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The Garden of Earthly Delights

2025
The more you contemplate it, the more its mysteries emerge.

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. Maybe I’ll refer to a catalogue or monograph. But neither the historian nor the critic will be of much use in dispelling his confusion. Because the triptych painted by Bosch at the beginning of the 16th century is still one of the most enigmatic and unfathomable paintings in the history of art. An intricate maze of iconographic details. A disturbing hieroglyph. A challenge for the human eye. The more you contemplate it, the more its mysteries emerge.

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?

The altarpiece casts a spell over us. We are mesmerised. It overwhelms us. It seems that we understand, but never stop thinking about it.

The altarpiece casts a spell over us. We are mesmerised. It overwhelms us. It seems that we understand, but never stop thinking about it. Each image, every tiny scene is a galaxy in itself. With so many dazzling twists and turns. An unsettling puzzle that drags us to the innermost depths of the mind. Few canvases raise so many questions, while providing so meagre an answer. Few challenge a single interpretation, a definitive solution. Since it avoids all subject matter. Any style. All influence. Their unclassifiable images shock us today, just as they did their contemporaries.

Their unclassifiable images shock us today, just as they did their contemporaries.

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.

The exotic central panel that gives the painting its name, shows bodies overcome with lust, giving themselves unashamedly to the game of love.

All that unbridled fantasy, with its erotic delirium and its coded messages, has been carried over into the new collection. With a colour palette that mirrors both the ephemeral beauty of Paradise and the obscurity of Hell, a continuous tension exists between earthly pleasure and eternal damnation: the greens recall the exuberance of Eden while the burgundy symbolises the underworld; the transparent blue of the floating spheres contrasts with the mirrored pink, the emanation of desire. A representative range of colours in which opulent golds reflecting the light fuse with flashes of red, the colour of lust, creating a vibrant contrast that highlights the eternal struggle between ecstasy and penitence.

A catalogue of earthly sins and devilish punishment arrives in the form of accessories.

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?