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The Garden of Earthly Delights
Hieronymus Bosch · Renaissance & Mannerism
- Artist
- Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516)
- Date
- c. 1490–1510
- Dimensions
- 205.5 x 384.9 cm (open)
- Medium
- Oil on oak panel
- Location
- Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych of three panels that has puzzled viewers for five centuries. Read from left to right, it moves from paradise, through a garden swarming with pleasure-seekers, to a nightmarish hell.
A closer look
The left wing shows God presenting Eve to Adam in the Garden of Eden. The large central panel is filled with hundreds of naked figures playing among giant fruits, birds and strange crystal structures, apparently without a care. The right wing is a dark, burning hell where musical instruments become tools of torture. When the wings are closed, their outer sides show the world on the third day of creation, painted in shades of grey.
History of the painting
The triptych was probably painted for the Nassau family, and by 1517 it hung in their palace in Brussels, where a travelling Italian described it with astonishment. It passed to William of Orange, leader of the Dutch revolt; in 1568 his property was confiscated by the Duke of Alba, governor of the Netherlands for the Spanish crown. Philip II, who admired Bosch, acquired it in 1591 and sent it to El Escorial two years later, where the monks catalogued it as 'the strawberry painting'. It entered the Prado in 1939, after the Civil War.
