EPISODE TRANSCRIPTS

35: Hieronymus Bosch • Part II: The Hell Panel

A massive fire is raging in the city of ’s-Hertogenbosch, in the Netherlands–it is the year 1463. Panic has erupted, people are yelling and scattering through the streets–evacuating their homes, as plumes of black smoke blot out the sun.

Some are running from house to house, trying to help their neighbors or the elderly, some are gathering all their valuables in sacks, and bringing them to the market square–their tools, their silverware, so that when the fire engulfs their home, they don’t lose everything.

A local youth, named Hieronymus Bosch, is rushing in and out of his family’s home, tossing sacks of belongings into a carriage. His brothers and sisters are helping him. There’s no time to think, he’s heard the stories from his mother: 50 years ago, a fire engulfed the city. No one was spared–not even the wealthy.

Once they’ve packed what they can, their father forcefully shakes the reins of their horses, and they quickly take the full carriage down the cobblestone street, to the market square, where everyone is gathering… in panicked masses. The peasants with the wealthy alike.

As the fire inches its way to them, there is nothing they can do but wait. To see how far God’s wrath stretches.

Young Hieronymus heads to a hill on the edge of town. Where people have gathered to view the disaster from a higher vantage point. And to see how close their own home or their friend or family’s home is to the mouth of Hell ripping its way through the streets.

It’s here that Bosch has a chance to see it for himself.

The sky has become a mixture of black and orange. He’s never seen anything like it. Immense pillars of smoke, silhouettes of homes engulfed in flames, people crying, running erratically.

The catastrophe continues long into the night.

And Hieronymus can do nothing but watch it. As darkness settles beneath the crescent moon, the fires beam through the silhouettes of homes…There is a terrifying beauty to it all.

The vividness of this moment will stay with Bosch for his entire life. But so will the trauma: this fire of 1463, destroys 4,000 homes in ’s-Hertogenbosch, almost leveling the entire city.

Bosch is only 13 years old at this time. He doesn’t know it yet, but this event will inspire him, in the strangest ways, for the next five decades.

Witnessing the chaos of panicked masses of people, seeing the terrifying beauty of a city on fire.

It will cause Bosch to depict visions of Hell which no one before him could have imagined, and no one after him will ever match.

Of the 25 artworks of Hieronymus Bosch that we have today:

10 of them include burning city landscapes. Almost half of his known artworks include a scene inspired by that fateful day.

It is a motif of his work which is as recognizable as his signature. The artists before him, always depicted hell with burning caverns and underground cauldrons.

But it is Bosch, who imagines that a city itself can become a Hell.

And although his only direct reference for this depiction was that catastrophic fire of 1463. Watching it, at 13 years of age, left such an impression on his young artist’s mind, that he was able to summon it decades later in his greatest artworks.

This is Creative Codex, I am your host, MJDorian. On this episode, we are going to take a journey to Hell, with Hieronymus Bosch as our tour guide. I’ve created a video companion for this episode, which shows you detailed closeups of all the artwork we discuss. You can view that by simply playing this episode on Spotify, and the video will automagically play along.

I’ve included a link for that in the episode description. Alternatively, if you’d like to follow along with the The Hell Panel at your own pace, I’ve also included a link to a high resolution scan of The Garden of Earthly Delights; it’s the best one available online.

This is Part II of my Bosch series, focusing on The Garden of Earthly Delights. If you have not yet listened to Part I, I strongly recommend you pause this episode and scroll down in the podcast feed to episode 34: Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights (Part I). There we explore the exterior panels and panels 1 & 2 in great detail, as well as the historical context of the work.

Without further ado, put your funnel caps on, we’re going to Bosch’s Hell. And we’re going to descend deeper than anyone else has ventured before.

Chapter 3: The Reinvention of Hell

When you first set your eyes on the third panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights… the thing that first takes hold of you is the immense blackness. The absence of light. In contrast to the effect of panels 1 and 2, gazing at panel 3 is like falling into an abyss.

And where your eyes, in the central panel, may have darted to-and-fro like a hummingbird going from flower to flower, here, they settle, and pan the landscape in horror and fascination.

A knight being eaten alive by demonic rats…a naked woman being ridden like a horse…people being crushed by giant ears…a man impaled on the strings of a harp…someone trapped inside of a bass drum as a demon bangs on it…oh yeah, and don’t forget the contrabassoon, being played by a demon as it’s held aloft on the back of a man with a flute up his butt.

What the hell is going on here?

How do we even begin to make sense of this.

The art historian, Erwin Panofsky, who wrote extensively about Netherlandish painting of this time period, wrote this about Bosch in 1953:

“I cannot help feeling that the real secret of his magnificent nightmares and daydreams has still to be disclosed. We have bored a few holes through the door of the locked room; but somehow we do not seem to have discovered the key.”

And that’s the way one feels when spending time in Bosch’s hellscape. A fruitless search ensues to find the key to his symbolism… (show man hanging on key) and yet, no such thing is found.

In that ambiguity, as your thoughts grapple with what stands before you, your mind starts to project its own meaning on the painting. And in many ways, this is even more important than the meaning which Bosch intended. Because what we project onto the painting, says more about us than it does about Bosch. If we recoil, it is because something has offended us, if we are perplexed, it is because something has engaged us.

There are no surviving writings of Bosch–no journals, no notes, or correspondences that explain his thought process. So in our attempt to understand this painting, we will have to largely rely on an intuitive approach, and support our intuitions with known insights about the time period it was created in. Somewhere along the way, this will give us an appreciation for what Bosch has achieved here.

We may not find the key, but if we’re lucky, we may just fashion one… which happens to pick the lock.

We’re going to start our exploration of The Hell Panel from the base of the painting, and work our way upward. It will be helpful to separate things by planes of action like we did with the central panel.

There is the foreground, mid-foreground, middle ground, and background.

The foreground is delineated by the sandy colored ground at the base of the painting, which cuts a diagonal from the man with the pig on the right to the crowd behind the table on the left. The mid-foreground is the area of ground that has a burnt sienna color, it includes the demon sitting in a high chair on the right, and the instruments on the left.

The middle ground is the lake with the glowing figure of the ‘tree man’ its center. And the background begins directly above the bagpipes which are on the tree man’s head. It is engulfed in darkness, and stretches all the way to the top of the painting.

The first thing to consider is that Bosch is a master of his craft. By the time he paints this artwork, he is in his late fifties to early sixties. Whatever we see, and the manner in which it is placed, is very deliberate.

He has grouped these crowds of people in very specific ways–based on their punishment. Unlike panel 2, where we see people in countless small intimate groups, here in The Hell Panel, we see crowds of people huddled close–packed tightly. As if they were being herded together this way–like animals–by the demons in charge.

But likewise, what makes these scenes so believable is the feeling of terror. You can imagine that if people were in Hell, naked, and witnessing these terrors, they would huddle close together–out of fear–in an attempt to protect themselves. Add to that, instead of the sweltering heat traditionally associated with Hell, it appears to be freezing cold. Which would also have the effect of causing people to huddle close together.

Let’s direct our attention to the foreground of the painting, at the bottom of this panel. Where we’ll begin our analysis with one of the most confusing scenes in the entire painting.

In the bottom right corner we see a naked man, sitting on the ground, with his legs extended, he is being embraced by a large pig wearing a nun’s habit. His right hand is raised to the pig’s jaw, implying they will kiss, but his upper body seems to be recoiling.

Draped across his left leg we see a white document, with writing on it. It appears to be some kind of contract or binding agreement. We know this because directly above this document, the pig’s left hoof is holding a long white quill, which has just been dipped in black ink. What is their agreement? Are they getting married? Is it something else? And why is the pig dressed as a nun?

The quill that the pig is holding has just been dipped into an ink pot that is suspended from the long beak of a bird on the left, a bird that is wearing a knight’s helmet…on top of which a severed human foot is hanging…as if that weren’t enough, this bird-knight has human legs, with claw-like feet and his right leg has been pierced with an arrow.

This only raises more questions, but for now we can say that the demon bird is not a knight, and that he instead represents something false. Perhaps false honor, or falsely earned privilege.

There is one more figure that completes this scene, and I believe, helps explain what’s going on here. Behind the pig, a man is standing wearing a light red robe. In his left hand he holds a small note with a red seal, and in his right hand, he holds a large white envelope that also has a red seal. But he is balancing this large envelope on the top of his head as he stares to the left, at the scenes before him, with his mouth gaping open. As if he doesn’t belong here.

The red wax seals tell us that the document on the naked man’s lap is some kind of official agreement, likely from some governing body, or church office. This is further confirmed by the standing man with the envelope on his head, seemingly waiting for the agreement to be signed. This is notably also the only human figure in the foreground wearing any clothes.

He wears a light red colored robe. We have seen this light red robe before, in Panel 1, being worn by the image of God as the Son of Man. Bosch is a master of using these visual echoes and subversions.

This light red robe tells us to associate this man with the church, but his position behind the pig-nun and his lack of adornment indicates he likely holds a low station in the church. He is certainly no Cardinal or Pope.

We have every indication to believe he is a courier or assistant of a church official. This is further confirmed by the large envelope balancing on his head. Throughout The Garden of Earthly Delights, Bosch has uses this visual game to tell us something about the character portrayed. Whenever he balances something on a person’s head, it denotes their station or motivation. A knight wears a helmet on his head, a lustful sinner wears fruit, a nun wears a habit, and a courier or assistant…wears an envelope. It’s silly, but its effective.

It reminds me of Antonio de Beatis, who was the assistant to Cardinal D’Aragona. We mentioned Beatis in the last episode, he was the one who accompanied the Cardinal on their tour of indulgence through Europe. And Beatis’ journal also contains the first written account of The Garden of Earthly Delights, in 1517.

We can decode the symbolism a bit more by noticing the symbolic significance of the animals here. A pig, during the Middle Ages, was associated with gluttony. And there is one more animal Bosch has hidden. On the assistant’s shoulder there is a black toad. The toad during Bosch’s time signified avarice… or greed.

Recall that in Panel 1, toads are one of corruptions that enter the Garden of Eden.

But what is the toad doing on this assistant’s shoulder. Seemingly hopping into a pocket or coin purse?

Whatever it is, all of this symbolism combined points us more clearly to an interpretation of one of Bosch’s most confusing scenes. Let’s recap:

The pig-nun–pigs representing gluttony, nuns representing the Catholic church, the document–an official agreement, the embrace–implies a formal union, the courier in a light red robe representing an administrative arm of the church, the black toad on his shoulder representing greed, the bird-demon in a knight’s helmet representing false honor.

Bosch is depicting something called simony. S-i-m-o-n-y.

This is a corrupt dealing of the Catholic church in which a wealthy person can buy a church office by bribing church officials. For example, if you were wealthy enough, like perhaps, one Cardinal D’Aragona, you could pay off a few church officials and be given the sacrament to become a Cardinal. This was considered a very serious problem of the Catholic church from as early as the fifth century, all the way to Bosch’s time.

In the 1300’s, the book Dante’s Inferno gives a special place in Hell for people engaging in such deals, including putting Pope Nicholas the IIIrd there, who is specifically condemned for simony. And around Bosch’s time, in 1494, when Bosch may have already been working on this painting, a monk of the Carmelite Order, preached publicly against the practice of simony…aaaand was found dead in his bed from twenty stab wounds.

Yeah, sounds less like a church and more like the mob.

This calls to mind one of the difficulties with interpreting Bosch five hundred years later. Like in the case of simony, he may be depicting scenarios and symbols which the people of his time easily understood, but which are no longer commonplace for us…

Let’s now shift our attention to the next scene, on the left side in the foreground.

