The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Garden of Earthly Delights was painted by the early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch (1450 – 1516). The painting has been held in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1939. The age when the painting was painted is between 1490 and 1510, when Bosch was around 40 to 50 years of age. This is Bosch’s best know and most ambitious work, a masterpiece that reveals the artist at the height of his powers; in no other painting does he achieve such a complexity of meaning or such vivid imagery.

The triptych is painted in oil and has a square middle panel flanked by two rectangular wings that can close over the centre like shutters. The outer wings, when shut, display a painting of the earth during the creation. The three scenes inside the triptych are intended to be chronological from left to right. The left depicts God presenting Adam and Eve, while the central panel is a panorama of sexually engaged nude figures, animals, fruit and stone formations. The right panel is a hellscape and portrays the torments of damnation.

Art critics have interpreted this painting as a warning on the perils of life’s temptations. It has also been seen as a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost.