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Rating: In a unique and unrepeatable context such as the sixteenth-century painting in the Netherlands, so closely tied to the traditions of proverbial popular culture (and the most famous example of this is the unforgettable Proverbs Painting by Pieter Bruegel, inspired by Erasmus's work, the Adagia, "summa" of popular knowledge with curiously - but up to a certain point, if the Machiavellian thesis of man always being the same in his pettiness is true, almost in an eternal return of mediocrity and the inability to surpass oneself - many analogies with our contemporaneity), but also to that of occultism, esotericism, and Renaissance magic (which is esoteric by definition, and will have to wait for the advent of the seventeenth-century figure of the scientist to move away from the intricacies of an initiatory culture that denies progress in favor of technique and where results are compared, and not jealously guarded), it is quite difficult to trace a profile of the figure of Hieronymus Bosch.
Of course, we have a birth year, 1450, we have a historical context, and we have, if not the complete works, a more than sufficient number of paintings and triptychs; on the other hand, his figure remains mysterious and enigmatic. The obsessive motif of his work, of which "The Garden of Earthly Delights" is only one of the most illuminating examples, is that of man overwhelmed by sin, and depicted in moments and with dramatic tones: impressive is the figure of the dying miser who on his deathbed reaches out for the moneybag being handed to him by a demon, signifying the total absence of redemption; or the famous (and beautiful) Triptychs of the Last Judgment, with the famous depictions of hell populated by demonic creatures illustrated with a visual power, a fantasy and a genius unparalleled in the history of art.
This leads to a dilemma: but do Bosch's compositions have a moralizing intent, do they stand as blind bastions in the Christian faith warning of the dangers of a sinful way of life, or are they perhaps a surrender, a simple snapshot of the cosmic pessimism of a universally enslaved world devoid of any possibility of redemption, no longer even able to imitate the saints who were once models? The first hypothesis is supported by the religious charge that Bosch seems to have held; the second, however, can be encouraged by the author's certain involvement with heretical sects.
"The Garden of Earthly Delights" seems to lean toward the second path: everything originates from Eden, a condition of happiness, the age of gold, not in the Tasso-like sense of "s'ei piace, ei lice," but as a place free from the sin of lust, the most obsessively stained by the visionary author. The situation changes with the creation of Eve, who introduces the sin of lust precisely (and here the theme of misogyny in sixteenth-century culture would need to be explored): parallel to her, sinister monstrous figures begin to slither.
Then there's the majestic central panel, conceptually and figuratively dynamic: hundreds of naked characters follow one another and interact within the span of a monstrous no-place, no longer Eden, not yet the world as we know it. Whirling figures, who, in the extreme symbolism of eternal human fragility, closed in a glass ball, echo the proverb that sees human happiness as a glass sphere, which soon shatters; but the center of gravity, the fulcrum of the majestic composition populated by unique beings, is the fountain of youth, another topos dear to Flemish culture (let's remember the painting by Cranach the Elder, at the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin), heralding endless discussions about carpe diem and the position of women. Memorable is the background with absurd constructions watching over this theater of the absurd.
The infernal part introduces the novel musical motif; deaf to God's calls, humanity is punished by contrapasso with refined and sadistic torments; Satan, a being with a bird's head wearing a cauldron as a hat, swallows the damned and disposes of them as excrement, to underline the loss of dignity and (therefore) reason.
Epic portrait, perhaps celebratory, perhaps a warning, who knows, of human excess, whether viewed as a moralizing warning against man's desperate pursuit of pleasure or as the celebration of an unrepeatable lifestyle, the Garden of Earthly Delights remains more than 500 years later imbued with a charm, a symbolism, and a richness perhaps unrepeatable and unparalleled.
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