Here we see a chaotic mess of bodies, demons, parlor games, and violence being done with swords and knives. In the front of this crowded mess is a large table which has been knocked over. A rodent-demon dressed like a hunter or guard of some kind is stabbing a man through the chest with his longsword. The rodent-demon is restraining the naked man against the table by his neck. In addition, a knife is pierced through the right hand of the naked man.

The art historian, Stefan Fischer, connects the symbolism of this confusing scene to a specific subject matter often seen in art of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance: the evil inn.

A place where townspeople would gather to gamble, drink, and sleep with sex workers. There are Dutch artworks from this time period that show strikingly similar symbols to the ones Bosch is using here. Such as the wood engravings by Jacob Matham, a Dutch artist. Like the one titled Consequences of Alcoholism

In which we can see a dispute between two gamblers, they have both pulled out their knives. The table is toppling over, with the backgammon board, the playing cards, a pitcher, and a candle. All items Bosch has included in his scene.

In the book, Hieronymus Bosch, the Complete Works, Fischer writes:

“The whole of the right inner wing is dominated by the topos of the ‘evil inn’, called quade herberge in Dutch. Taken from contemporary literature, the term was applied to brothels and shady taverns in which it was asserted, secular music, gambling, alcohol and prostitution led to the sins of lust, quarrelsomeness, anger, vanity, greed, alcoholism and an addiction to gambling.

Bosch indicates these connections not with a pointing finger but with a creative freedom of combination and bitter irony…

In line with the notion that one sin leads to another, the deadly sins would often appear together in artworksor in sequence. In his widely read treatise, On The Imitation of Christ, circa 1418, Thomas a Kempis counsels the reader, writing ‘control the untamed appetite for food and drink, and you will more easily control all bodily desires.’

The body was viewed as a vessel intended as a container for the Holy Spirit. Its purity, however, was destroyed by sin and in particular by lust. A body contaminated by sin excluded a person from receiving the Eucharist…While the topos of the ‘evil in’ is represented in concentrated form in the tree-man, it is elaborated in greater detail in the scenes in the lower left section of the panel.

The naked woman with the dice on her head is identified as a prostitute by the candle and jug in her hand; and she clearly also belongs to the milieu of the shady tavern…a devil holds a trictrac board–similar to a backgammon board–menacingly in the air. Playing-cards lie scattered on the ground in the bottom left corner.

[…] Bosch is addressing themes that had a contemporary relevance. Towards the end of the 15th century, restrictions on prostitution were being tightened, while at the same time marriage was becoming increasingly institutionalized. Gambling, which was often accompanied by drinking, was considered to lead to over-excitement, arguments and outbursts of temper and was thus frequently banned.”

In addition, some texts of the time period mention these specific behaviors as ones the aristocracy and civic elite should avoid. A Dutch marriage proverb from 1450 reads: “From bad people one can learn, unchastity, dicing, drinking and swearing, and also to forget days of fasting, and thus all the commandments, that one should observe before God.”

Another example, the philosopher, Erasmus of Rotterdam, mentions in 1516 in his autobiography, that his tutor did not ‘engage in dicing, whoring, or drinking.’

But in Bosch’s vision of Hell, he goes one step further. It seems that these aren’t simple parlor games anymore, it seems that the gambling is now being played with the human bodies themselves. That it is the demons gambling with human lives. There are chalk marks on the table keeping score, and you can even see one demon piercing a heart in mid-air with his sword.

Notice the blindfolded man on the bottom left, whose head is being severed by a floating sword. In trying to make sense of some of these scenarios, I stumbled on this proverb from the time period, found in Erasmus’ Adagia: “Save a thief from the gallows and he will cut your throat.”

Before moving on from this scene, there is one final detail to notice… take a look at the blue shield on the back of the rodent-demon, who is impaling the man against the table. On this shield, Bosch has painted a severed hand. It is fixed to the shield with a knife through its palm. The hand is paradoxically giving the symbol of Benediction, while it balances dice on its extended two fingers.

This appears to be an echo of the hand of God which we see in Panel 1. It is also a right hand. So there is no doubt Bosch has done this deliberately. But here, it is presented as a mockery. The center of the hand is pierced through by a knife, mimicking the wounds of Christ’s crucifixion.

This is the logic of evil–a mockery of all that is good. The use of God’s blessing on a game of chance. [rotate the severed hand, and fade it to the hand of God in Panel 1]

How Bosch could conceive of this dark visual metaphor five hundred years ago is a testament to his creative genius.

Let’s now make our way to the mid-foreground, which is the entire area of reddish brown terrain just above the foreground.

It’s here that we meet one of Bosch’s most famous characters from all of his paintings… the ‘Prince of Hell’. Here he is on the right side, seated on his tall golden throne. But he is not relaxing, he seems to be performing a very specific duty. He is devouring humans with his enormous beak, swallowing them whole, and excreting them out of a blue sack from his rear, which hangs underneath his tall chair.

The humans falling out of the sack drop into a circular opening in the ground, where terrified faces are seen looking up from the darkness. It’s a disturbing image…This effect only intensifies when you notice that there is a man vomiting into the hole from the right, with the aid of some maiden or priestess holding his head, and another man on the left, is bending his ass over the hole in the ground, and seemingly shitting gold coins into the open mouths of onlookers below.

Yeah.

If you can believe it–it gets weirder. When you realize what Bosch is saying here.

Now I haven’t heard anyone talk about the specific symbolism of this coin and vomit hole, so I’m proud to say…that this next insight is my personal realization.

As we established before, a dominant theme of what Bosch is doing in the Hell panel is the perversion of all that is good. Such as the skewered Benediction hand being an echo of God’s hand in Panel 1.

I think these falling coins are also a perversion of something from Panel 1.

That is: the disc-like leaves on the vine, which are climbing up the dragon blood tree next to Adam. If you recall, in Part I, we talked about how the dragon blood tree foreshadows the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of man. And the disc-like leaves, which Bosch has rendered with such great care, are symbolic of the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, an integral ceremony of the Catholic Church.

At first, I thought I might be making a stretch here…connecting the two scenes…until I noticed that both the Eucharist leaves and the coins appear on a perfect horizontal axis to one another. Again, I have not heard anyone mention this before.

And notice how the Prince of Hell’s tall chair is positioned at a relative mirror image to the dragon blood tree’s position.

This hole, where terrified people with open mouths receive gold coins from an ass, is Bosch’s perversion of the Eucharist.

This is Hell’s Unholy Communion.

And the proverbial Blood of Christ, which a priest drinks along with the Eucharist? Is this other man’s vomit.

Yeah, crazy stuff.

There might be good reason why no historian has written that particular insight down. It’s kind of hard to write a scholarly book on Bosch and spend three pages explaining how a man shitting gold coins into people’s mouths and another vomiting into that same hole is Hell’s version of the Eucharist.

But there you have it, on Creative Codex we call it like we see it. And don’t send me angry letters, I didn’t paint this.

If we explore this scene a little more, we see more symbolism. Some historians point out that the chair that this Prince of Hell is seated on is a type of aristocratic toilet, one which would have been positioned in such a way that wealthy people could do their business inside their home, and it would go right into the drainage canal outside, without having to leave their residence. Unlike common folk, who would have to go outside, or in a bucket they would empty in the canal.

Because Bosch was upper-middle class, it is very likely that he had one of these aristocratic toilets in his home.

Notice somethings about this demon. He is wearing a large pot on his head. Recall that in earlier scenes, Bosch balances objects on people’s heads to denote their station or motivation. This Prince of Hell does not wear a crown, but rather, a cauldron. This may indicate his motivation: to eat. His dominant drive is his appetite. Just like the people in the central panel.

It’s important to point out that this demon has an owl’s head. Look at the beak and the eyes. Recall that it is the owl in Panel 1, inside of the shadowy hole of the baptismal font, seated on a symbolic crescent moon, which is the cause of the corruption in Eden.

And then there are two large owls in the central panel, like two pillars, flanking the pleasures taking place. And a fourth owl gazing down at the spotted boar, whose arousal helps us decode the meaning of Bosch’s color choices.

This Prince of Hell, I believe, is the owl in its true form. That it has been watching man, and his misadventures on Earth, all the while waiting to receive him in Hell, where he will devour him for all eternity.

Notice that the Prince of Hell is located on a perfect horizontal axis with the other two large owls in Panel 2. Bosch wants us to make this connection.

But it’s still not clear who is being punished. For that, we have to turn to historical sources. One curious source I tracked down is a collection of Netherlandish proverbs from Bosch’s time. These are folk sayings or adages which we know Bosch often paints in his other works.

If you look at the human that this demon owl is currently swallowing, you’ll notice there is fire, smoke, and a flock of crows coming out of his rear end. A Netherlandish proverb of the time says: ‘He who eats fire, craps sparks.’ It means, don’t be surprised at the outcome of doing foolish things.

We have a modern version of this saying which is: ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes.’ And that certainly seems to be the case here.

But what would this sinner be guilty of?

It turns out that it’s most likely lust. This is the station where all the people from Panel 2 end up. They get eaten by the demon owl, and pooped out into an abyss, where they receive the Unholy Communion.

This is further confirmed by the huge rabbit that is walking through at the lower left of the Prince of Hell’s station. Recall that the rabbits near Eve’s feet in Panel 1, were symbolic of the Origin of Lust, that leads to the Fall of Man.

But here, in Hell, those animal impulses have taken full dominion. The rabbit of lust is now as large as man, and hunting humans. One human he has tied to a pole he carries, and another has been captured by two hounds which belong to the rabbit-hunter. And I love this subtle detail, from this terrified man’s mouth, we see a panicked vapor of breath. Which tells us it’s either his ‘last breath’ or Hell, is cold as hell.

But back to the demon-owl, it’s very likely that Bosch took some inspiration for this character from a book called The Vision of Tondal.

The Bosch scholar, Stefan Fischer, writes:

This creature… “exhibits parallels with a passage in the Vision of Tondal, in which a giant winged beast punishes those convicted of the sin of lust by devouring and then excreting them. It reads:

‘Soon, they came upon a hideous creature that filled Tundal with terror. It seemed more evil and dangerous than anything he had ever seen before, with two enormous black wings and with claws of iron and steel protruding from his feet. Its neck was long and slender but held a huge head in which burned two red eyes, set wide apart, and its mouth was wide and spat fire in a seemingly inextinguishable stream. Its nose was tipped with iron!

The beast sat in the middle of a frozen lake, swallowing terrified souls which burned inside its body until they were nearly wasted away, but then they were expelled from this horror in the creature’s excrement and left until they had recovered and become whole once again… But they were not delivered from this pain, the cycle was renewed and they had to endure it again and again.’

This punishment was specifically ordained for ‘monks, clerics, priests and canons and other men and women of the Holy Church who have indulged their carnal desires…ignoring the strictures of their order and leading their lives as they wish.’

The Vision of Tondal was written down in around 1149 by the Irish monk Marcus at the Scots Monastery in Regensburg. It tells the story of Tundal, a notoriously unscrupulous man who falls unconscious one day during dinner and is shown a vision of the afterlife. An angel guides him through numerous scenes of Hell and finally shows him a glimpse of Heaven.

Beholding the dreadful punishments suffered by sinners, Tundal repents of his previous conduct and, restored to consciousness, embraces a virtuous life. The Vision of Tundal was widely known north of the Alps and remained extremely popular right up to the Early Modern era. It forms part of the same genre of vision literature as the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri…”

It’s confirmed that an edition of The Vision of Tondal was in circulation in Den Bosch by 1484, when Bosch would have been 34 years old, and at least ten years before he created this painting.

The similarities are striking, especially regarding the punishment for lustful sinners. But the most remarkable thing is how Bosch’s imagination runs with that scenario–adding so many extra layers.

