through. So it's a triptych, which means it's three panels.

27:15 The central panel shows the adoration of the Magi itself. Very famous religious moment, of course. Everyone knows about it. When Christ, shortly after being born, the three kings, the three Magi, come bearing gifts for the new baby. And we can see Christ on his mother's lap in front of this barn and on the side the barn which is i mean just you know very briefly the three magi who are there are so elaborately and ornately dressed and the barn is such a shabby humble dwelling from the region so it feels almost like a glimmering of there's observation of the real landscape again that sense of reality and Is it a successful fusion of those two elements?

27:56 I don't know. But, you know, I suppose the contrast is, that's the whole point, the humility of the origins of Jesus Christ as he was born in the stable versus these grand sages who seek him out. I mean, I think the barn is just so beautifully painted, so wonderfully observed. And on the side panels, we can see the husband and wife who commissioned the painting and, together with their respective patron saints, also witnessing the scene.

28:21 And the whole thing is set within this stunningly rendered panoramic landscape. And also we've got the city of Jerusalem beyond. The Prado says it's Bethlehem. I think it's more likely to be Jerusalem. So I don't think Bethlehem was a metropolis. But anyway, so far so conventional. Yes. But actually, when you start to look more closely at this picture, you begin to see some slight weird...

28:45 Boschian stuff. Can I say a few details that I really love? Yes, go ahead. As well as the Magi, there are these six shepherds who are peeping around the side of the hut, who seem to be wielding presumably some agricultural implements. They look a bit like golf clubs, but peering, these yokels, really.

29:01 He's... Again, there's great play and drama between the Magi versus the Rustics who are looking on. Within the barn, you have this very strange crew, including this bizarre character. I'm hoping you can explain who he is, where he appears to be semi-naked. He has a very elaborate headdress and this crimson robe that he's sort of almost slipping off one shoulder and his naked leg is peeping out like a chorus girl or something.

29:28 And he's wearing a sort of thorn crown as well, isn't he? I think he's the Antichrist, isn't he? He's often interpreted as the Antichrist. So that's the false messiah who was believed to precede the second coming of Christ. And one of the other interesting things while we're in that barn is that you will see that right in the roof of the barn, in the hayloft, There's a little owl.

29:49 Yeah, he loves his owls, Bosh, doesn't he? He loves owls. There's actually, I think, maybe a dead mouse or a rat next to the owl. Yes. And of course, we often think of owls as embodiments of wisdom. Yeah. This was not the case in the 15th century. Well, it's very interesting. Yes, we obviously need to have that debate because do you just reject absolutely that...

30:12 Bosch could have seen any positive attributes which would have been associated in antiquity with owls, with the owls he depicts. I don't think so. I think the owls are nearly always, in some ways it's almost like a signature, isn't it? Because in almost every picture from this point on, you get owls.

30:27 They always look baleful, very watchful, slightly menacing with their glare, don't they? And because they were birds of the night, they were associated with ignorance. They were associated with wickedness. I think that's what the meaning is. There's also in the left panel, do you see a guy who's sort of sitting by a fire looking rather stupid doing some laundry?

30:47 Do you know who that is? I don't know who that is. That is Joseph. So Joseph, I mean, Joseph is always an interesting character in the history of art because artists never really knew what to do with him because he was obviously an important part of the story. He was, you know, he was the partner to Mary, but you couldn't make him too prominent because if you made Joseph too prominent, then it would raise all these interesting questions.

31:09 problematic questions like was he actually the father of christ was she actually a virgin and so typically artists would place joseph at a distance looking like an imbecile and we can see him here is he washing a nappy or something like that but the really interesting stuff in this picture is taking place right in the background in this remarkable landscape and the first thing you can see is just behind the barn in the central panel we can see an army On the left, you can see they're wearing turbans.

31:42 No one really knows what they are. They could perhaps be Herod soldiers. So, of course, after he heard about Christ's birth, Herod ordered for all these young baby boys to be killed, the so-called massacre of the innocents. So this could be an army heading out to kill all the children to try to stop Christ growing up.

32:01 But the really, really, fascinating and for me totally terrifying detail in this picture is one that is so easily missed. So if you go to the left panel we can see a couple. They're a man and a woman and they are pootling around in the countryside. They're possibly dancing to the piper. If you move right to the second panel you can see them standing outside a building that is Alistair Well, we know that it is in fact not just a rather charming, rustic, tumble-down dwelling.

32:34 I mean, it could well be all those things. But it's also a brothel. Yes. And we know that because there's a flag with a swan and apparently the dovecot above it, these are things that identify it and would have identified it to people at the time as a brothel. Yes. So this couple, they are being led astray.

32:59 monkey riding some kind of horse or donkey. Another symbol of lust. A symbol of lust. A symbol of human beings being governed by animal instincts. There's also, just underneath the swan flag, can you see very sinister detail of a man peeking around a corner. So things are about to go wrong for this couple.

33:18 And indeed, if we follow the story right to the right panel, we can see that he, the man, is now being attacked by a wolf. Right. And she is about to be attacked by a wolf. So totally amazing that what we have going on in the background of this picture, almost unnoticed, is we have this remarkable story, tragedy, playing out.

33:42 reason why you've talked about those details in such depth because in a sense what you're seeing here are a number of themes yes devices motifs that are so centrally important when it comes to discussing the garden of earthly delights i mean very briefly some fantastical architecture in the background this quite spring-like beautiful landscape that's there but also this theme of lust sexuality yes um these are key key things so totally and we'll see how he does that in much greater detail after the break.

