Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” has generated complex debates on the subject that it reflects. The painting is framed as a triptych, being constituted from three panels, depicting different scenes. “The Garden of Earthly Delights” has been interpreted as the reflection of paradise (left panel), earthly utopian society before Adam and Eve’s sin (center panel) and the damnation (right panel) (Belting 54). The focus of this essay is the center panel, which abounds in scenes, characters and illusory devices that create the impression of a three dimensional perspective, such as overlapping, diminution, foreshortening, shading/modeling, atmospheric and scientific perspectives.
Bosch’s center panel of “Garden of Earthly Delights” is designed on a two dimensional medium, but due to the spatial devices that the artist explored, it creates the impression of a third dimension, which makes the painting realistic, generating the impression of depth and volume (sursa). There are multiple scenes that compose the center panel, which are not connected with each other. The painting’s scenes overlap one another, but the characters in a single scene also overlap, creating the impression of depth, hence, enforcing the illusion of the third dimension. For instance, the scene at the center right of the panel, wherein a group of young men and women sit by an apple tree, with a man carrying a big strawberry explores the overlapping device. Here, the characters are positioned around the tree, suggesting their further or closer proximity, by the way the characters in the front cover the ones in the back, and the ones in the back being represented as slightly smaller, for creating the impression of distance. This device of reducing the scale of the characters to indicate objects’ distance is called diminution (Smith & Wide 415). It is best visible in the analyzed painting in the central scene, in the pool that hosts a wide group of girls who seem to have fun entertaining each other, while also carrying fruits and birds on their heads (Bosch “The Garden of Earthly Delights”).
Although receiving little employment, foreshortening is also incorporated for creating the realistic representation of objects, by presenting the parts closer to the viewer wider, and the rest of the object or character gradually smaller, as it furthers the horizontal line (Smith & Wilde482-483). This technique can be best observed close to the first hybrid stone, positioned in the right of the center panel. The silhouette of a man, swimming on a giant fish appears, with the man’s bottom positioned closer to the viewer, hence, being represented as larger, as compared with his head, which is smaller for reflecting the spatial perspective of being further from the central line (Bosch “The Garden of Earthly Delights”).
Shading device creates darker spots, which suggests the objects’ turning away from light and living a less intense surface (Smith & Wilde 416). This device is used in the scene around the pool, where groups of men are riding on different animals, as the artist smoothly depicts the shadow of the animals’ hoofs through less intense coloring (Bosch “The Garden of Earthly Delights”). The scene in the back of the central panel depicts fields, water and sky in paler hues, diminution of saturation, diffuse manner, which implies the employment of atmospheric perspective to suggest distance (Bosch “The Garden of Earthly Delights”; Smith & Wilde 416). The painter also employs the scientific perspective, through which he creates objects and characters smaller to suggest the increase of distance from the observer (Smith & Wilde 474). This device can be observed in the scene representing the people flying on allegorical birds or the ones standing on the curious plants, in the back of the center panel (Bosch “The Garden of Earthly Delights”).
While the images of the objects and characters presented in the center and back of the center panel successfully create the impression of depth, the scenes in the front, which depict larger characters are less effective in creating the three dimensional effect, being mostly shallow representations. Nevertheless, the characters in the front require no special technique for suggesting the depth, as they are the landmark for the other scenes, in the distanced plans. Overall, the three dimensional techniques employed reflect a realistic image of an utopian earthly garden of delights.
Works Cited
Beting, Hans. Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights. Munich: Presten Publications. 2002. Print.
Bosch, Hieronymus. The Garden of Earthly Delights. Approximately 1490 – 1510. Painting.
Smoth, Paul & Wilde, Carolyn. A Companion to the Art. Mason: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002. Print.