Notice that this demon-owl has some kind of pink skirt that extends around the length of his toilet chair. In the canopy of this skirt, Bosch has hidden further symbolism. On the left side, a naked woman is sleeping, sitting up, resting against the legs of the chair. A bizarre looking demon-dog is directly behind her, its eyes eerily glow in the shadows.

While this woman sleeps, this demon dog appears to be molesting her, with its four fingered hands wrapping across the front of her body. The woman has a black toad on the center of her chest. Directly to the left of her is a spherical mirror, with a golden frame. In it, we see a reflection of the sleeping woman and the demon-dog. Strangely, this mirror has been placed on the rear end of some green tree demon, whose bent leg crosses over this woman’s legs.

I have not heard any scholars dissect the symbolism of this woman… but she must have been significant to Bosch, because he paints her in this same exact pose in Panel 2…But mirrored, the other way.

What kind of game is Bosch playing here? …What is he trying to tell us?

Both of these versions of the same woman appear on the same horizontal axis across the two panels. This isn’t a coincidence, things like this don’t just happen in a painting of this complexity.

Notice how, in Panel 2, the woman is leaning against an orange hut structure, and a man is raising his bare ass just behind her shoulder. In Hell, she is leaning against the Prince’s toilet chair, and again, directly behind her shoulder, a man is displaying his bare ass.

These choices are deliberate. And as we have noticed in the earlier scenes, Bosch plays with these visual echoes in a way that weaves the three panels together.

But what does it mean? Is the woman dreaming about Hell? It feels deeper than that.

Does she represent the ‘Sleep of Wisdom’? In more ancient traditions, such as Jewish mysticism and Gnosticism, Wisdom is understood to be a female emanation of the divine. Even in Greek culture, Athena represents wisdom.

Another interesting thread–in my research of Bosch’s time period, I’ve read historians say that nude figures in paintings of the Middle Ages represent the soul, in its transit outside of the physical body. That’s why in that manuscript, The Vision of Tondal, you can see that Tondal is naked while the angel is clothed.

Is this woman the soul of man?

If we analyze this painting according to analytical psychology, Dr. Carl Jung might say that what is being shown is Adam’s soul, or universal man’s soul–in its descent into Hell, across the three panels.

Jung often wrote that the soul of a man is feminine and the soul of a woman is masculine.

But whatever Bosch meant by this…he wants us to make these connections. Because not only does this woman echo Panel 2, she also echoes Panel 1. Notice the position of Adam’s body in the Garden of Eden. It is exactly the same posture, all the way down to how his hands are placed: one on his thigh and one on the ground. And again, Bosch has positioned all three on the same horizontal axis.

With all this in mind…I was reflecting on the Sleep of Wisdom… and it hit me.

Through this sleeping woman, and her mirrored poses linking back to Adam. Bosch is representing the ignorance of the knowledge of our soul’s descent into material reality…The spiritual Fall of Man…

 

Now it’s time, for a brief Intermission.

I hope you’re enjoying this episode. As I said at the outset, our goal has been to go deeper into Bosch’s Hell than anyone has ventured before. And I hope I’ve achieved that.

At this point of the episode, in most podcasts, you’d hear an advertisement for an Amish dating app, a new crypto pyramid scheme, or overpriced liver supplements. But not on Creative Codex.

Instead, I’m going to tell you about some cool stuff you may not be aware of. For example: did you know Creative Codex has its own YouTube Channel? Yup. You can find it easily by searching the show name on YouTube, or by simply heading to youtube.com/creativecodex

There’s a few video specials on there, including one in which I run some fun experiments on Midjourney, which is this artificial intelligence program that generates artwork based on text prompts. I share these experiments in the video and explore the potential ethical and philosophical problems they present.

You can check that out again at the Creative Codex YouTube Channel.

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The link for this soundtrack is also in the episode description.

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Without further ado, let’s get back to Hell shall we…?

Our tour through Hell finally brings us to one of the most notorious scenes in Bosch’s Hell Panel… the butt music.

Yes, I was half-hoping we didn’t have to talk about it, but it seems there are a few misconceptions out there about this particular scene which we need to clear up. Especially if we ever hope to understand what Bosch was trying to say.

There is a scene to the left of the Prince of Hell, which shows a crowd of musicians and music instruments. At the base of this scene, just under the lute, you can see the naked posterior of a man, who has music notation inked on his butt cheeks.

The question which has plagued bloggers and YouTube Channels for years is: what song did Bosch write on this man’s rear end? And can we play it? In reality, this is the wrong question. The real question is: why did Bosch write music notation on that part of the body?

But what can we expect really. We see a butt, we see notation on it, we laugh at the absurdity and we get distracted.

It’s the kind of silly red herring that social media has trained us to react to. It grabs our attention and sucks all the oxygen out of the room, and we never notice that a more serious societal statement looms on the periphery.

Let’s tackle both. First, the red herring.

What song did Bosch write on this man’s butt cheeks? And can we play it?

Let’s get our facts straight. Bosch wasn’t a musician. No records indicate he knew anything about it. But, he no doubt had access to musical notation through his work with the church. And, it’s highly likely he sang liturgical music during masses.

It’s important to point out, this is not modern music notation, this is Gregorian music notation, common during the Middle Ages for church music. As such, it has no indication for what rhythm or what scale the melody is using. This may not seem like a big deal to non-musicians, but it is a HUGE deal. A different scale changes everything, in the most simple explanation: playing a melody in a major scale makes it sound happy and playing the same melody in a minor scale makes it sound sad.

As far as music historians can tell, this is not a recognizable piece of medieval music.

Still, that has not stopped some intrepid music students from trying their hand at figuring it out. In 2014, one college student, named Amelia Hamrick, decided to translate this medieval notation into modern notation and came up with this melody… [play melody]

She posted it to her Tumblr and people went crazy for this 500 year old butt music. It was a viral hit, she ended up interviewed on several news segments, and people loved it. But, notice the notes have no sense of rhythm, because the notation has no rhythm. So even if it was a real song of the 1400’s, we have no way of playing the rhythms correctly, we can only make guesses.