34:13 So just before we go to the break to simply say this painting is indeed a game changer for Bosch. It makes an enormous difference to his career. We know this from the fact that 22 copies of this picture were made in the years after it was made. So lots of artists were making copies of it. Lots of patrons wanted their own versions of it.

34:32 So it had a really, really significant impact on his professional development. So Alastair, by the middle of the 1490s, Bosch is on a roll. He is rich, he is famous, his workshop is growing, he can't stop eating swans. Everything is on the up. Or is it? Because as far as he is concerned, the end of the world is approaching.

34:55 Join us after the break. A reminder that if you want to see the artworks we're discussing, you can switch to video in your podcast app at any time. You can now find us on Instagram at storiesofart.henny. So please do follow us, comment, and by all means, suggest topics for future episodes. Welcome back to Stories of Art, or should I say, welcome to the apocalypse.

35:30 Because you know, Alistair, as the 1490s rolled on, Europeans developed something of an eschatological obsession. Not scatological, that's a different thing. Is it worth unpacking that word? An eschatological obsession, which is an obsession about really the end of the world. Yes. Really people, but around the year 1500, people started to fear that things were about to come to a very sudden end.

35:52 I mean, you remember when we did the Michelangelo series, we spent a lot of time in Florence thinking about Savonarola, the preacher, the bonfire of the vanities. It's that idea, isn't it? It really is that end of days feel. And we had this, I mean, you know, you must remember when we were approaching the year 2000.

36:08 I'd made a note to say the very same. What was it called? The Millennium Bug. Well, yeah, everyone thought Microsoft Windows was. going to come to an end or something like that. My grandfather was absolutely sure it was going to be the end of the world. Well, there was a similar vibe around 1500. And it's not that people thought, oh, on the 1st of January 1500, the world will come to an end.

36:25 But there was a real end of days vibe. So, Von Arola was part of that. Columbus had sailed across the Atlantic to the New World in the 1490s. Lots of people thought that was a negative portent omen. And clever artists were jumping on the bandwagon. So Albrecht Dürer, I think we might be doing a series about Dürer next year.

36:40 I really hope so. I would like to. Oh, good. Dürer does a series of woodcuts called the Apocalypse series, which comes in, I think, 1498, 1499. I know that we've said that, you know, you can't always explain everything about Bosch through context. But I do think he's channeling this sense of... pessimism, of doom, of that the last judgment is approaching in the works he goes on to make in the years around 1500.

37:08 I think it's worth saying as well that sometimes it's quite tempting to look at the past and think it's quite remote and possibly slightly silly in some of its belief systems by modern enlightened standards. But we happen to be recording this in... in the week where there's been huge news story about various people working in AI, saying that if we achieve AI super intelligence, there is a very significant chance that AI will kill, destroy all of humanity.

37:37 And people are taking that, understandably, because it's pretty effing scary, very seriously. And, you know, I mentioned it just because It's not just ridiculous that these silly people approaching 1500 were thinking it's the end of times, but it really was, by their standards, their metric, a deeply held belief that was their reality.

37:57 You know, they really believed that they were living in a culture in which damnation was real, in which heaven and hell was real, and in history felt like it was coming to an end, that destruction of the world was imminent. It's true. It's what they believed. It was reality as far as they're concerned.

38:12 And Bosch is part of that. And that's why in the years around 1500 and afterwards, Bosch makes a series of truly remarkable and terrifying paintings about the end of the world, if you like. And the most celebrated of them is without question The Garden of Earthly Delights, which is in the Prado in Madrid, like a number of his great works.

38:33 It dates from around that time. We don't know exactly when, but circa 1500, could be 1490s into the very early 1500s. Before we get into the picture... We should talk a little bit about the patron. We don't really know who the patron was. We know that in 1517, so the year after Bosch died, it was seen in a palace in Brussels owned by Henry III of Nassau.

39:01 And a lot of people, scholars for a long time, felt that Henry III had commissioned it... to mark his wedding in 1503. We now think the picture was made slightly earlier than that. And so most scholars now think it was commissioned by someone called Engelbert II. His uncle. His uncle. Very educated Burgundian courtier.

39:20 And that it would have hung in their palace. Now, that is a really important fact. Although this is a religious picture, it's not for an ecclesiastical setting. So, I mean, it takes the classic form of a church altarpiece. It is a hinged triptych. So there are three panels, and it means that those thinner outer panels can fold over the central image to reveal on the other side of those two panels, they come together and there's another picture, which we'll start to discuss in a moment.

39:46 So in a sense, there are what? actually five paintings within one. But I don't think anyone believes that this could ever really have been in a church, partly because of the batshit crazy sexual subject matter, which we're going to get into shortly. The Burgundian court is quite interesting, ultra sophisticated elite Northwest Europe, about a century.

40:08 This is in the Low Countries. Originally, these Dukes of Burgundy descended from the French Royal House. They rule that part of the world and commission an enormous amount of beautiful, sophisticated, high-end art. And I think some people have even suggested that perhaps there could be almost an educational component to the Garden of Earthly Delights if it is commissioned by, what's he called?

40:31 Engelbert. Engelbert. Engelbert II, possibly to educate that nephew, Hendrik III, Count of Nassau. I really love the fact that the 1517, because, you know, as you've established, there are so few facts with Bosch that you really have to make the ones that you have work very hard. I love the 1517 moment.

40:50 It's a man, an Italian, who writes about it. He calls it extraordinary. He's called Antonio de Beatis. And he's travelling around on a sort of, you know, European, quote unquote, grand tour, although that didn't really exist as a concept yet, with a cardinal, isn't he? And on the same tour, it's when he meets Leonardo da Vinci.

41:07 What a great trip. So he... encounters both Bosch's work and Leonardo. The fact that it's hanging in a private residence of Palace is important. This is not really a devotional work, even though it is religious in its subject matter. This is a work, I presume, that was designed to educate, but also to excite, to provoke conversation, to inspire curiosity.

41:29 It was that kind of thing. And that explains so much of the weirdness that we're about to explore. And maybe it's worth saying, in essence, what you're alluding to is the central debate with Bosch is, is he presenting an orthodox Christian message? Or is there something which is quite heretical and subversive about his work?

41:48 There's a real paradox and tension which no one has been able to resolve. And nor will we. And nor will we. And nor will we. But we should bear that in mind as we go through the next bit, because it makes it all the more fascinating, that complexity, I think. It really does. So let's begin describing the picture.

42:05 Let's begin, actually, with it closed, because everyone knows the inside of the triptych. But actually, it would have spent most of its time closed. So let's look at the exterior panels. There are two of them. For me, this is no less remarkable in some ways than what's going on inside today. No, I'm just looking at them in a picture in a book.

42:23 I mean, it's worth saying a little bit of dimensions. Each of these panels is, what is it, about seven foot high. And maybe when it's open and across, it's definitely more than 12 foot across. So it's big. But when it's closed, instead of having that very colourful expanse of landscape filled with all of these figures, which we'll describe in a moment...

42:43 You have something which has been painted conventionally for an altarpiece of the period, for the outer panels when they're closed, in something called grise. In other words, in greys. It's effectively monochrome. And you see this enormous globe that looks like a giant crystalline globe, maybe some sort of snow globe.

43:01 Yeah, it's like a... It's like a snow globe. It's a snow globe, really. And across the middle, you have this flat landscape internally inside. The outside is actually reflecting light. There's this huge, very wonderful, tempestuous cloud formation going on at the top of the globe. And what Bosch is painting here is the third day of creation, according to the book of Genesis, when God the Father, who you can see in the very top left of that left area, panel as you look at it, a slightly hesitant, almost shy looking bearded man with a sort of papal crown and an open book, probably the Bible on his lap.

43:38 He's separated light from dark, the lands from the water, and there are no people yet. There's no Adam, no Eve yet. But instead, you have this landscape filled with sprouting with vegetation and plant life. And, And when you really zoom in and look at some of the plant life, it's in true Bosch style, like nothing you'd really encounter.

44:00 Except it's really believable. Yes. You know, it has that sense of like quasi reality, which gives it a solidity. But you have these strange forms that look like parts of what? I don't know. Crab pincers, slightly bodily. There's a bit of a sense of if you really look at them, and this isn't just my dirty, lecherous mind, but they are quite suggestive, some of them.

44:23 And I think he's... Everything's bodily in Bosch. Well, he's teeing up what you're going to see when you open up the images. And I was struck, actually, when I was just looking the other day at this. When you look at the landscape, when it is opened up, I think you can almost see in the background some of the forms that you see here.

44:40 They're certainly quite related with their strangeness. And at the top, you have, as well as God the Father, against the darkness, you have two Latin inscriptions that come not from Genesis, but from the Psalms. And they translate as, for he spake, and it was done, and for he commanded, and they were created.

45:04 So you have here Bosch's vision of God's creation of the earth. On day three, as you say. So day one, he's separated light from darkness. Day two, he makes the sky and the atmosphere. We can see the sky beautifully depicted. And on day three, he makes the land, he makes the sea, he makes the vegetation, and we can see the land emerging from the water.

45:25 So when you see this piece closed, you have no idea of what it's going to be like inside. And I'm sure this was part of the pleasure of the work itself when it was displayed at the time, that Engelbert would bring his viewers over. Yes. He'd take a look at this and he'd open it and suddenly the monochrome world erupted into colour and the deserted, empty landscape filled with hundreds and hundreds of figures.

45:48 I would go beyond pleasure. I think that's an essential part of the work's drama. It is a moment of theatrical spectacle to have the reveal. Yeah, it's wonderful. Yeah. Well, now we're inside. We're going to look at the triptych inside three panels, all of them extraordinary in different ways. I think, maybe you disagree with me, but I think the way to read it is from left through to right.

46:09 Yeah, look, there is a debate to be had because, in a sense, you can say that the most conventional panels are the ones that flank the central image. Yeah. And whilst, of course, and we will, let's do them in order left to right and you can construct a narrative that takes you through, One thing to bear in mind, as far as I'm concerned, is that that central image, which is the biggest, it is also the strangest, the most mysterious and impossible almost to parse and really define what is going on.

46:40 And in a sense, that is the essence. That's the core of this work and its specialness. Yeah. I just say that and part that thought. Well, let's try left to right. And we can always come back to the middle one at the end if our overall discussion makes us rethink the meaning of the middle. Yes. So let's begin on the left.

