The garden
A curious onlooker approaching the Prado Museum and pausing absent-mindedly before The Garden of Earthly Delights, may be overwhelmed by the dazzling complexity of the scene before their eyes.
A curious onlooker approaching the Prado Museum and pausing absent-mindedly before The Garden of Earthly Delights, may be overwhelmed by the dazzling complexity of the scene before their eyes.
In its breathtakingly beautiful landscapes, lascivious love is mixed with monster-like creatures. An oneiric imagination with hermetic symbology. A cavalcade of men on eccentric mounts charms a group of maidens. The strings of a giant harp act as a crucifix for the condemned man. A gargantuan piece of fruit provides shelter for two lovers. A batrachian reads a pentagram on the posterior of a heartless person. The bodies emerge from the most unusual places: flowers, berries, the shell of a mussel, the carcass of a scorpion... The sublime and the macabre, the delicate and the grotesque intermingle with astonishing creativity. One is unsure where to look and cannot help but comment on that which meets the eye. What is all this about?
What does it mean?
Leafed through like a book, from left to right, its story is deceptively simple: on the outer face of its two closed panels is the universe before the creation of man. The colours have died away at the dawn of the world, in its greyish plant forms. Upon opening them, we are met with the surprise of light upon a landscape densely populated by humans and animals. On the left, God gives his blessing to Adam and Eve, surrounded by palm trees and unicorns. The exotic central panel that gives the painting its name, shows bodies overcome with lust, giving themselves unashamedly to the game of love. And, like an inverted mirror, Hell on its right. A bird-headed monster defecates on the condemned, those who listened to profane music are tormented by their own instruments, the envious are drowned in an icy lake. An invisible evil distorts matter. Everyday objects have grown bigger and become menacing. The condemned try to flee, but nothing will change their inevitable fate.
A catalogue of earthly sins and devilish punishment arrives in the form of accessories, a warning about the ephemeral nature of human pleasures and the dangers of the flesh under wonderful earrings and necklaces.
And now confess: will you also succumb to temptation?
