A New Clue to Bosch's Garden of Delights Author(s): Patrik Reuterswrd Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 64, No.

4 (Dec., 1982), pp. 636-638 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3050276 . Accessed: 15/05/2013 08:47
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636

THE ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1982 VOLUME LXIV NUMBER 4

A New Clue to Bosch's Gardenof Delights Patrik Reuterswiard

An important feature of Bosch's great Prado triptych, The Garden of Delights, as is well known, is the presence of black people in the main panel. The appearance of whites and blacks together is in fact such a determining factor in the whole atmosphere of the scene that one may easily overlook the presence of a quite different kind of being, the wild man and woman. Among the fair-haired figures to the lower right stands a woman who is wholly covered with blond body hair,1 and the two men standing behind her are perhaps of the same species. In a cave next to these standing nudes is a man with undeniably individual features pointing in turn towards a reclining female nude in the right-hand corner (Fig. 1). We can safely assume that she is a key figure, since her mouth is sealed and she is shielded by a transparent semicylindrical prism, reinforced by equally transparent discs. Such devices serve to emphasize that she is the bearer of a secret. The man is seconded, in his attempts to attract our attention and make us aware of the enigmatic woman, by a companion to his right. Crowned with dark leaves and almost smiling, this broad-faced man also looks towards us from the mouth of the cave. Even though his presence is of secondary importance, his participation in focusing our attention is worth noting. This crucial corner has long remained an embarrassing problem, and most writers have dealt with it rather summarily. Wilhelm Fraenger,2 as I understand him, rightly identified the pointing man as the patron of the triptych, whereas Dirk Bax3 identified him with Adam in the act of "denouncing" Eve. A Spanish art historian, Isabel Mateo G6mez,4 observed that the man seems to be clad in something brownish, and therefore identified him with Saint John the Baptist in his camel cloak. But he lacks a beard, and manifests the pronounced individual characteristics of a portrait.5 During a visit to the Prado in 1981, I had occasion to scrutinize this problematic corner with greater care than before, with the following results. Like the standing nude next to the cave, the reclining "Eve" is also covered with hair - the lower portion of her body is concealed, but her blond fur appears quite clearly along her arms. This in turn explains the strange apparition of the pointing man. He does not carry the cloak of Saint John the Baptist, but is a wild man. Since his hair is reddish brown, Bosch gave him a brownish fur. The effect is contradictory, in somewhat the same way as in the case of the marble bust of Commodus as Hercules in the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome: a face that is very much the product of culture and sophistication is combined with a body that is as inconsistent with civilization

1 Bosch, The Garden of Delights, detail of lower right corner of central panel. Madrid, Prado

as are the lion's skin and club of Hercules. Apparently, it was the wish of this individual man (who may have been the patron) to be represented as a wild man. By appearing as such, he more emphatically declares his loyalty to the woman, or rather to the primitive kind of life she embodies. As for the leaf-crowned head next to this man, it can be established with certainty that it does not represent a person of the white race. The skin is darker, and the facial characteristics indicate Asia, if not Africa. How then are the wild man and woman to be evaluated? Since Adam and Eve occasionally were represented as wild people,6 we need not a priori rule out the Adam and Eve identification. It is worth noting that the woman contemplates a fruit, which,

1My sincerethanks to Ann Kempefor her help with the Englishtext. To my knowledge, the body hair of this standing nude was first Jheronimus Bosch,Brussels,1972, in recognizedby R.-H. Marijnissen, her as an his captionto Max Seidel'sclose-up,pl. 103. He understands of the time. exoticdevice,echoing,like others,the fancifultravelreports 2 Wilhelm Fraenger,HieronymusBosch: Das Tausendjithrige Reich, Coburg, 1947; reprintedin Fraenger'sHieronymusBosch, Dresden,
1975, 135ff.

en poging tot verklaringvan Het Tuin der Bax, "Beschrijving van Jeroen Onkuisheid-drieluik Bosch,gevolgddoorkritiek op Fraenger," d.K. Nederlandse Academievan Wetenschappen, Verhandelingen Afd.
3 Dirk

Letterkunde, LXIII, Amsterdam, 1956, 37ff.