46:56 We're in a beautiful landscape with fruit trees, hills, streams, all the things that we saw in the process of being made when the piece was closed. Is this the Garden of Eden? Probably it is. It's certainly full of exotic creatures, many of which Bosch would surely have never seen. There is an elephant, there's a giraffe, there's a unicorn drinking at the watering hole, probably not native to 15th century Netherlands.

47:23 Some of the animals were probably drawn from bestiaries. They were copied from bestiaries. Others totally invented. There's a two-legged dachshund and a three-headed lizard. You see, I love that. I mean, it's almost arrogant on Bosch's part. He's outdoing God the Creator in terms of the fecundity of the natural forms he can envisage and come up with.

47:43 Yes, absolutely. And in the foreground of the picture, we can see just next to a dragon tree, which is native to the Canary Islands. In fact, I was on holiday in the Canary Islands a month or so ago, and I think I saw one. We can see a naked Adam and Eve with a rather youthful God in the centre. And he looks like Christ.

48:01 there rather than God the farm. He does, doesn't he? And he is looking out at us and he is making some injunction. And we think what he is saying is from Genesis as well. And it's when he says, I'm going to quote Genesis, and God blessed them. And God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the Which I love.

48:31 I mean, he may well be saying that. But when you look at the painting, Adam has really eyes only for Eve, who's being presented to him. So it's not the moment where God is plucking out Adam's rib and creating Eve. But he's showing Eve, who is very demure, she's looking downwards, and her white glowing naked body is sort of framed by this mandala of golden hair behind her.

48:54 But Adam, if you really zoom up close, he has this kind of look His cheeks are flushed pink. He is besotted instantly with his new partner, isn't he? He really is. But a lovely little... I've only just noticed this now. Isn't there an amazing little piece of intimacy where we can actually see Adam's feet touching God's robe, almost touching God's foot, Wonderful sense of them being connected in that sense.

49:23 But I think that the passage that I mentioned from Genesis, I think that is crucial for understanding not just the meaning of this particular panel, but the meaning of the whole thing. Because, of course, we know full well that Adam and Eve do not obey God's rules. They eat the forbidden fruit. This is, of course, original sin.

49:43 Yeah. And if you look on the right of this panel, there is a date tree. I think it's a date tree. And we have the serpent. We have the snake curling around it, almost as though it is waiting for Eve to come on over. But you also have these other strange elements that you don't expect to find in a vision of the Garden of Eden.

50:03 So where is it? Somewhere in the background. Is it a lion attacking, savaging, goring an antelope? And then in the foreground, just by Adam, you have a cat which is has in its jaws some silhouetted black creature could be what is it a sort of lizard perhaps some kind of rat so there's a sense here of death and violence which are jarring notes to find in such a scene right yeah and another jarring note can you see that extraordinary pink fountain right in the center of the picture well right in the center of that his little hole yes and peering out at us.

50:41 We have our dear old Boschian friend, an owl. We have the owl. So again, I think what you're completely right in saying is that Bosch is seeding a sense of disaster, even in this picture of paradise. You are right to mention the fountain. And of course, there's the owl at the centre. Let's not just skip past the fountain.

51:00 The fountain is such a strange shape. I mean, it's sort of a bit phallic but not really phallic. It has a bodily, fleshy, pink aspect to it. It's a completely fantastical form and itself seems to be like this rocket of fecundity where various bits of it are proliferating and spawning other bits and out they unfurl.

51:25 You mentioned that famous line from the Bible about God saying go forth and multiply essentially. I mean Eve is surrounded by some And, you know, next to the fountain, you have all of these odd creatures. Some of them, again, what do they have? Three heads, things you would never see in real life emerging from the water.

51:46 But then it's also interesting to reflect on the fact that you mentioned Columbus a few minutes ago. This is an age of horizons expanding so rapidly, of discoveries all around the world. And in a sense, to Bosch and many of his viewers, you know, Is a unicorn any more fantastical than, say, a giraffe?

52:08 No. Both are depicted in the painting, but I don't think Bosch could possibly have seen. We certainly wouldn't have seen a unicorn, but I don't think he would have seen a giraffe either. So there's that sense, perhaps, of a world that itself feels like it could be proliferating with all of these magical new discoveries that he's channeling that spirit of the age.

52:25 I think. He so is. Let's move now to the central panel, because this is where things get really weird. We are still in this verdant garden setting. The landscape is actually continuous from the panel on the left. The horizon line continues. It continues, but it has even more strange structures. The fruit is even larger.

52:46 It reminds me of the scene of something of the Willy Wonka factory... Well, I mean, we're obviously vying for our memorable descriptions. I look at this and think it's as if this is maybe a bit esoteric, but it's like the Teletubbies landscape. Yes, it is. If someone like Nabokov, someone with a perverse imagination, had completely redone it.

53:06 It also really makes me think of this, and before the description, this may not quite make sense, but I just, as I was preparing this episode... Have you ever read Brave New World, Aldous Huxley? Yes. And you know how a big part of it is everyone's on this drug soma and it's about erotic play and this sort of almost antiseptic sexuality and pleasure and it's almost like, well, I'm not sure I want a piece of that pleasure.

53:26 That, in a sense, to me anyway, is the same spirit you find here. I was going to say, where's Wally? Where's Wally as well? Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you look at this, there are hundreds of figures, a plethora of just bizarre detail. We can't possibly go through and analyse it all. No. just describing some of what we're seeing and trying to break it down.

