Bosco. Garden of Delight. 195 × 5 x 215 H cm

Description

Relief made of moulded alabaster, with oil polychromy and aged patina. Composed of pieces that form a mosaic.

Measurements:

• Height: 215 cm. Width: 195. Depth: 5 cm.

Reproduction of the central panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch. The original work is oil on panel and was probably painted between 1500 and 1505 approximately. The size of the original triptych is 220 cm x 389 cm, and it is currently on display in the Museo del Prado.

Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlands, c. 1450-1516), is one of the most original Flemish painters. His imagery, the animals, fantastic beings and structures and symbolic elements that appear in his works, especially the one depicted here, make us think of him as a kind of precursor of surrealism.  Many of Bosch’s works are satirical and moralising in tone, such as The Hay Cart and The Extraction of the Stone of Madness. Bosch was particularly appreciated by King Philip II of Spain, who acquired several of his works, including The Garden of Earthly Delights.

This polychrome relief reproduces the central panel of the triptych of The Garden of Earthly Delights. This part of the triptych is the Garden itself. Populated by numerous human figures, animals and fruit of disproportionate sizes and strange structures such as bubbles and fantastic constructions, it would represent the fall of man into sin. In the original work it is flanked on the left by the panel of Eden or Creation, and on the right by the panel of Hell. This work is one of the most unique of the Flemish Renaissance and one of the most original and symbolic in the history of art.