Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are stepping
into a visual landscape that is, well, it's frankly
terrifying. And absolutely mesmerizing. Exactly.
And confusing in the best possible way. Yeah.
We're looking at the work of a man who has been
called the inventor of monsters and chimeras.
That's a quote from Felipe de Guevara, a Spaniard,
writing all the way back in 1560. 1560. That's
incredible. And he called him that, the inventor
of monsters. And, you know, nearly 500 years
later, that description still holds up perfectly.
If anything, it's even more relevant. It really,
really does. Because when you stand in front
of one of his paintings or, you know, even when
you just pull up a high res image on your screen,
you are seeing things that just shouldn't exist.
Things that feel like they're from another dimension.
Yes. You're seeing these. oversized fruits that
look like they're about to burst. You see people
trapped inside translucent bubbles like they're
some kind of, I don't know, specimens. And those
weird hybrid stone formations that look almost
like alien architecture. And the hellscapes.
The hellscapes look like they were ripped right
out of a modern surrealist horror movie. But
here's the thing, and this is the kicker that
always stops me in my tracks. The dates. These
were painted in the late 1400s. Right. Context
is absolutely everything here. I mean, we are
talking about the transition from the late Middle
Ages into the Renaissance. It's a time when art
was, for the most part, very orderly, very devotional.
You had your saints, the Virgin Mary. Exactly.
Strict hierarchies in the paintings. And then
right in the middle of all of that, you get this
explosion of what was described at the time as
wondrous and strange fantasies. It's like a glitch
in the matrix of art history. That's a perfect
way to put it. So the protagonist of today's
deep dive, the man behind this glitch, is Hieronymus
Van Aken. But the world knows him much, much
better as Hieronymus Bosch. The one and only.
And our mission today is, I think, pretty specific.
We want to try and peel back the many layers
of myth that surround this guy. Because there
are a lot of them. A lot of them. Let's be real.
When you see a painting with a bird -headed monster
eating a human while it's sitting on a high chair
that's also a toilet. Your first thought is probably.
What was this guy on? Exactly. It's a natural
reaction. It is. But we're not just looking at
the weird monsters today. We are trying to understand
the man who sort of paradoxically became this
voice of reason through his depiction of madness.
We want to know what makes him tick. And that
really is the core tension, isn't it? The debate
has been raging for centuries. Was he a heretic?
Was he, you know, on some kind of hallucinogen?
Was he a member of a secret sex cult? Was he
the opposite? Was he actually a deeply orthodox
moralist who was just using these images to scare
people into being good? Scaring them straight,
essentially. Right. And then on top of all that,
we have this whole other layer, this kind of
detective story we have to get through, right?
Oh, yeah. Because we have to ask the fundamental
question. How do we even know which paintings
are actually his? And that's not as simple as
just checking for a signature. It turns out that's
a huge, huge debate in the art world, and it's
actually heating up right now. So what are we
working with today? What are our sources? Okay,
so we're pulling from a few different places.
We've got historical records from his hometown,
his Hertogenbosch. We have art history analysis
of his most famous triptychs, specifically The
Garden of Earthly Delights and The Temptation
of St. Anthony. The big ones. The heavy hitters.
And we're also going to look at some really cutting
-edge forensic data from something called the
Bosch Research and Conservation Project, or the
BRCP for short. Science meets art history. I
love it. Okay, let's unpack this. Let's start
with the man himself. You mentioned his name
was Hieronymus van Aken. So where does Bosch
come from? Is that a nickname, a stage name?
It is essentially a branding decision, which
is a very modern way to think about it for an
artist in the 15th century. A brand, really?
Totally. So he was born Hieronymus von Aitken,
probably around 1450. The name Van Aken tells
us his family's roots were likely in the city
of Aken, or maybe Namaken, but he spent his entire
life in the town of Hertogenbosch. Hertogenbosch.
That is a mouthful for anyone not from the Netherlands.
