WEEK 12- Nick

Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights is easily the most complex triptych that we have explored in class. Not only is it artistically stimulating, it is also a great tool to study the culture of the time. The complexity really shows the importance of religion in that time. The interior is very strange in the fact that the right panel feels very distant thematically from the other two panels. While the left panel looks like the Garden of Eden and depicts Adam of Eve, the middle panel shows a cornucopia of sexuality. This feels like an extension of the left panel especially with several nude figures picking apples from a tree and the skyline remaining constant between the two. The right panel, in my opinion, is the most interesting as it invokes feelings of destruction and malice. While it probably represents hell, it also could serve as an extension of the center panel if the people from the garden continue in their promiscuity. I also found it odd that there was a harp in the panel as well as large ears. Another reason why it could be the garden in the future is that the skyline matches even if the colors and images are drastically different.