Will the Real Hieronymus Bosch Please Stand Up?
Copyright © 2000 by Damon Knight
Below is the left panel of Garden. In the upper background and in the pink concretion in the middle of the lake, we see life emerging from non-life,n finding its own modes of expression—curved, knobbly, moist, spotted, spiny. Farther down, fabulous animals are roaming at large: unicorns, a dragon, a spotted porcupine, a spiny sow with five piglets. On the shore to the right of the lake, bizarre things are struggling up from the water. (One of them, the one with the long tails clinging to the top of the rock, looks rather like Bosch's idea of a trilobite.)
In the foreground, Jesus rather than Jehovahn has just extracted Eve from Adam's side and is raising her to her feet while Adam watches in dumb wonder.Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (left panel). The postures of Jesus and Eve parody those of the bride and groom in Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding. Jesus is looking away uneasily, as if he would like a chance to think it over. Arnolfini is made of sterner stuff.Left, Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (detail).
Right, Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Wedding, 1434.The left and center panels have a continuous landscape. The left panel is set in Paradise, and so is the center. Close to the horizon line we see the same weird mineral-vegetable growths in both panels, and in the middle of each, a tower rising from a lake. Look at Adam and Eve in the left panel, and then at the people in the center panel—they are little Adams and little Eves.
Bosch, Garden (left and center panels).