I'm glad we're sticking with Bosch. It's a bit
of a tongue twister for sure. It translates to
the Duke's Forest. But locally, people just called
it Denbos, which just means the forest. Okay,
that's easier. Much easier. So when Hieronymus
starts gaining some fame, he needs a way to distinguish
himself. He knew his market wasn't just local.
He was ambitious. He wanted to sell to international
buyers, to the Spanish court, to wealthy collectors
all across Europe. So Van Aken from this small
town didn't really tell them anything, but...
Bosch. But Bosch told them exactly where to find
him. He adopted the name of his city. He became
the artist from Den Bosch, Hieronymus Bosch.
That is actually really smart. It's like a rapper
taking the name of their neighborhood to represent
where they're from. He's putting his city on
the map literally and figuratively. He was putting
his stamp on it. And it's really important for
context to remember he wasn't the only artist
in his family. We often have this idea of these
geniuses as singular anomalies who just appear
out of nowhere. The lone genius myth. Exactly.
But Bosch had, for lack of a better term, artistic
DNA. So it wasn't just a hobby for him. Not at
all. It was the family business. His grandfather,
Jan van Aken, was a painter. Jan had five sons,
and four of them also became painters. Hieronymus'
own father, Anthonius, was an artistic advisor.
So he grows up in a house that just smells like
turpentine and linseed oil. It's like growing
up in a family of carpenters or bakers. You don't
just choose it, you're sort of born into it.
That is a great way to view it. It really was
a workshop dynamic. We assume Bosch learned the
trade from his father or his uncles. He would
have started by, you know, grinding pigments,
prepping the oak panels, learning the basics
of drawing. So he learned the fundamentals. He
had to. But the real tragedy, from an art historian's
perspective, is that none of their other works
have survived. None of them. Not a single painting
from his father or grandfather. Zero. Nothing.
So we can't compare Hieronymus to his dad and
say, ah, that's where he got his style from.
We don't know if his father painted monsters
or if his uncles painted surreal landscapes.
He just appears in the historical record in 1474,
fully formed as an artist. Wow. That is so frustrating.
It's like having the final chapter of a book
but missing the entire prologue. Well, it leaves
a huge gap. Okay, so he's a local boy from a
family of painters. But something must have happened
to give him such a dark vision of the world.
You don't just wake up one day and decide to
paint a demon playing a flute out of a human
nose without some kind of inspiration. I read
about a specific event in his childhood that
sounds absolutely traumatic. You're thinking
of a fire. The Great Fire of 1463. Yes. In 1463,
a truly catastrophic fire just swept through
Ishertip and Bosch, and Hieronymus would have
been roughly 13 years old. 13. Wow. That is a
very impressionable age. Extremely. The records
from the time say 4 ,000 houses were destroyed.
4 ,000 houses. In a medieval town, that isn't
just a neighborhood fire. That is practically
the whole world burning down around you. It was
devastating. You have to imagine the density
of a medieval town, the narrow streets, all the
wooden structures, the thatched roofs. Once a
fire like that gets going, there's just... There's
no stopping it. It consumes everything. And you
can see it in the work, can't you? Oh, absolutely.
If you look at Bosch's paintings later in life,
specifically his depictions of hell, you see
these backgrounds. They're almost always filled
with burning cities, with exploding buildings,
and that distinct, terrifying orange glow against
a pitch black sky. So it's not a metaphorical
fire in his paintings. I don't think so. I mean,
I think it's memory. It's very, very likely that
the teenage trauma of watching his hometown turn
into a complete inferno just. Right. It stayed
with him forever. He saw the panic. He saw people
losing everything. He saw what he probably interpreted
as the wrath of God. That makes so much sense.
He isn't just imagining hell. He saw a version
of it. He walked through the ashes. He knew what
it looked like. But despite that trauma, and
despite the incredible weirdness of his art,
he wasn't a starving artist living on the fringe,
was he? Because that's the other myth, that he
must have been this tortured, isolated soul living
in a garret somewhere. Not even close. And this
is where that mad heretic theory really starts
to crumble a bit. When you look at the facts
of his life, he was actually quite well -to -do.
He was a man of significant status. How so? Well,
sometime between 1479 and 1481, he married a
woman named Allade Goyartz Vandenmeerven. Allade
Goyartz Vandenmeerven. That... That sounds like
an expensive name. That sounds like old money.
It was. She was a few years older than him, and
she came from a very wealthy family. She had
inherited a house and a lot of land in a nearby
town called Orrshut. This marriage gave Bosch
significant financial stability. And that changes
the dynamic completely, doesn't it? It does.
It means he didn't have to paint just to survive.
He didn't have to just churn out standard portraits
of local merchants to put food on the table.
He had the freedom, the financial freedom, to
paint what he wanted to paint. So the monsters
were a choice. They weren't a desperate attempt
to get attention. A very deliberate choice. And
he was also part of a pretty exclusive club,
right? The Brotherhood of Our Lady. Exactly.
This was a highly respected devotional confraternity.
And for anyone listening who might not know,
a confraternity is basically a lay religious
organization. Kind of like a localized charitable
club, but with a religious focus. That's a good
way to put it. But this wasn't just any club.
They were dedicated to the veneration of the
Virgin Mary. They had about 40 sworn members
who were the most influential citizens, the elite
of the town, the movers and shakers. And then
they had a wider membership. Right, about 7 ,000
outer members from all across Europe. But Bosch
became a sworn member, one of the elite 40, in
1486 or 1487. So he is rubbing shoulders with
the powerful. He's dining with the mayor, the
high -ranking clergy, the richest merchants in
town. Exactly. His father had been an artistic
advisor to the Brotherhood, which was a good
position, but Hieronymus became a full -sworn
member. He was deeply embedded in the religious
establishment of his city. Which completely contradicts
the idea that he was some kind of outsider or
cultist. It makes it almost impossible to believe
he was a pillar of the community. Which makes
the paintings even more fascinating. It's like
finding out your very respectable banker neighbor,
the one who heads the homeowners association,
writes the most twisted psychedelic horror novels
on the weekends. That is a perfect analogy. He
lived a very respectable, orderly public life
while painting the most disreputable, chaotic
things imaginable. Okay, let's talk about how
he actually painted. Because you mentioned earlier
that art at this time, this early Netherlandish
style, was usually very orderly. I'm thinking
of Jan van Eyck. Very smooth, very polished,
almost like glass. Right. The gold standard of
the time, set by masters like Van Eyck, was to
create an illusion of absolute perfection. They
used multiple, very thin, transparent glazes
of oil paint. Layer after layer. Layer after
layer. It was a painstaking process. And they
would build them up to create a surface so smooth
you couldn't see any brush strokes. The idea
was to make the painting look like a divine creation,
as if it just appeared untouched by human hands.
Like it was breezed onto the panel. Exactly.
It was all about removing the art. from the image
to focus the viewer entirely on the divine subject.
And Bosch. Well, he did not do that. No. He actively
rebelled against that technical perfectionism.
He painted in what art historians call a sketchy
manner. He used impasto, which means the paint
has texture. It's physically raised on the surface.
You can see the brushwork. You can see the direction
of his hand. So why do you think he did that?
Was he just impatient or was it a deliberate
artistic choice? I don't think for a second it
was impatience. I think it suggests a desire
to be direct. He was prioritizing the idea, the
content, the message over. the illusion of reality.
It gives it a different kind of energy. It does.