53:49 There are really three zones. There's that distant zone where you have more of these, as you say, fantastical structures emerging out of water and all sorts of odd people and creatures. There is a whole load of people trying to go back into an eggshell, for example. You have a middle zone where right at the centre of the picture you have this pool, the so-called pool of maidens, where you have these alluring naked women of various skin colours.

54:14 Some of them, I think, do they have apples on their heads? I mean, I need to zoom in to really check. And then around them, this riotous kind of wild charging procession of men on horseback, like animal passions unleashed. They seem to be really excited by the maidens they can see. And then in the foreground, you have yet more of these naked, frankly, quite doll-like, hairless adult figures who are just having a quote-unquote seemingly good time.

54:45 Many of them look like they're about to have sex or they're really enjoying eating, as you say, these oversized pieces of fruit. There are all of these very sinister, I think sinister, but meticulously painted gigantic birds. I love those. And the people are much smaller in comparison. I feel like Bosch is a real auteur of horror.

55:07 He gets a sense of that suppressed menace of the avian world way before someone like Alfred Hitchcock. Do you know I used to be an ornithologist? I was a young ornithologist as a child. Well, they are accurate, aren't they? aren't they? They are totally accurate. So you can see there's a green woodpecker, there's a robin, there's a goldfinch, who'll play a very important role in 17th century Dutch art, of course.

55:25 There's a mallard, there's a hoopoo. And that's really at the heart of, you mentioned this already, Bosch's brilliance, is that though he creates these weird hybrid forms, the actual ingredients are so brilliantly, meticulously represented. Yeah. And you have as well. I mean, we should mention, you spoke about the owl that's in the middle of that odd pink fountain on the left hand panel.

55:47 Well, this central image is flanked by two further owls. One is seemingly being embraced by a man. And then the other is on top of some strange prancing, kind of Morris dance style jig with lots of pieces of fruit. And they both are staring out again, a somber, perhaps sinister note. I mean, a very early observer of this painting, I think, referred to it, interestingly, as the strawberry plant.

56:16 Because you find here so many oversized strawberries, as well as other types of fruit. And you can see in certain places, actually, weirdly, the birds are almost feeding the fruit to some of the people, as though the people are their tiny bird babies, like gobbling the fruit that's coming down towards them.

56:31 There's a real sense of sensual, sensuous appetite which is being indulged. And I think the whole thing feels a bit like, you know, we've tried Where's Wally, Teletubbies, but it certainly has this fairground quality from afar, doesn't it? It feels like this is somehow a holiday atmosphere of consequence-free, question mark, pleasure-making.

56:56 I think, Alistair, that brings up a really important question around this panel, because it is without question the most mysterious panel in the whole picture. And what art historians have been debating for years is essentially whether we are supposed to approve of what is going on here or whether we are supposed to disapprove.

57:15 Yes. is good or whether it's bad there was a brilliant art historian called hands belting and hands belting made the point that this is a positive vision this is a what if this is had adam and eve not disobeyed god and not taken fruit from the tree of knowledge we would all still be in the garden of eden eating all this wonderful fruit having a lovely time i don't buy this interpretation at all i i think i don't buy it either No, interesting.

57:41 I mean, should we, because that is really getting into the meat of it, and I think it's fascinating, and we've got to do it. But should we complete the description before we get stuck into it? The other very interesting part of this picture is if you look at the bottom left of the panel, you can see a group of figures, and they are gesturing across to the other panel, brilliant little motif, and they are pointing towards Adam and Eve and God.

58:09 Yes. This is a really, really important moment in the picture. And it could mean lots of different things. Well, I think the theory you've just briefly sketched hinges, I think, partly on that moment, because it's almost as though this group of people in this strange, like, never-neverland of paradise or sleeping with each other is looking back to Adam and Eve.

58:31 And we spoke about that sort of slight erotic besotted charge to their first encounter and kind of going, look, this is where it all began. Yeah. Oh, they're saying, hey, it's mum and dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's our ancestors over there. But isn't that Aldous Huxley-like and weird? Yes. It is weird. Because the sexuality here, I mean, again, we're now jumping ahead, but I think it is antiseptic.

58:53 Yes. You know, there is no body hair. There is no real sense of passion apart from the odds. You can see glimpsing maybe someone is in one of the fountains in the background trying to grab at his partner's genitals. Yeah. But there is a doll-like quality to it. Yes. And I think that is what makes it especially unsettling.

59:12 And for me is what slightly demolishes the idea that, oh, what a wonderful paradise we could all be part of. I just think, yeah, I don't buy Belting's theory, because I just think if you try to put yourself into the mind of... a deeply superstitious religious person circa 1500, how could they possibly look at this scene when they've been told, you know, sensuous pleasure, physical pleasure is a sin, when having sex for pleasure is a sin?

59:39 How could they look at this and say, hey, that's great? But on the other hand, and this is the tremendous ambiguity and people tie themselves up in knots to explain why this might be the case, it does, as I say, have this holiday feel. Yes. Ostensibly, the bright colours, the kind of beautiful landscape, the sunny day, the sense of these wonderful notes of red of those strawberries, the other fruits.

1:00:01 It feels somehow exciting. It's certainly pleasurable to look at. And the fact there were so many details is inviting close scrutiny. So it's really, really double-edged. But you're right, that sort of sense of contemporary sensibility. I mean, I don't know whether you want to say more about that central panel for now or not.