For example, here is one interpretation I came up with: [play ex1]

And here is another one: [play ex2]

They are equally valid. And to make matters worse, because there is no clef included in this medieval notation, we can’t be certain what scale or mode the melody is sung in.

So instead of A minor, like Amelia transcribed it in, it might actually be played in G major, and it would sound like this: [play ex3]

You can find dozens of interpretations of this melody. Here is one of my favorites, by a Spanish group known as Atrium Musicae, on a record they released in 1978, which takes its inspiration from the Gregorian notation on this man’s butt. Atrium Musicae call this piece: Codex Gluteo.

[cue Codex Gluteo music]

Long story longer… this butt music is a red herring. Bosch is not Bach. He isn’t using the music notation literally, he is using it symbolically. These various renditions of the notation are examples of a musician’s creativity in interpreting it, and not a literal reading, because, well, as we saw, the literal reading lacks musicality. It is equivalent to throwing darts at a blank piano notation paper and trying your best to make music out of the resulting dots.

What is this song? Is the wrong question. The real question is: why did Bosch write music notation on that part of the body?

Despite most of the people in this artwork being nude, there are a few key moments when Bosch makes a point of presenting us with an ass–in the form of a statement.

There is the one presented behind the sleeping woman in Panel 2. The one presented behind the sleeping woman in Panel 3. And a very deliberate one presented in the circular opening of the corrupted baptismal fountain, again in Panel 2. To Bosch, we must assume, the ass itself is a symbol of impurity, of humor, of disregard, and our base animal nature.

There was a belief in the Middle Ages that secular music was a diversion, which lead to a preoccupation with bodily pleasures, and turned us away from the spiritual path. These instruments Bosch chooses, aren’t classical church music instruments, these are instruments used by traveling musicians and bards who sing in taverns: a lute, a bray harp, a bass drum, a recorder, a hurdy gurdy.

Bosch is saying: this is the music of the ass–the music of our base desires. And in Hell, you can listen to this cacophony all day long. In fact, you have to.

Bosch was making a judgement about popular music of his time.

The question we should ask ourselves today is:

Is popular music a net good for society? Does the music which holds most sway over our popular culture help us in any way? Does it encourage our virtues and our spiritual growth?

Or is it leading us further into the depths of our own despair? Is it encouraging and reinforcing our base animal impulses?

This is the serious philosophical question Bosch raises with this scene.

Do we dare to answer it?

It’s time to shift our attention to the middle ground of the painting.

It’s here that we begin to see darker colors dominate the space. The air in the middle ground is filled with deep black shadows and cold gray tones. At the base of this section, you can see a frozen lake. Not exactly what one would expect from a depiction of Hell from 500 years ago. Instead of a lake of fire, we see a lake of ice. In many ways, this is somehow even more frightening…to imagine being naked, hunted, and tortured in a place of freezing cold.

On this frozen lake, we see one person ice skating, another person bending over while standing on an enormous ice skate with either his hands bound by a rope attached to the back of the skate or holding it willingly, and a third person to the left who has fallen into the freezing water, grasping onto his oversized ice skate, trying to climb out. There is also some spoon-billed platypus demon skating by, with a long bow over his shoulder and arrows at his boot. He is either hunting humans or acting as a guard.

Just above these skaters, there’s a dismembered head and a set of legs on the ice in the background. This calls to mind the dismembered hand and foot in the foreground of the panel, and the Biblical verse found in Matthew 5:27: “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you…And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.”

The figure in the middle ground which commands the most attention is the Tree Man. This is a gigantic creature that is seemingly half human and half tree, with sail boats for feet. His skin tone matches the pale skin of the humans in the central panel. He appears to be turning back toward us, with his rear end cracked open, displaying a large eggshell shaped chest cavity, within which you can see people seated at a table.

This creature is Bosch’s most difficult symbol to decode. So we will return to it after first understanding some of the scenes around it.

To the left of the Tree Man is what can only be described as an infernal cathedral. I haven’t heard anyone analyze this particular scene, so any of the following insights are from my own reflection.

Bosch has painted the broken edifice of a church with demonic monks in blue robes standing in front. Inside we can see a large church bell ringing, but for its clapper, instead of a metal shaft, we see a dangling human; whose legs appear to sway with the bell itself, as a demon yanks on it from directly below. In the darkness of this infernal cathedral, you can also make out a second church bell, just behind the first. This one includes a person hanging upside down as the clapper.

The church’s steeple is an enormous horse’s skull. With a long staff protruding from its eye socket, on which is hung a key, and within the bow of that key, hangs a lifeless human body, with a crow flying toward its rear. Is the crow meant to be the shadow version of the dove? Often associated with the Holy Spirit.

Is the key meant to represent the keys of St. Peter, which unlock the gates of Heaven. It seems like everything about this cathedral is a mockery of all that is sacrosanct.

One has to wonder…is this a scene from Hell? Or is this a critique of the world above?

A world where the wealthy can buy sacraments and indulgences. A world where corruption and greed run through the Catholic church in the same degree as they do in the secular world… It’s important to consider that if these scenes weren’t presented in the context of Hell, most of them would be considered sacrilegious for their time period.

If Bosch painted this exact scene of demons running amok in a cathedral, without the context of Hell…Such a painting would have been destroyed.

Just above this cathedral scene, to the upper right, there is a what looks like a vehicle of war which is made from a set of severed ears, pierced through by an arrow, and between them, a knife the size of a house rises outward in an upward diagonal. Bizarrely, this creates a very phallic symbol.

Sinners appear to be trapped under the gigantic ears, and a demon is stationed in one of the ear lobes. It’s curious to note, that this knife is not an invention of Bosch, he painted a knife which was a very common brand of knives in Den Bosch at this time. You can see the insignia of this knife maker on the side of the blade. It looks like a capital B, perhaps another reason Bosch included it, but it is likely a capital ‘M’, viewed sideways.

During the Middle Ages, in Europe, the courts followed a strict system of corporal punishment, all the way into the Early Modern era.