It gives his work a sense of urgency. When you
look at a Bosch, you feel the energy of the artist's
hand. It was a stylistic departure that really
set him apart from all his contemporaries. It
made his work feel more alive, more immediate,
and maybe more human. It feels more modern in
a way, like he's saying, I have something to
tell you, and I need to get it down on this panel
fast before the vision fades. That's it. What
about his tools? Was he using some special weird
kind of paint to get those effects or secret
ingredients? You know, it's funny. His toolbox
was surprisingly standard. He painted with oil
on oak panels, which was typical for the region.
And his palette, the range of colors he used,
was actually quite limited. Really? Because when
I look at a print of the Garden of Orisley Delights,
my brain just explodes with color. I would have
assumed he had access to every pigment available
at the time. The paintings are incredibly vivid,
but he achieved that vividness with a few key
pigments. He was very economical. For his blues,
those beautiful hazy skies and distant landscapes
that fade into the horizon, he used azurite.
For the foliage and the green tones, he used
malachite and verdigris, which are copper -based
pigments. And they can be a bit unstable, which
is why some of his greens have darkened over
time. And what about the people? All those little
nude figures? For the figures, he mostly used
lead. Tintin yellow, various ochres, and red
lake, which is a carmine pigment made from insects.
So pretty standard kit. Very standard. And it's
amazing that he created such vivid nightmares
with that limited palette. It's like a chef making
a five -course meal with just salt, pepper, and
flour. It really highlights his genius, doesn't
it? He wasn't relying on expensive, rare pigments
like lapis lazuli to impress the buyer, which
was a common trick at the time to show off the
patron's wealth. He wasn't. He was relying entirely
on his imagination. The value was in the vision,
not just the raw materials. Okay, let's get into
that imagination. We have to talk about the masterpieces.
We can't do a deep dive on Bosch without walking
through the Garden of Earthly Delights. I mean,
it's the piece everyone knows. It's a pop culture
icon. It's the most famous for a reason. It captures
everything we are talking about. It's a triptych.
which means it has three panels hinged together.
And the outer panels, when they're closed, show
the world during creation. It's a sphere floating
in darkness, painted in grisaille. Grisaille,
meaning painting in shades of gray to mimic stone
or sculpture. Correct. So it starts very somber.
It's the world before humanity, before cinch,
or before all the color and chaos. But when you
open it... It's sensory overload. Complete and
total overload. It's meant to bracket the entire
human experience. So on the far left panel, you
have the Garden of Eden. You see God presenting
Eve to Adam. And at first glance, it seems peaceful.
But there's a detail here that's kind of unusual,
right? God looks young. Yes, this was very innovative
for the time. God is depicted with a youthful
appearance. He's not the old patriarchal figure
with a flowing white beard. He looks almost like
Christ. And even here in Paradise, things are
already getting weird. The landscape is populated
by exotic animals, giraffes, elephants, which
Bosch probably saw in drawings from travelers.
But then you also have these strange, semi -organic,
hut -like shapes. It's Paradise, but it's already
alien. It's not your Sunday school Eden. No.
And then your eye moves to the center panel.
The main event. The garden itself. This is the
part everyone reproduces. This is the poster
on the college dorm room wall. It's a massive
panorama of what looks like innocent, self -absorbed
joy. You have hundreds of nude figures. There's
no shame yet. They're eating oversized fruit,
strawberries, cherries, blackberries. They're
riding on animals. They're trapped in bubbles.
It looks like a party. It looks like a festival.
But. Is it a good party? That is the eternal
question, isn't it? Is this a celebration of
a utopia where sin doesn't exist? Is it a what
-if scenario of a world without the fall of man?
Or is it a stern warning against the excesses
of lust and gluttony? The fruit is so prominent.
It's gigantic. It's bigger than the people in
some cases. It is. And the people are engaging
with it so intimately. And notice the hybrid
stone formations in the background. They look
blue and pink, almost like candy. But they're
also sharp and menacing. That ambiguity seems
to be the entire point. But then your eye can't
help but drift over to the right panel. And that's
where the party ends. The hell panel. And this
is where it gets really interesting for me. Because
when I think of hell, I think of fire. Dante's
Inferno, Burning Lakes, Brimstone. And sure,
there is fire in the background. The exploding
city we talked about earlier, his childhood memory.