4 Isabel Mateo, "El grupo de la cueva en el panel del 'Jardinde las Delicias'del Bosco,"Archivo espariolde arte, xxxvi, 1963, 253-57. 5 In my own attempt,HieronymusBosch, Uppsala,1970 (Figura,N.S. the man as the patronin the guise of vii), 70, I consequently interpreted SaintJohnthe Baptist.Hardlybetteris E. Gombrich's suggestionthatthe manis Noah ("Bosch's 'Garden of Earthly Delight':A Progress Report," Journal of the Warburgand CourtauldInstitutes, xxx, 1969, 169f.; in Gombrich'sThe Heritageof Apelles. Studiesin the Art of reprinted the Renaissance, Oxford, 1976, 89). 6 A remarkable Cathedral from exampleis on a roof boss in Winchester about 1400 (pl. 16 in PenelopeB.R. Doob, Nebuchadnezzar's Children, New Haven, 1974). I am indebtedto ProfessorCarlNordenfalkfor this reference.

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NOTES

637

however, she has not as yet tasted. On the other hand, the presence of other wild people in this section of the panel makes it reasonable to infer that Bosch here wished primarily to remind us of the wild forest people as a species in general. Thanks to Richard Bernheimer's comprehensive study of 1952,7 we know that the motif of the wild man was used in the most varied contexts, heraldically for instance as a symbol of strength. But no clubs are to be seen in this corner of the panel, or elsewhere in it, so that the pointing man and his wild woman may be associated, rather, with the more subdued view of the wild forest people that developed during the fifteenth century and later, as an imagined alternative to our civilized life. These unseen yet never distant dwellers of our forests were hailed as the noble savage at a time when the black people of Africa too could be recognized as such.s With the inclusion of the wild man and woman, the message of the triptych gains a more clear-cut primitivistic note. Bernheimer refers to a wild man tapestry, formerly in Sigmaringen, with scrolls that lament the evils of civilization. One wild man, for instance, pointing at his woman, says: "She and I, we complain that the world is so treacherous." In a more elaborate way, Hans Sachs later had the wild man express the same message in his "Klag der wilden holtzleut uber die ungetrewen welt," which he presented in Nuremberg on June 2, 1530. Just as the first eighty-five verses on the evils and the corruption of the world could almost serve as a guide to the right wing of Bosch's triptych, the lamentation ends with the following peaceful picture of the life of the wild man, as translated by Fred A. Childs: And so we left our worldly goods To make our home in these deep woods With our little ones protected From that falsehood we rejected We feed ourselves on native fruits And from the earth dig tender roots For drink pure springs are plentiful For warmth sunlight is bountiful For garments grass and leaves we take And from the same our beds we make Our homes are made in caves of stone And no one takes what's not his own The wild beasts which most men fear We find our good companions here Since we never do them harm They give us no cause for alarm And thus removed from civilization's Shams we've lived for generations United in our simple life Where never could be cause for strife Since none would call another "fool" For following the Golden Rule And worldly pleasure's paid no heed
7 Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages. A Study in Art, Sentiment, and Demonology, Cambridge, Mass., 1952, particularly 11317. a Henri Baudet, Paradise on Earth. Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man, New Haven, 1965, 14-22, 25. As Baudet rightly