The punishment for thievery was cutting the convicted criminal’s ear off. (This is how one could recognize a convicted thief who shows up in your town, and it would alert you to be on your guard.) This may be what Bosch is referring to in this scene.

One of the most startling details about this panel is the way in which we see commonplace objects in Hell, often being used to torturous ends.

To the right of the Tree Man we see an illogical assortment of objects, stacked one atop the other to create another scene.

At the bottom of this scene, a woman is being ridden like a horse by a demon who is wearing a hat and heel spurs, he seems to be riding her into the dark opening of a chamber pot. To the right of them is a strange speckled vase, it looks as though it’s covered in a skin disease, or boils, out of it, a man is climbing a ladder.

Laying across the vase and chamber pot is a huge butcher’s blade, notice the same insignia of the knife maker we saw on the earlier blade.

Above this knife is a chaotic scene, where we see a knight being devoured by demonic rats, a crowd of people clamoring to escape on a ladder, a demon impaling a man on his sword, and an oversized lantern within which people seem to be hiding.

All of the people in this scene are wearing helmets and armor, including one woman. Bosch is very deliberate throughout the Hell Panel regarding any articles of clothing or headwear. He uses it to denote station, often among the demons, but here, he includes it on the humans…why?

The man being impaled on a sword reminds me of the old adage: live by the sword, die by the sword. It’s interesting to point out that the people clamoring for the ladder are engaging in a fruitless struggle. There is no hope. The ladder is propped up against a short, flimsy and leafless tree, which will give them no escape from this torment.

What is happened here?

I haven’t heard anyone analyze this scene, so the next insight is entirely my own… We noticed that on the left of the Tree Man, Bosch is making a mockery of the Catholic cathedral. In this scene, at the right of the Tree Man, I think Bosch is making a mockery of the Inquisition.

In 1478, at least a decade before Bosch started this painting, the King and Queen of Spain formally established the Spanish Inquisition. This was a form of persecution by the Catholic church authorities against anyone practicing heresy. 

Local courts were established in every city, and tribunals were held to condemn and punish Catholics who strayed too much from Catholic doctrines. And although the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was meant to be limited to only Catholics, it caused many negative rippling effects against Muslims and Jewish people living in predominantly Catholic towns. There are documented cases of towns that would forcibly convert Jewish people under the threat of death or expulsion.

And of course, after they had been converted, as new Catholics, they had to adhere to the doctrines of Catholic codes of conduct or be sent before the Inquisition tribunals. By 1492, all the Jewish people who had not yet converted, were expelled from Spain.

Notice again that in this painting, Bosch depicts this knight on the red disc who is being eaten by demonic rats. But there are two important details we missed. He is holding a golden chalice, and laying next to it is a Eucharist. In his other hand, he holds the tail end of a flag that he has fallen on. The flag displays a toad. The recurring badge of Hell–interpreted in the Middle Ages as a symbol of greed.

And I just noticed this… directly under these symbols. Bosch displays… another ass… Recall the three other instances of this. The two sleeping women, and the shadowy opening in the corrupted fountain… Here it is shown in immediate proximity to the holiest of Catholic symbols: the golden chalice and the Eucharist–a bold statement.

The more we examine these symbols that Bosch paints…the more and more we see Bosch is a thoroughly modern artist.

Chapter 4: The Tree Man

The Tree Man, in the center of The Hell Panel is one of the enduring mysteries of Bosch’s work.

He is towering over the chaos around him, seemingly un-phased, and perhaps even relishing it to some degree, as he appears to be smirking.

The longer you stare at this Tree Man, the more interesting he gets. The sail boats he has for feet are being dragged across the frozen lake. In each sail boat is a demon who steers the course.

For some reason, the Tree Man has a fresh wound on his right leg, which is bandaged, and bleeding. Inside of his eggshell chest cavity there appears to be a tavern. A ladder from the left side ushers people into this apparent safe haven–the only scene in the Hell Panel where people are not being tortured or dismembered. There are three people at a table sitting on a giant toad, and they’re lit from the right side by firelight. The barmaid is filling a pitcher from a wooden cask on the left, and upon closer examination, she appears to be a demon rather than a human.

During the late Middle Ages, the human body was viewed as a vessel for the Holy Spirit, but here, in the body of the Tree Man, it is being depicted as a vessel for vice.

Looking above the Tree Man’s barrel chest we see a flat disc, which is balancing on his head. In the centre of this flat circular disc, pink bagpipes are standing tall, and a procession of couples is circling the bagpipes. Notice that the couples are not only humans, but instead, to each man is paired a demon.

The sinners on the flat circular disc, walk in a circle, counter-clockwise. Exactly the same direction of the animal procession in the central panel–a journey with no end or purpose. Bosch further connects the Tree Man to the earlier scenes by this flat circular disc.

Notice that we see the disc in the middle ground of Panel 3, so too, a disc-like pool of water is in the middle ground of Panel 2. As if the ground itself were carved from this shape. And we again see the echo of this disc in Panel 1, where it is the unnatural shape of the shadowy pool at the base of Panel 1, and it also appears twice in the blue background of that panel, but on its side.

It’s such an unnatural design that we have to assume Bosch uses it deliberately. But what does it mean? Is it simply a way for Bosch to thread the panels together? Or does it imply something more–like a plane of action. The Earth on the exterior panels seems to also be a flat plane, with water filling the orb underneath it. Or perhaps the circular disc represents material reality itself?

We can see that these bagpipes on top of the disc, which is on top of the Tree Man’s head, have a phallic quality to them. Again, alluding to the cardinal sin of lust. A dark green demon is sitting on the bagpipes and directing the long flute with his hands and feet. We can confirm the sexual connotation of the bagpipes because they share the same color as the pink fleshy monuments in the background of Panel 2.

Through these symbols and their connections to Panel 2, which scholars theorize is the Earth right before the Great Flood, the Tree Man becomes a visual echo of that cataclysmic event, and an echo of the debauchery of the central panel which causes the Flood. With boats for feet, and a ‘safe haven’ inside his body, The Tree Man is a ‘false ark’ atop the lifeless frozen waters. And rather than saving sinners, he compels them to indulge their sins without end.