Exactly. But the foreground, it's cold. That
is such a crucial distinction. Bosch's Hell features
frozen waterways. You see figures skating on
thin ice or being submerged in frigid water.
The color palette shifts to cold blues and grays,
punctuated by that hellish fire in the back.
That's almost scarier, the coldness of it. It
implies a total absence of warmth, an absence
of God, an absence of life. It is. And the whole
tone shifts completely from the center panel.
In the center, the nudity seems playful, maybe
even innocent. But in the hell panel, the nakedness
becomes shameful. The figures look vulnerable,
exposed, tortured. It's a world where humanity
has succumbed to every possible temptation and
is now paying the eternal price. The party is
over. and the hangover is eternal. I couldn't
say it better. Speaking of temptation, that leads
us perfectly to the other major work we need
to discuss, the triptych of the temptation of
St. Anthony. Right, this is from around 1501.
The theme here is the struggle against evil,
which seems to have been a core obsession for
Bosch. St. Anthony was a hermit saint who went
into the desert to pray, and the legend says
he was tormented relentlessly by demons. And
Bosch's demons are not your standard guys with
pitchforks and pointy tails. They are. They're
psychological. They're weirdly specific and creative.
He paints the psychological chaos of temptation.
So you have the classic temptation by seductive
women, of course, but you also have these physically
harrowing scenes. There is a famous composition
in this triptych where St. Anthony is being ambushed
in midair by a swarm of devils. In midair. Like
a dogfight. Yes, he's being literally lifted
up and torn apart by these flying monstrosities.
It's a composition that was actually also used
by the German artist Martin Schongauer. And allegedly,
a young Michelangelo copied it. It shows that
Bosch was tapping into a shared visual language
of fear, but just taking it to a whole new level.
So it's not just a mental battle, sitting in
a cave being whispered at by demons. It's a full
-on physical assault. And he's being attacked
on the ground as well, from all sides. It represents...
the total siege of the human soul the idea that
evil is everywhere constantly trying to break
you down so we look at these images the frozen
hell the air ambush the giant strawberries and
we have to ask the big question what does it
all mean and this is where it's really interesting
you mentioned earlier the heretic theory let's
maybe debunk that first because it's a popular
one Right. It's a very seductive theory, especially
for a modern audience. In the 20th century, particularly
around the 1960s, people really wanted Bosch
to be a counterculture hero. The era of psychedelics.
Exactly. They looked at the mushrooms and the
bizarre creatures and thought, this guy must
have been on something. Or they theorized that
he was a secret member of a heretical sect, like
the Adamites or the Cathars or the Brethren of
the Free Spirit. And what did they believe? These
were groups that... in various ways, believed
in things like free love or different non -church
sanctioned paths to salvation. They were outside
the mainstream. So it fits the vibe of the 1960s
perfectly. Bosch was the original hippie. He
was raging against the machine. Exactly. And
other people suggested he used obscure hermetic
practices or alchemy, or that the art was just
groteschi, a style meant purely to titillate
and amuse, as some 16th century critics thought.
Just weird for weird's sake. But there is just
no historical evidence for the heretic angle.