1:00:17 But, you know, you can see it writ large on the right-hand panel where you're plunged into a kind of classic from this moment vision of hell. So it's kind of firing in all directions and it's uncontainable in its... riotous originality, which is a stunning thing. Shall we move to the right? Shall we move to hell?

1:00:38 So this is the hangover after the party. And it's totally horrific. How do we even begin? I mean... Well, continuous horizon line, even if it's not quite, it's no longer that daylit world, isn't it? So some people see that there is a kind of linking of the three images and as you are advocating, a simple clear progression from left through to right, which would make tremendous sense.

1:01:02 Can I focus for a moment, before we get into the monsters, can I focus for a moment on the top third of this panel? This is an absolutely horrific scene of a city, perhaps, burning down. We can see fires breaking out all over the place. And amid the flames and the smoke, we can see humans as tiny as insects trying to save themselves.

1:01:25 Some are escaping buildings down ladders. Others are leaping out of windows into the canal below, drowning. You can almost hear their screams, actually, when you see the picture. And we can also see, and this is so scary, there is an army approaching the city, the army of hell, and they are being led by some kind of demon riding some kind of monster.

1:01:46 It's very Lord of the Rings, very Battle of Helm's Deep. But as we concentrate on this subject matter, it's easy to forget, I think, how stunning the actual painting is. If you look closely at the way he's painted the flames, you can see how he's created these shafts of light by dragging wet paint across the panel.

1:02:07 And look at the way he's created the reflection of the flames in the clouds at the top. I mean, this is like Turner. It's like... You know what it reminds me of? Photography of the Blitz of London in the Blitz. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing, it does have so many modern parallels. It reminds me of the Blitz.

1:02:22 It reminds me of those figures jumping out of the buildings of 9-11. It reminds me of Grenfell. But I just wonder, to go back to where we were at the start, whether Bosch here is channelling his... childhood memories, when he was 13 years old and a fire tore through his hometown. It has an intensity and authenticity to it, I think, which suggests very much that it's not a piece of autobiography, but those memories when he paints this are still very much there.

1:02:51 And he's drawing upon that somehow. And in a sense, that Inferno is a source of his artistic gift. Are there any particular characters in this? in this panel that you'd like to talk about? I mean, there are so many. We should come on... I mean, you've mentioned the brilliant one who's excreting that sort of balloon blue turd with his bird-like head in the foreground.

1:03:14 But you see essentially a whole... a myriad odd demons and sinners who are being tormented for their sins. Yeah. Oddly, a lot of them are being tormented with musical instruments. So you have these infernal inversions of what musical instruments are being used for. So, for example, there's a man who's being crucified on a harp.

1:03:39 And then just beneath that, just to pluck one detail at random, there's a horrible demon who is very pink. And behind him, there's a seemingly human choir. They're all singing with great gusto. Yeah. And they're singing according to a score that's on someone's buttocks that's being crushed underneath a giant lute.

1:03:56 And then up above, you have these really, and I use the word advisedly, surreal images of a gigantic pair of ears projecting a huge knife blade as if waddling along. Ears, clearly all the instruments suggesting sound. They are being tormented with horrors. presumably a cacophony of sound in hell it also frankly has a phallic component to it that that little vignette and next to it you have this central image of the so-called tree man who is this very odd hybrid figure with a face some have said in the past could have been actually bosh's self-portrait turning back to look out at the viewer or perhaps look right down to Adam and God in the very first panel.

1:04:41 Interesting. And he has two trees for legs, which seem to emerge from these boats, which are precariously in this, I think, lake of ice, possibly. And then this carapace-like abdomen, which is almost no longer like a tree, but becomes like an egg, which is cracked open. And then inside there's a tavern scene.

1:05:01 And on top of him, he has a head with this kind of enormous pink bagpipe itself again looks completely phallic feels like sexual organs there are more demons cavorting around i said it was hallucinatory it is a full-on wild mind-blowing trip totally mad you mentioned that tree man perhaps is a self-portrait uh of bosch there but inside tree man there is one man who is looking out at us and i have a hunch that that might be a self-portrait well there's another one in the bottom right corner of the central panel where you you sometimes get these figures don't you in his work i mean clearly here where you see someone who seems actually compared to all the mayhem relatively sane and slightly maybe ironic yes looking out and is addressing the viewer and creating that link and it's almost like a knowing wink somehow yeah

1:05:49 And I think this guy in Tree Man, he is one of the few people, one of the few humans in this scene who is dressed in ordinary clothes. He's looking out at us, making direct eye contact. Look at how his hand is positioned. It's almost as though he's looking at himself in the mirror, painting himself. And the other hand is on his face, which is the classic melancholic pose, which was often associated with artists.

1:06:13 I just wonder... We'll never know for certain whether this might be Bosch peering out. I mean, you speak of mirrors. There's another mirror slightly lower down where you have, I'm just looking at reproduction in a book, a naked woman who is being caressed, groped, in the most unpleasant fashion by this kind of black, nightmarish, deer-like creature.

1:06:32 And she seemingly is forced to see her own reflection in a mirror where her face appears red, which is attached to the arse, to the bottom of some green goblin-like thing that's sort of stuck towards her face. Right down as well, you can see a very important moment that people speak about a lot is the famous pig nun in the bottom right corner where there is a pig with a nun's veil on its head.

1:06:58 And long story short, essentially, this is clearly a piece of satire on the contemporary church. And actually to circle back to that idea of the impending apocalypse, as well as things like syphilis epidemics, disease disease. printing press spreading all sorts of strange novel ideas. But the corruption of the church was a reason why people believed that perhaps end times were a coming.

1:07:19 And I think you see that articulated here. Definitely. I just want to think about the musical instruments. I've only just had this idea whether the musical instruments are important because possibly this triptych would have been displayed in a room in which musical performances might have taken place.

1:07:34 Well, there is some interpretation of the whole thing where actually people look at it through that courtly prism and see subtle inversions within the painting of courtly pastimes, perhaps courtly settings. Bear in mind that we, although whether it was Engelbert, Humperdinck or Hendrik III or whatever, we know that this is most likely senior nobility from the Burgundian court who commissioned this.

1:07:58 And I think that's very interesting. You spoke about the social upgrade. You've got a sense of the interest of the natural world. You have an interest in popular folk customs and sayings. But there's also clearly an awareness of and a throwing to those pastimes of the elite. And just to remind listeners of the Genesis passage we mentioned in the very first panel on the left, do you remember what it said?

1:08:22 It said, have dominion over the fish of the sea. and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Well, here we are seeing an inversion of that. We are seeing animals have dominion, animals controlling and terrorising and tormenting the human beings. Yes. I mean, I would just really encourage people to go and spend some time looking at the details because they are so fascinating.

1:08:45 In a sense, we could do this endlessly, describe every single one, and you'd be no closer to understanding the the DNA of this work of art and what it really means. I actually don't think it's that mysterious. I think the individual iconography is crazy and unprecedented. But actually, perhaps, I'm going to put an argument here, the programme is quite straightforward.

1:09:08 And that is effectively it's saying, God creates the world, God creates humans, he tells them to behave themselves, we don't behave ourselves, and we end up being punished and suffering in eternal damnation. Isn't that basically the point of the triptych? Quite possibly. The central theological problem that it brings up is why does God create this world in this fashion?

1:09:31 So that in the moment of paradise and Eden on the left, you have this potentially sinister owl. A lot of people describe it essentially as an allegory of lust. There's another very famous triptych that we have by Bosch known as the Haywain Triptych, I think also in the Prado, right? which is seen as an allegory of avarice.

1:09:51 And here, perhaps, it's the cardinal sin of lust that is being anatomised by Bosch. But you do wonder why we as humans have been put in this extraordinary situation, if you like, by our superiors up there, which, again, gives rise to that sense that could there be a strand of something almost subversive and heretical here?

1:10:14 Right. You know, I find it very interesting. It's been thoroughly discounted. But there was an art historian in the middle of the 20th century who put about this idea. He became very interested in a group of people known as the Adamites, who were a brotherhood who effectively, there's no record of them, I think, in the Low Countries or certainly in the Netherlands beyond about 1411 and not in Bosch's lifetime.

1:10:36 They were people who were independent in their sexual practices and mores and that sense of sexual freedom which they encouraged and promoted, which they believed was going back to that sort of prelapsarian innocence of the sexual relations between Adam and Eve. maybe there was still a group of these closet underground Adamites and Bosch could even have been one of them.

1:10:59 And this entire triptych might have been painted to sell the Adamite vision, possibly even to celebrate the marriage, I believe, of one of these so-called Adamites. Nonsense. Shemolay. Yeah. As I say, it's been rubbish. But the interest is that, well, there's a couple of interests. One is that In a sense, you can go with the argument because of that real sense of being on side with the pleasure, the sense of the free love.

1:11:25 The other interesting thing, of course, and this is jumping ahead to the painting's legacy, but, you know, since we're here... The idea that that idea was current in the 20th century is interesting. The moment of free love. You know, there is a kind of afterlife to Bosch where he becomes almost seen as like this proto-hippie before the psychedelia and counterculture of the 1960s, if you like.

1:11:45 And you see it in a world like the Garden of Earthly Delights. But ultimately, I suppose, if you're going to go back and be really prosaic and factual about it, he's part of the Brotherhood of Our Lady. Yeah. He's living in an intensely religious time. Ultimately, his paintings get collected and have a great deal of success, if you like, in Spain, collected by the most orthodox Catholic of them all, Philip II of Spain.

1:12:09 And it feels... highly unlikely that he could have been this secret heretic at the moment of the Inquisition and so on. I just don't see it at all. So then the conclusion has to be that it is orthodoxly religious. Yes. In which case, yes, ultimately big picture stuff, it is warning the viewer about the consequences of free love and lust.

1:12:37 Yes. Well, look, let's begin to wrap this episode up, Alastair. After producing works of this kind, and this is not the only one he produces, Bosch becomes very successful. He's very wealthy. He has maids. He has a workshop. He's got assistants doing quite a lot of paintings for him towards the end. But in the summer of 1516, Some kind of disease arrives in Sertigenbosch.

1:12:58 Could be plague, could be cholera, could be pleurisy. But what we do know is that at some point in the beginning of August 1516, when Bosch is in his mid to late 60s, he himself perishes. And on the 9th of August, some really fascinating information. We know his body was taken to the Church of St John, where the Brotherhood met, the bells were rung, the clergy celebrated the Requiem, a singer, an organist provided the music, his fellow members of the Brotherhood gathered in the chapel, and of course the gravediggers did their work.