Bosch scholars suspect that this Tree Man may be a self portrait of the artist himself. There was a tradition of this time period, in the late 1400’s, for artists to occasionally include themselves in the crowd of a painting. And this depiction has all the hallmarks of this practice, including that it has a portrait-like quality, as if Bosch were looking at a mirror while painting it, and it’s important to note that it’s the largest face from all of the panels. So Bosch would have likely used a life reference for it.

Not many people know this, but this wasn’t the first time that Bosch depicted the Tree Man. Among the handful of drawings we have by Bosch, there is one that bears a perfect resemblance to this figure. You can find it by searching Bosch Tree Man Drawing.

It includes everything, the sail boat feet, the tree trunk legs, the backward glancing pose, the tavern chest, it even includes an owl high atop the tree growing from the Tree Man, and a flag of a crescent moon. Recall that it was an owl in the opening of the fountain in the Garden of Eden panel, which seemed to be perched on the crescent moon.

Of course, the setting is different in this sketch. It is not Hell, instead it is a nature landscape. It’s curious to note another clue…Bosch’s name…means the Forest or the Wilderness… is he the Tree Man?

If so, is this Bosch’s way of coming clean about his own possible vice? Alcohol?

If this sketch predates The Garden of Earthly Delights, then it might also be the first instance of Bosch using one of his signature motifs: ‘the piercing branch’.

Notice how a branch extends upward from the Tree Man’s right leg and pierces through the eggshell chest. The branches seem to imply the rib structure of the Tree Man. What is so perplexing about this visual is that the entry points of these branches leave no marks. No cracks. No punctures. What is going on here?

Wait…we’ve seen this before.

In the central panel, two of the monuments have branches piercing through them. And again, they leave no mark. Then in the first panel, the blue background features two discs which are pierced through by a curving branch, which tapers off into a crescent moon shape on its end. This branch also leaves no mark on the discs.

I haven’t seen anyone analyze this particular motif. But I believe this symbol holds great significance to Bosch.

The piercing branch represents the corruptibility of matter. A principle that can be understood through two apparent truths Bosch confronts us with:

  1. The illusion of matter. As seen in the seamless entry and exit points of the branches. And…
  2. Evil can fill matter like a vessel. As we see in the eggshell chest of the Tree Man.

Bosch’s branches convey to us a warning about the corruptibility of matter.

The more time one spends with this Hell Panel, the more one gets the sense that Bosch isn’t representing Hell. Not in the literal sense. He is representing the human condition… With all the bitter honesty that only a great artist can convey.

This isn’t Hell. This is a mirror–of all that we are capable of, in our darkest hours. Bosch reaches into the shadows of our psychology, and shows us what our true motivations are, if we cast aside our virtues.

Despite the strictness of his Catholic faith, it’s clear that Bosch–like all great artists–did not limit himself to only one world. He existed in a state of liminality. Able to envision the highest ideal and the lowest depravity. Able to elevate our vices and make a mockery of the sacrosanct.

[ideal: show the Garden of Eden]

[depravity: show the Unholy Communion]

[vices: show man drinking and thorny shaft scene]

[sacrosanct: show abandoned cathedral]

He was able to survey the entire range of human experience, and represent it with honesty, depth, and humor. Such that, 500 years later, it still feels alive with meaning.

We may not have much information about Bosch the man, but here in his artwork, we have a treasure trove of information about Bosch the artist.

Here we see the fires of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, which are etched into his memory, here we see the human vices, which, like in all of us, wrestle for a claim on his soul, here we see the tireless ambition of a master, who between the ages of 50 and 60, does not rest on his laurels. But instead, embarks on a mission to paint something that will stand the test of time. With the completion of The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch achieves the impossible: a perfect work of art.

[extended end music]

Conclusion:

This completes the Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights series. I hope you enjoyed it.

The goal of this series, wasn’t to judge Bosch’s work or view it from a modern lens. It was to see it the way Bosch would have seen it. With the depth and the rich associations that an artist has when viewing their own work–like an analysis from the artist’s perspective.

And I think we’ve achieved something here, because we dared to see the artwork in a way that I haven’t seen done anywhere else. I mean, where else will you find the insight about the Unholy Communion? Or the Sleep of Wisdom and the intellect’s ignorance of the soul’s descent into material reality? Or the connection between the Prince of Hell and the Vision of Tondal, which Bosch would have very likely been influenced by. Only on Creative Codex.

And for that, I’m proud of these episodes.

If you had a good time venturing through Bosch’s Hell, please share this episode with someone. In my research for this series, I’ve been perusing what’s available about Bosch online, on podcasts, and on social media, and… It’s kind of embarrassing. It’s all just butt music and similar tidbits.

Rather than diving into the heavy topics and philosophical problems that the Garden of Earthly Delights confronts us with, most people creating content out of Bosch…get distracted by the superficial layers of interpretation.

We’ve covered a lot of deep stuff in these two episodes. But honestly, there is still more to say. That’s one of the remarkable achievements about this painting. It just draws out so much thoughtfulness and curiosity. And that’s why I do truly believe it’s a perfect work of art.

There’s several things I wanted to say about Bosch or about this artwork, but they didn’t quite fit for these episodes. So I plan on doing a mini-episode about them for my Patreon, as an Episode Exclusive. One of the topics it will cover is a wild theory I came across about why The Garden of Earthly Delights was commissioned.

If you’re interested in that kind of stuff, please consider becoming a supporter of the show, at Patreon.com/mjdorian. By becoming a patron you gain access to all kinds of goodies, including the Kurt Cobain series, which totals over four hours. Rest assured, the most important episodes will still appear here in the main feed, but if you would like to show your support, these extras are my way of saying thank you.

The site again is patreon.com/mjdorian A link for that is also in the episode description.

Thank you for listening!

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