We gather daily what we need For that day and don't have to hoard For all these gifts we thank the Lord If death should come or one fall ill We know that this is just God's will Which always sets things for the best And so our minds remain at rest As we await within our border That great change in the civil order When all the world will see the light And everyman live true, upright, In equal, unconniving good It's then we'll gladly leave the wood And rejoin mankind in tears Of Joy; We've waited for years and years. This turn to virtue Man now mocks, Will soon occur, hopes friend Hans Sachs.9 The conception of a primitive way of living is here blended with a pious trust in God. It has been hoped that the Africans too were good Christians. Whether Bosch had this in mind when adding both blacks and wild forest people to his picture may be left to surmise. The primitivistic part of the message remains no less manifest. From that point of view, the virtues of these two kinds of people were very much the same, which may explain why the man in the cave is being encouraged by a black man. The reclining woman could thus well have been black. The fact that she, the most important woman in the panel, is white and covered with hair, indicates that Bosch attached a particular importance to his wild people. The juxtaposition to corrupt civilization, which is implicit in representations of wild men and women, is made by the placement of this group close to the right wing, which serves very much as an image of civilization. There, at the lower left, on a level with the forest people, can be recognized both frequenters and keepers of inns, as well as a prostitute with her candle. Next to her a huge hare passes by, with the hunter as his prey. Further up is the place where musicians are chastised, or rather those who revelled in musical delights too much, including the blind beggar on the top of the hurdy-gurdy. Moreover, to the other side of the Tree-Man, sinners of an obviously feudal or military type are being tortured. In his grouping, Bosch here apparently followed a social classification, rather than one according to the Seven Deadly Sins. The stations of punishment are in fact more than seven, and in many of them several cardinal sins are blended. Yet lovemaking as a sin is almost if not completely disregarded here. Among the inn representatives, the prostitute, with jug and candle in hand and a die on her head, is present as noted, but it is not only to signify lechery that she is there. Similarly, the naked woman prominently placed to the right, at the foot of the tall
through their Christian captors." Unfortunately, she does not take a definite stand as to the role of the blacks in Bosch's triptych.
9 Quoted from Timothy Husband, with the assistance of Gloria GilmoreHouse, The Wild Man. Medieval Myth and Symbolism, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980. In his introduction, Husband discusses the concept of the wild man as a noble savage (p. 16), and the catalogue also offers insight into this realm elsewhere, particularly of course at No. 33, which is an illustrated print of Sachs's lamentation. Child's translation, pp. 202-04, has, besides other qualities, the merit of being rhymed. For a more exact translation, see Bernheimer, 114.

the attitudetowardsthe blackracewas highlycontradictory. emphasizes,

In an unpublished paper,;"A Consideration of the Blacks in 'The Garden of Earthly Delights,'" University of Virginia, 1979, Sandra Lucore sums up the situation as follows: "Africans evolved such disparate connota-

of Ham, the good Ethiopians of Paradise tions as the sinful descendants

before the Fall, and infidels whose only hope was to find salvation

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638

THE ART BULLETINDECEMBER1982 VOLUME LXIV NUMBER 4

commode, stands for Superbia, not at all for Luxuria. In contradistinction to her sister in the Hell panel of The Hay-Wain, she has the toad placed on her bosom, the seat of pride, and a demon offers her his buttocks as a mirror. The purely sexual sinners apparently form a vanishing minority in this Inferno, if they exist at all. While all kinds of sinful habits are being beaten out of these wretched bodies, the sin of sexual abuse is treated, as it were, as of no consequence. This brings us back to the main panel, where lovemaking is such a predominant feature. When it comes to evaluating the actions and reactions of these thousands of nudes who are discovering each other and the blessings of these meadows, it must be taken into account that intersexual relationships are being depicted on all levels of tangibility. Whereas many of the figures in the foreground evince a subtlety in gesture and bearing that, by comparison, would make the Garden of Love of Rubens in the Prado seem crude, there is a zone in the middle-ground where anguish and uncertainty rule, as if these naked beings for all their freedom suddenly felt insecure. Higher up on the central axis, there follows that unrestrained cavalcade around the circular pool, where white and black girls await - a merry-go-round so consternating that the viewer must question why. The fact that quite different actions and ways of life are being punished in the right wing calls for a radical interpretation, on a line with Wilhelm Fraenger's reading of the triptych. Fraenger's view, so harshly dismissed particularly by Netherlandish art historians,10 implies in short that the two wings are to be perceived simultaneously as two entries into the realm of the main panel: to the left the Garden of Eden before the Fall, when Man still lived in accordance with the divine theory, and to the right the weary practice, a spiritual purgatory, which we sinners have to undergo before gaining access to that restored life of primeval innocence, or guiltlessness, which the main panel shows. The idea of a restored Eden has recently been revived by Laurinda S. Dixon, in a remarkable alchemistic approach to the triptych. " Her article offers some most illuminating explanations for those enigmatic tours-de-force of Nature which abound in the setting. As Dixon rightly emphasizes, alchemy is here to be taken in its broadest sense, as a path towards salvation. The alchemical process of transmutation of the microcosm (Man) mirrors that "truly unselfish aim of alchemy, which was to return Man to a second Eden and bestow upon the human race the perfect balance of sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic humors which existed in the bodies of Adam and Eve before their fall" (p. 98). Although confined to humoral speculation, such a phrasing is, I believe, very much in line with Bosch's message. That restored equilibrium of the humors at which the alchemists aimed also included, after all, a portion of the choleric temperament, which might explain the unexpected frenzy of the wild ride round the pool. Yet, alchemical references served Bosch only as one of several means of expressing the message of a reinstated Eden. books on Cf. my review of W. S. Gibson'sand R.-H. Marijnissen's 10to Bosch, Art Bulletin,LvII, 1975, 285-87, as well as the ensuing debate, 1976, 148-50. LVIII, 11LaurindaS. Dixon, "Bosch's Garden of Delights: Remnantsof a
'Fossil' Science," Art Bulletin, LXIII,1981, 96-113. Q.v. also for a repro. of the whole triptych. 12Anna Spychalska-Boczkowska, "Material for the Iconography of Hieronymus Bosch's Triptych, The Garden of Delights," Studia
Muzealne, v, Poznan, 1966, 49-95, particularly 59-68.

That he also made use of astrological allusions was convincingly demonstrated some fifteen years ago by Anna Boczkowska.12 She showed that the marvelous coral-red figuration in the center of the Eden panel perfectly visualizes an astrological metaphor that had been used by the Netherlandish mystic Jan van Ruysbroeck: the analogy of the nature of Christ to the summer solstice when the sun stands in the sign of Cancer. Moreover, Adam and Eve were said to have been created in the sign of Cancer, and most marvelous were those rare occasions when both the sun and the noon coincided in this sign. The fabulous fountain in the center of Eden thus stands for something optimal. Its inherent affinity with Christ is stressed, I believe, even in the colors, as there is an obvious parallelism between the fountain and the figure of Christ below, who not only is clad in red but is himself of a reddish hue.13 Thus through astrology and alchemy, parts of the setting that otherwise would remain inexplicable can be explained. This in turn reveals something of the high intellectual level of the message. One must accept the existence in 's-Hertogenbosch, or elsewhere, of an exclusive circle or confraternity of intellectuals, who in their attempts at an ethical restoration resorted to both astrological and alchemistic speculation, and perhaps also to Kabbalah and other once highly relevant sciences. How very sophisticated this triptych is, intended for meditation rather than for the cult, may be demonstrated by the mandala-like juxtaposition of the Tree-Man and the fountain of Eden. The very perception of the whole presupposes a capacity for viewing pictures which in those days could have been expected only from an intellectual elite. I wish here to recall the high intellectual standards involved, since primitivism as a philosophy normally proceeds from the intellectually higher strata of society. This triptych was obviously a very serious affair, and it would be unfair to dismiss the wild people simply by turning them into some popular allusion to eroticism, to say nothing of so dismissing the nobly rendered blacks. When seen through the perspective of primitivism, philosophically speaking, the main panel becomes a counterimage to corrupt civilization. Knives, jugs, and playing cards are absent, and hardly any figure has an attribute that can be connected with our society. As a contrast to the right wing's accessories of civilization, the primitive conditions of the main panel could not be more eloquent. With this view goes the presence of blacks in the main panel, as does their absence in the right - they simply did not need to engage in the wearisome roundabout the right wing depicts. Nor is there any need to investigate the right wing for wild forest people. Like the blacks, they belong to the realm of the central panel, where together they act as tutors in the art of primeval living. Stockholms Universitet 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

of AestheticsandArt 13 ElenaCalas,"D for Deus andDiabolus,"Journal thatthe reddishhue denotesthe Criticism, xxvII, 1969,445-54, maintains

falsity of this creator, who should instead be understood as Satan. This weird idea founders on the fact that Bosch also gave Saint Agnes in the Prado Epiphany a reddish hue. Admittedly, a reddish skin could stand for evil, as may be demonstrated by an Austrian 15th-century Crucifixion panel in Bucharest, where the Bad Thief alone is reddish (for a color repr., see the Catalogue of the Art Museum of the Socialist Republic of Romania [in Rumanian], II, 1974, pl. 228). But Bosch definitely did not follow such a line of thought in the case of Saint Agnes, nor could there be anything negative about Saint John the Baptist's equally red complexion in Bosch's L~zaro Galdiano panel, to say nothing of the subtle and sublime figure of Christ in the Eden wing of the Garden of Delights.

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