Stlukesguild

Like many artists, I have played at the game of what painting I would want to take with me on the proverbial desert island. Inevitably, I have been drawn to the Garden of Earthly Delights. The layers of meaning... the complexity... the contrast and variation from the most noble ideals... to lush sensuality... physical beauty... and eroticism... to the almost exquisite brutality... horror... ugliness... Such leads me to feel that I might easily spend endless hours with this work without ever feeling I have begun to exhaust it... or unlocked all that it holds. Again, on a purely personal note, the painting holds an added attraction to me in that it also reminds me of some of the marvelous illustrated books of my childhood... books that surely inspired my love of art and my love of reading... books illustrated with images teeming with dozens... if not hundreds hundreds of figures engaged in diverse activities so as to divert my attentions for hours on end.

Bosch completed two final great paintings following the Garden of Earthly Delights: The Temptation of St. Anthony and Christ Carrying the Cross. The Temptation of Saint Anthony is another brilliant triptych... arguably as good... as complex... and as multi-layered as The Garden of Earthly Delights. This achievement alone should have ensured his place in the history of art. It is as if Dante had followed up on the Comedia with another epic of equal merit.



While this painting certainly deserves the same in-depth analysis as The Garden of Earthly Delights, I must beg off for the time being, admitting that I am not as well versed in the symbolism and interpretation of this painting as I ought to be. It has been more than a decade and some since I last studied this painting in any depth.Still... I must offer yet a cursory examination of the painting...

The painting presents three panels... yet without any clear order as to which panel, if any, should be "read" first, second, third... The left panel presents two simultaneous views of Saint Anthony. Seen above, he is spirited aloft by demons. Below, he has nearly fainted, and is virtually carried by two supporting followers. In the right painting the Saint looks out to us beseechingly as he is tempted by various sensual seductions... especially women and wine... yet none are to be what they seem.

The central panel is surely the culminating temptation for Saint Anthony...



In this scene... the Saint, exhausted by his torments aloft, seeks to strengthen his faith through the participation in a holy mass which he attends with a devout lady. But all is not what he expected. The woman herself is but one more of Satan's minions and the mass itself is the perverted "black mass" of the Devil. Again, Anthony turns his eyes to us... while Christ... in the church doorway... points to the image of the crucifixion... the true path to salvation.

Perhaps the most fascinating element of the Temptation of Saint Anthony is the light it may shed upon the visionary and hallucinatory elements of Bosch's art. At nearly the same time as Bosch was painting this picture, the German Matthias Grünwald was painting his own version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony. Grünwald's painting was specifically painted for use in an assylum used to treat patients suffering from ergot poisoning caused by the ingestion of the Claviceps purpurea fungus which infects rye and other cereals. In Bosch's and Grünwald's time the disease was commonly known as "Saint Anthony's Fire". Symptoms of the disease included a spread of gangrene throughout the extremities (fingers, toes, feet, lower legs, ears, nose, etc...) leading to a weak peripheral pulse, loss of peripheral sensation, edema and ultimately the death and loss of affected tissues. Other symptoms included seizures and spasms, diarrhea, headaches, nausea and vomiting. Usually these gastrointestinal effects preceded central nervous system effects, including hallucinations resembling those produced by LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), to which the ergot alkaloid ergotamine is an immediate precursor, and mental effects including mania or psychosis.

There have been credible suggestions that Bosch's visions owe something to his own experience with ergot poisoning... or that obtained through speaking with sufferers... or even through word of mouth. The further fact that both Grünwald's and Bosch's paintings of the Temptation of Saint Anthony make such prominent display of the mandrake root... commonly used to treat "Saint Anthony's Fire"... but itself quite poisonous and bearing hallucinogenic properties is surely quite thought-provoking.

Bosch's last painting, Christ Carrying the Cross, was probably completed in 1516... the year the artist died.



In this painting Bosch has moved away from the use of deep, open space and dozens (if not hundreds) of figures, and returned once again to shallow space and a limited array of characters. Just as The Garden of Earthly Delights found the artist perfecting all the elements employed in his earlier complex compositions, this final painting would prove to be the best of Bosch's simpler work.

The characters are brilliantly realized and organized into various groupings. Multiple narratives and multiple motives unfold before our eyes. Clad in shining armor the bulldog of a soldier leads the procession through crowds. He shows no thought as to what he does... its "only his job".

Immediately above and below this "good soldier" we see the contrary faces of the "good" and the "bad thief" who shall be crucified this day along with Christ. The "bad thief" is crowded and mocked by gypsies, alchemists, and pharisees... but he meets their scorn with an admirable refusal to be broken. One can almost hear him growling in a gravelly voice ala Johnny Cash, "Damn your eyes!" By way of contrast, the "good thief" is seen ashen-faced... almost having fainted... his eyes rolling back in his head... while a Jewish Pharisee and a maddened Franciscan monk... surely not one Francis of Assisi would have recognized... assail the condemned.

To the lower left Bosch presents us with the grouping of Saint Veronica and her maid. Bosch's Veronica, however, it must be admitted, looks anything but saintly. She carries the veil imprinted with Christ's image with an expression of vanity and smugness... rather like the teenager showing off her trophy... the t-shirt that some rock star has signed... or wiped his sweaty brow upon. Veronica's maid... her eyes narrowed into slits... looks at her mistress in envy out of the corners of her eyes.

Christ himself is at the center of the drama, as might be expected. Our eyes are directed to his serene face through the use of the single strong diagonal element: the cross which he bears. Surrounding Christ, a single apish figure howls in derision, while other similarly deformed and toothless members of the crowd scoff and sneer and taunt. But Christ... in almost a Buddhist mode of calm and reserve... is already resigned to his fate... is already somewhere else. One almost imagines the artist himself... facing his own impending mortality... identified deeply with this Christ... a Christ who could bear his own personal cross as well as the scorn and the threats of the ignorant masses... and maintain his dignity... and total inner peace... as he stands before his maker.