As we discussed, his membership in the Brotherhood
of Our Lady he was as establishment as you could
possibly get so if he wasn't a heretic if he
wasn't a rebel in that sense what was he a square
well he was a moralist that is the modern scholarly
consensus scholars now view his vision as being
completely consistent with the orthodox religious
belief systems of the late middle ages he wasn't
painting this stuff to be trippy he was painting
it to be didactic didactic so meant to teach
a lesson yes think of it as a sermon in paint
He lived in the same town where Erasmus, the
famous humanist scholar, was educated. And there
are definite parallels between Erasmus's writing,
which was often satirical and biting, and Bosch's
bold style of painting. So the weird monsters
aren't just random hallucinations. They are coded
messages. Absolutely not random. And this is
where his genius really shines. The art historian
Dirk Bax did a lot of work on this. He argued
that Bosch's paintings are often visual translations
of verbal metaphors and puns from the time. Visual
puns. That is fascinating. Can you give us an
example? Sure. Think about the oversized fruit
in the Garden of Earthly Delights. In Dutch folklore
and language of the time, plucking fruit or various
fruit metaphors often alluded to sexual acts
or promiscuity. Ah, okay. I see where this is
going. So a giant strawberry isn't just a big
fruit. It's a symbol of fleeting, sinful pleasure.
Because a strawberry doesn't last long. Exactly.
It tastes incredibly sweet for a moment, and
then it rots. It's soft. It's easily crushed.
He was coding these moral truths into these crazy,
unforgettable images. That makes the reading
of the painting so much richer. It's not just,
look, the weird bird monster. It's a language
that we have mostly forgotten. It's like trying
to read a political cartoon from 500 years ago.
If you don't know the context, it just looks
like a funny drawing. But if you know the code.
If you know the code, it's a sharp critique.
exactly and there's another layer to this which
is what some call the irony or the shield theory
Joseph Karner, an art historian, suggests that
this cryptic symbolism was also a very clever
defense mechanism. A defense mechanism against
what? Against criticism from the powerful. Think
about it. If you paint a direct political attack
on a corrupt bishop or a greedy nobleman, you
might get in serious trouble. You could be arrested
or worse. Right. But if you disguise your criticism
as a fantasy, as a monster or a scene from hell,
you have plausible deniability. It's just a joke
defense. The medieval version of it. Or it's
just the Bible. You can say, oh, I'm just painting
a demon from scripture. But maybe the local viewers
would recognize the face of a famously corrupt
official on that demon. That is absolutely genius.
It shields him from harm while allowing him to
appeal to everyone. The conservatives look at
it and see a stern warning against sin. And the
more progressive or critical viewers see a satire
of the establishment. It's a Trojan horse. The
monsters of the horse. And the critique is hidden
inside. Precisely. It allows the art to be two
things at once, which is why it's so endlessly
debatable. But here's the problem with studying
a guy who used so many disguises and lived 500
years ago, the detective story. We don't even
know for sure how many of these paintings are
actually his. This is the headache for every
museum curator who thinks they have a Bosch.
He didn't date his paintings. He signed some
of them, but not all of them. And to make matters
even worse, Some of the signatures on existing
paintings are fakes that were added later by
dealers to drive up the price. Because having
a Bosch was a status symbol. A huge status symbol.
And his style was so popular, right? So people
were copying him constantly. It became a brand.
It became its own genre. He was incredibly popular,
even in his lifetime and certainly right after
his death. Other artists were just churning out.
Bosch -like paintings full of monsters and weirdness.
So for centuries, we had this incredibly inflated
idea of how much work he actually produced. So
how much did the official catalog shrink? Well,
early 20th century historians, guys like Tolney
and Ballas, thought he painted somewhere between
30 and 50 works. By 1980, a scholar named Gerd
Unberfert had whittled that down to about 25
paintings and 14 drawings. And today. What's
the consensus? Today, the number of paintings
that are confidently attributed directly to his
hand is still hovering around 25. And this is
largely thanks to the work of the Bosch Research
and Conservation Project, the BRCP. These are
the people using the high -tech forensic stuff.
Yes. They started using a technique called infrared
reflectography. Okay, can you explain what that
is for the layperson? How does that work? Sure.
Infrared reflectography basically allows researchers
to see through the top layers of paint to the
underdrawing, the original sketch that the artist
made on the panel before they started painting.
