If you’ve ever had a late medieval or renaissance art class, you’ve probably seen The Garden of Earthly Delights, the most famous of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings. However much time you spent looking at this first masterwork in modern painting, it probably wasn’t nearly enough to address the slew of questions it evoked in your mind. Is it intended to be humorous? Why is everyone naked? What are those creepy owls? To better answer these questions, let’s first understand the context in which Bosch created his elaborate works.

Who Was Hieronymus Bosch?

Hieronymus Bosh is the invented name of Jheronimus van Aken, a Dutch painter born in 1450. He lived in s-Hertogenbosch, a flourishing and progressive Dutch town. We know little of his family life or personality, but he was definitely a product of his time.

The late 1400s were a time of continuous conflict and change in Europe. Moorish invasions and civil uprisings made violent death a common phenomenon. Feudalism had breathed its last and was being replaced by capitalism, resulting in a new class of tradesmen and skilled artisans.

Only a century after the last ravages of the black death, society was still grappling with collective trauma. After witnessing indescribable horrors, many believed that the god they had faithfully worshiped had treacherously turned his back on mankind. More heretically, some began to wonder whether the Christian god had ever existed at all.

Were His Paintings Satirical or Serious?

From at least the early to the mid 20th century, Western art scholars debated whether Bosh’s paintings were serious or, perhaps, heretical and comedic imaginings of Christian mythology. The Last Judgement, The Garden of Earthly delights, and many of his other three-panel “triptychs” are elaborate and almost ridiculously exaggerated depictions of demons tormenting mankind, creatures pulling people into hell, and men and women engaging in strange, sexually suggestive acts.

To the modern viewer inured to graphic horrors by Hollywood films, these scenes are engrossing, interesting, and sometimes hilarious. Indeed, many minor scenes, such as that of a man farting into a flute would have been as amusing to his contemporaries as it is to modern observers. The intricate depictions of hell, however, would have been terrifying to those who had already witnessed real horrors on earth.

Most academics now accept that Bosch's paintings were not satirical. If they had been, such blasphemy would have been seriously scorned, even in such troubled times as the late 1400s. We can instead think of them as religious propaganda designed to urge conservatism in an increasingly progressive time.

What Do We Know About the Hidden Meanings in Bosch’s Paintings?

Looking at some of these scenes, it's clear that there’s more behind them than just what you see. Nude couples picking apples off a tree, toads and lizards crawling around, crescent moons, and human-plant hybrids all seem out of place and surreal. What does it all mean?

Understanding art is a bit like understanding literature. While academics love to point out the “hidden meanings” in books, authors often swear they had no intention of embedding anything secret for readers to discover years later. It’s hard to argue, however, that Hieronymus didn’t want anyone to scrutinize his paintings. There’s always a lot happening in them and some of his religious imagery isn’t exactly subtle.

Nudes

Bosch often goes to great lengths to avoid depicting sex acts in detail. This, of course, is understandable given the conservatism of his time. Instead, he relies on symbolism and implications. The nude couple on the left panel of The Last Judgement, for example, clearly symbolizes sex.

In The Garden of Earthly Delights, couples frolic and intermingle in bizarre poses, and Bosch obviously wanted these to represent sinful acts that he couldn’t otherwise show. In the central panel, he includes male figures touching butt-to-butt, and this was a well-known allegory for homosexuality that audiences would have easily understood. If it wasn’t clear enough that Bosch disapproved of these acts, nearby demons are pulling people down to hell.

Reptiles and Frogs

The snake has long been a symbol of evil in Christianity, but medieval people also associated other reptiles with evil intentions. Bosch includes them in many of his most hellish scenes. He may not have been able to communicate directly with those viewing his art, but he was always sure to add creatures in the vicinity of humans to underline their motives.

Strange Creatures

Bosch's worlds are filled with demons and odd creatures, but he also includes normal or seemingly innocuous ones. A lot of art scholars believe these creatures represent the bestial nature of humans, which good Christians are always seeking to drive themselves away from. Most Europeans only knew of creatures like giraffes or oryxes from drawings in published works, so these would have seemed strange, alien, and even sinister. People of the early middle ages sometimes seriously debated whether unicorns were real, but it' isn’t clear whether Bosch’s unicorns were meant to be.

Owls

Small, creepy owls appear throughout The Garden of Earthly Delights. While modern people associate owls with learning and wisdom, people of the 1400s would have considered them to be creepy and foreboding. They may symbolize Satan or the forces of evil.

Famously, there’s a far less subtle avian subject in the same painting, who appears to be consuming and defecating human sufferers in hell. He has been dubbed “the prince of hell,” and little symbolism is necessary to tell us about his significance.

Crescent Moons

Since the dark ages, the European world struggled to combat what it saw as the satanic influence of Islam in its lands and seas. The inclusion of crescent-shaped objects may be a subtle nod to Islam, though some of the crescents scholars like to point to don’t seem to have been added intentionally.

In an era where mundane scenes from the bible were considered pinnacle artistic accomplishments, Hieronymus’ works were an incredible leap forward. Though Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and other renaissance artists would contribute much to the collective world of art over the same historical period as Hieronymus Bosch, perhaps no other artist has ever inspired so much puzzlement and fascination.

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The Metal Art of Hieronymus Bosch