Hieronymus Bosch, born Jheronimus van Aken (c. 1450 – 9 August 1516) arguably had the wildest, most fantastical imagination in art history — painting our deepest fears, our deepest desires. This August the art world will mark 500 years since his death. “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” is widely recognized as his best known surviving work.
The dimensions of the triptych is quite impressive — 7′ 3″ x 12′ 9″. It was created in 1503–1515, on display at Museo Nacional Del Prado. Seeing it “live” is a treat to any art lover, but only a few could afford to spend hours on end to take in every detail of the masterpiece.
That is what I’ve done just now — an hour and a half of “earthly delight” with the painting, not leaving my desk, making screen shots.
All thanks to the interactive documentary Jheronimus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights —an in-depth tour though The Garden. It’s a web interface, a transmedia tryptich, where the visitor is taken on an audio-visual journey, including sound, music, video and images to enrich the storytelling.The transmedia tryptich consists of the documentary film ‘Hieronymus Bosch, touched by the devil’, the interactive documentary ‘Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights’ and the Virtual Reality documentary ‘Hieronymus Bosch, the Eyes of the Owl’.If you haven’t been there already, take a tour. It’s a truly unique experience.Whether you like Bosch or not, it’ll be worth your while. Follow the link to The Garden.You’ll be delighted.
Hieronymus Bosch, (appr. 1450 — 1516) an Early Netherlandish painter, in various accounts was “the inventor of monsters and chimeras” and his works as comprising “wondrous and strange fantasies often less pleasant than gruesome to look at.” It was believed that Bosch’s art was inspired by medieval heresies and obscure hermetic practices.
These days, however, Bosch often seen as a prototype medieval surrealist, and compared to Salvador Dali. That is why I love them both.
The Garden of Earthly Delights is one of Bosch’s most famous works. It is a triptych with Adam and Eve in paradise on the left panel.
The triptych’s central panel is either (a) a fair warning that such unabashed debauchery won’t do you any good or (b) a dreamy delight in earthly pleasures of paradise lost — a wishful thinking.
Wikipedia article quotes American writer Peter S. Beagle who sees it as an “erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs, a place filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty”. Disagree about “us, voyeurs”. It’s either “him, voyeur” or “them, voyeurs” — I respectfully abstain from being included. Perfect liberty? Perhaps. Be it thus.
The Garden of Earthly Delights, Oil-on-wood panels, 220 x 389 cm, Museo del Prado in Madrid
To be fully appreciated, The Garden of Earthly Delights certainly needs to be viewed on large scale. Much larger than this:
Central Panel
Let’sdisregard “erotic derangement” of the center panel, with it’s “broad panorama of socially engaged nude figures” and turn our attention to Hell — the right panel. It depictsthe torments of damnation, vestiges of god-awful hellscape.
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Fascinating as All Hell might be, the subject of this post is but a small detail of the panel.
Fragment of Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights
One the torments, offered a la carte in Bosch’s hell, is torture by music. Anyone whose senses were subjected to the offensive sounds of music one strongly despised, could attest to experiencing hell, Hell or HELL.
It seems that no one was paying close attention to the music, written on the damned rascal’s bottom, until recently. Here is how the butt music from Bosch’s Hell sounds:
And below is a video clip — widely available on YouTube but little heard — of the “hellish” melody’s musical arrangement . Sounds a bit “new-agey” to my taste. The triptych, let’s be reminded, is dating from between 1490 and 1510. Something old, something new… music from hell, Hell or HELL?
Hieronymus Bosch, born Jheronimus van Aken (c. 1450 – 9 August 1516) arguably had the wildest, most fantastical imagination in art history — painting our deepest fears, our deepest desires. This August the art world will mark 500 years since his death. “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” is widely recognized as his best known surviving work.
All thanks to the interactive documentary Jheronimus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights —an in-depth tour though The Garden. 
It’s a web interface, a transmedia tryptich, where the visitor is taken on an audio-visual journey, including sound, music, video and images to enrich the storytelling.
The transmedia tryptich consists of the documentary film ‘Hieronymus Bosch, touched by the devil’, the interactive documentary ‘Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights’ and the Virtual Reality documentary ‘Hieronymus Bosch, the Eyes of the Owl’.
If you haven’t been there already, take a tour. It’s a truly unique experience.Whether you like Bosch or not, it’ll be worth your while. Follow the link to The Garden. You’ll be delighted.
Contra Spem Spero... Et Rideo 