Oh. Well, carbon, which is used in charcoal or
ink for sketching, absorbs infrared light. The
oil paint, on the other hand, largely becomes...
becomes transparent to it. So the sketch underneath
becomes visible. So it's like an x -ray for the
artist's initial thoughts. You can see their
first draft. Exactly. And why does the underdrawing
matter so much for attribution? Because Bosch
had that sketchy, energetic style we talked about
earlier. And his underdrawings are very distinct.
You can see him working out the composition,
making changes on the fly, fixing mistakes directly
on the panel. He's thinking with his brush. Whereas
a copyist? A copyist, on the other hand, is usually
just tracing a finished image. Their underdrawing
will be very clean, very precise, with no corrections.
Because they're just copying a finished product.
There's no creative process happening. Right.
So if the underdrawing is too clean, too perfect,
it's probably a copy. If it's messy and energetic
and full of changes, it might just be the master
himself. So did the BRCP find any hidden treasures
with this tech? Any big surprises? They had a
huge win in 2016. There was a small panel of
The Temptation of St. Anthony that was sitting
in the Nelson -Atkins Museum in Kansas City.
For years, it was labeled as a workshop piece.
Meaning maybe a student did it or a follower.
Exactly. The BRCP analyzed it, looked at the
messy, creative underdrawing, and they upgraded
it to an authentic Bosch. Wow. That must have
been a very good day for the Nelson -Atkins Museum.
A very, very good day. Their asset just appreciated
significantly in both monetary value and prestige.
But there were losses too. The BRCP questioned
some very famous works. Oh. Like what? They suggested
that the seven deadly sins in the Prado Museum
in Madrid and Christ carrying the cross in Ghent,
two very famous paintings, might not actually
be by Bosch himself. No way. They think they
might be high -quality workshop productions,
but not from the master's own hand. Ouch. That
changes how we view history. You walk into a
museum, you see the little plaque on the wall,
and you assume it's gospel truth. But science
is literally rewriting the art history books.
It is. It reminds us that art history is not
static. It's an ongoing process. investigation.
Just because a painting has hung in a famous
museum for 200 years doesn't mean we know everything
about it. So let's try and bring this all back
to the man himself, Geronimus van Aken, a wealthy
religious man from a family of painters living
in a provincial town in the Netherlands. He witnesses
a fire that burns his entire world down. He rejects
the smooth, perfect style of his time for something
rough and urgent. And he uses that style to create
the world's most enduring nightmares. That is
the paradox of Bosch right there. He used the
imagery of madness to preach sanity. He used
monsters to talk about what it means to be human.
And that, I think, is the final takeaway for
me. His monsters weren't just random hallucinations
from a fever dream. They were a mirror held up
to the very real anxieties of the late Middle
Ages. The fear of hell, the fear of sin, the
fear of societal corruption. And honestly, those
fears aren't so different from our own anxieties
today. We just have different monsters. We have
different fears. You know, climate change, pandemics,
technology running amok. But the fundamental
anxiety about chaos and losing control is the
same. Bosch gave form to the formless fears of
his time. Here's a thought to leave you with.
And it goes back to that irony or shield theory
we discussed. If Bosch used all this bizarre
symbolism to shield himself from criticism, if
he was hiding his true political or social attacks
behind these crazy demons, are we even seeing
the real meaning today? That is the provocative
question, isn't it? We might be staring at the
decor. We are so mesmerized and distracted by
the bird -headed monster eating a person or the
pair of ears wielding a giant knife that we completely
miss the specific critique of a corrupt local
bishop or a greedy merchant that his contemporaries
would have spotted immediately. So the real political
punch might be totally lost to history, leaving
us just with a nightmare. We're just looking
at the special effects and we've completely missed
the plot. Next time you look at the Garden of
Earthly Delights, don't just look for the giant
food or the funny monsters. Look at the frozen
hell. Look at the cold. And wonder what Geronimus
was really, truly trying to tell us. It's a chilling
thought. Thanks for diving deep with us. We'll
see you next time.