1:13:31 But shall we talk to us for a minute or two about Bosch's legacy? Because, of course, Bosch didn't have a son who could continue the workshop, but he didn't disappear. Indeed, far from it. In fact, within a generation, his pictures were being collected by princes, they were being copied by workshops, they were being imitated.

1:13:50 Lots of artists in Northern Europe were making copies of Bosch paintings and often ageing them to make them look like they were real Boschers. I mean, you've got at least five paintings by him, which we know were in Venice in that first quarter-ish of the 16th century. So there's a real spread in terms of that reputation.

1:14:08 A real spread. And many great artists are inspired by him. I mean, one of the greatest artists, of course, is Bruegel, who I think is an even greater artist than Bosch. But I suppose the real legacy, in some ways, comes in the modern period. Well, the funny thing is, is that the sort of Bosch flame is tended to in Spain.

1:14:25 So you mentioned Bruegel, but in a sense, and of course, there is that dissemination of his work, but he falls in some ways out of favour. And you can see why if you think of a history of taste, the 18th century is a very different moment. And it's only really as you come into the end of the 19th century that he's quote unquote rediscovered.

1:14:44 And his work... Evidently, I think for reasons that we've already outlined, frankly, in the course of this conversation, his works have this resonance, this affinity with many of the concerns of the modern era and that sense of apocalypse, conflict, war. difficult things which we're still struggling with today.

1:15:06 I mentioned that AI, superintelligence, all mean that I think suddenly people look at the work of Bosch and it feels resonant. Dreams, the unconscious. Dreams and the unconscious. I mean, the obvious thing to say about him is that he's a huge influence on the surrealists. Now, the very interesting subtle technicality of it is that The Garden of Earthly Delights, which ends up in Philip II of Spain's collection, and he puts it in his monastery palace complex, the Escorial, it only arrives in the Prado in 1939.

1:15:31 Interesting moment in itself. Yeah. You know, post, well, just at the end of the Spanish Civil War, just at the outbreak of the Second World War, moment of real crisis in Europe. So the young Salvador Dali would not have seen this? Well, no. I actually... I'll completely hold my hands up. I would like to have had a little more time to do some digging into that.

1:15:49 What I can say is that a lot of surrealists, once they become aware of Bosch, cite him as a proto-surrealist. Whether he is... A clear reference for them very early in their life, I don't know. But Dali, Miro, Spanish artists, where the Bosch tradition is alive, they seem, for them, Bosch seems especially resonant.

1:16:10 And there's this unbelievable connection, which you can see in a very famous Dali painting called The Great Masturbator, appropriately enough, given the content of Garden of the Earthly Delights, where you have this rock-like form, seems to be melting, becomes almost like this sleeping, mustachioed figure.

1:16:26 And if you look at the left-hand panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights, next to that pink fountain, there is a similar sort of rocky outcrop, orangey ochre, which looks like the profile of potentially a face and a creature could be its eyelid on top. You put those images side by side and leaving any documentary evidence to one side, the visual evidence there to me is so – I mean, it feels like that.

1:16:51 It's a clear reference. So it does become very important in the 20th century, in part as well as I've already touched on, for the reasons of it seems to be an image of the great movement of sexual freedom – tree love that becomes so dominant within the 20th century. You can look as well at pop artists like Oldenburg, Klaus Oldenburg, making his gigantic pieces of food, you know, with a gigantic fruit in the Garden of Earthly Delights.

1:17:17 And I was even thinking someone like Jeff Koons, the American contemporary artist, whose work I think has a similar antiseptic sexuality component to it, seemingly innocent things up to a very large and distorting slash distressing scale. Maybe you could even draw a link there from The Garden of Earthly, didn't I?

1:17:36 And into cinema as well. I mean, you think of Terry Gilliam, you think of Pan's Labyrinth, you can see a lot of Bosch's hybrid imagination ends up fertilising so much, not just of art, but also popular culture. Fantasy computer games now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there is a great German word. You know, there's a great German word for everything.

1:17:53 There's a German word called Wimmelbild. Ah, what does it mean? Wimmelbild means a teeming picture. And I think that sense of overflowing is something that does prove very significant as we go forward. I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of figures in this triptych. It is remarkable. And you often find it in children's books, don't you?

1:18:14 We mentioned Where's Wally? But also in things like Richard Scarry. And in that sense, I think it really, the complexity, the overflowing nature of detail in Bosch's work, I think it really speaks to our time, a time which is accustomed to looking at high resolution digital images where you can zoom in, you can discover, you can isolate, you can replicate, you can create means.

1:18:38 Bosch's work really speaks to this digital moment, I think. Absolutely. I think there's something, I think all of that is true. I think there's something else really fundamental at work, which is that he represents unbridled, unfettered creativity, a sense of kind of this torrent of original image making that's pouring out.

1:18:57 These things did not exist before he invented them. Yes. And they are inventions and they are startling inventions, which are In a sense, to come back to that first thought, you would never expect someone from this part of the world to have come up with. Yes. And I think can only really be accounted for, not necessarily by, although it's a factor, say, the Inferno of 1463, but by some quirk of question mark divine, you know, but artistic genius.

1:19:25 Can I end with a quotation from the founder of Surrealism, André Breton? He says... Bosch is a complete visionary. His oeuvre, having emerged out of oblivion, calls into question the very foundations of the art of painting. So let's leave it there. Goodbye. Goodbye. Next week, we're starting a new series on the life of a man who some consider to be the first modern artist, William Hogarth.