pink heart that doubles as a bagpipe…a sharp knife sitting between two huge ears… a tree man with tree trunks for legs and a cracked eggshell for a body… a city burning in the distance… and so much more. For a tip of a few pesetas (maybe ten American cents back then) you could get the Prado guard to close the side panels of the triptych and reveal the grisaille scene on the painting’s exterior panels depicting the birth of the round earth. (Bosch, born around the same time as Columbus, knew the earth was round, even if dogmatic clergy and officials claimed it was not). In that snowy Spanish January of 1971, I gazed into the Garden of Earthly Delights and tried to discern what was in Bosch’s mind when he painted it five centuries earlier. I spent time with the other Bosch paintings in the Prado as well, particularly the Haywain , which echoes key themes of the Garden of Earthly Delights . Bosch’s native Brabant region (in today’s Netherlands) was a kind of colony of Spain during the artist’s lifetime and for most of the century that followed. Philip II was the 16 th century Hapsburg Emperor who ruled much of Europe from his headquarters in Spain at the palace/monastery outside Madrid today known as the Escorial. Philip became fascinated with Bosch and bought as many Bosch paintings as he could get his hands on. It is said that Philip kept The Garden of Earthly Delights in his own private quarters at the Escorial where he could see it every day and share it with only his most intimate friends and visitors. Bosch has many “firsts” to his credit: • He is the godfather of surrealismwho painted fantastical and often horrifying “ duivels en monsters ” as the Dutch like to say, four centuries before Salvador Dali pioneered what we know today as surrealism. • Bosch’s Wayfarer may be the first painting in history to depict an ordinary man (as opposed to a religious figure, nobleman, or wealthy family) as a hero. It is definitely the first painting of an existential hero–a man suffering doubt and pain and seeking to find his own moral bearings on the difficult course of life. • Bosch may also be the first artist to use the triptych form to tell a story that was not a traditional religious one. A devout and loyal Catholic, Bosch may be the first to rail against the excess and hypocrisy of his own church through visual art rather than the written word. • And while a few artists before Bosch painted positive and negative views of the afterlife, no one addressed these subjects with his exotic/erotic view of Heaven or the detailed horror movie aesthetics of his vision of Hell. As a college student in 1972, I started writing a book about Hieronymus Bosch. Although I never completed that effort (in truth, I didn’t get very far at all), his work remained an intellectual passion for me. Over the ensuing decades of my life, I wrote 14 books and enjoyed multiple careers in journalism, consulting, investment banking, and venture capital. Through all that time, Bosch’s enigmatic art was never far from my thoughts. As I approached my 60 th birthday three years ago, my wife and son wanted to know what we should do to celebrate. I said I didn’t want a party. What I wanted was to embark as a family on a multi- year experiential adventure to see all the known Bosch paintings still extant in the world. Sitting in our own “garden of earthly delights” in the backyard of our home in Weston, CT on the beautiful August day that was
my 60 th birthday in 2013, my wife Julie read reports from various websites about the plans to hold a 500 th anniversary celebration for Bosch in 2016 in his hometown of ‘s Hertogenbosch (better known by its shortened name, Den Bosch) in the Netherlands. Reading about the ambitious plans of the local Noordbrabants Museum, we knew right then that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see much of Bosch’s work in one place. Whatever came together in 2016 in Den Bosch, we wanted to be there. Fast forward to Den Bosch, the Netherlands, April 2016: I am in my element here. The whole town has reinvented itself as a daily Bosch festival celebrating the 500 th year since the death of Hieronymus, its most famous citizen. In the Noordbrabants Museum show devoted to Bosch I am looking into the utterly mad
scene at the heart of the Haywain triptych, a painting more than 500 years old that seems starkly contemporary in 2016. The central image depicts humanity’s follies as a race to grab the most hay from a groaningly heavy harvest season hay wagon, even though the wagon should (theoretically) have plenty for everyone. The Haywain is far more ruthless in its condemnation of social inequality than a Bernie Sanders speech. There is a murder taking place with one man slitting another man’s throat in full view of the crowd. Is this the first murder scene in Western art that does not focus on the martyrdom of a religious figure? Nuns who have taken vows of poverty are loading up on grain directly from communal sacks while a fat self-satisfied priest looks on. In the right panel, a surrealist’s vision of Hell provides a frightening reminder of where all this human folly may lead. Meanwhile, arriving on horseback from the left hand side of the central image to join the feeding frenzy are the Pope and the Emperor. It’s the last days of the medieval “THE WAYFARER” ALSO KNOWN AS “THE PEDLAR” BY HIERONYMUS BOSCH, THE BOIJMANS MUSEUM, ROTTERDAM, IS AN OIL ON PANEL, CIRCA 1500. THE MUSEUM IS THE ONLY DUTCH MUSEUM THAT OWNS ANY PAINTINGS BY BOSCH. © 2016 JULIE O’CONNOR PHOTO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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