2016 in the Netherlands was announced Hieronymus Bosch year. On this occasion, at the Het Noordbrabants Museum the largest retrospective exhibition of his paintings took place. Maybe some of you are lucky and have chance to visit it?
As the “Garden of Earthly Delights” is one of the designs on CACOFONIA Store’s clothes, we would like to bring you closer to the figure of Hieronymus Bosch. Although we know little about the artist himself and only evidence of his existence are the entries in the city book containing the confirmation of who ordered the picture from him, Bosch’es painting is rather a topic for PhD thesis rather than a short article. The complexity of his work, the ubiquitous symbolism, the often complicated meaning deserve a good analysis. We decided to take up this topic for you and approach it with a grain of salt.
The “Garden of Earthly Delights” was created around 1490. This triptych, full of details, currently in the Prado Museum in Madrid, has an impressive size of 220 x 390 cm. And that’s exactly what we want to pay attention to today. Often when we’re looking at a small version of an image somewhere in a web browser, we do not even realize what was hidden in the artist’s imagination. And actually these were the most intriguing things…
Apart from the piece visible on the clothes of CACOFONIA, we havealso two wings of the image – representing paradise and hell. On the right it’s even more eccentric than in the middle, but more disturbing. Interestingly, a few years ago a blogger noticed that one of the characters on the wing that represented hell, has notes written on the buttocks. Bosch painted a finger pointing directly at the figure – as if he wanted the viewer to pay attention to the fragment. The girl decided to try to play the song – and so like that the Butt Songwas born on the Internet, “500-year-old track Bosch”. You can read the entire story here, including listening to the hellish chorus.
As you can see, although surrealism theoretically appeared in the art world around 1920 thanks to Salvador Dali, seeing the figures painted by Bosch we may be tempted to say that someone 400 years ago has already sown the seed…
If Madrid is not on your way, and you want to go to breakfast every day in this extraordinary production of Bosch’s in your imagination, we have good news: an interactive website that allows you to “move” around the triptych has rised up. During the tour we are accompanied by atmospheric music and a voice-over, who is talking about particular elements of the picture. You will find “Garden of Earthly Delights” online right here.
However, if you want to show your friends some of the elements of the “Garden of Earthly Delights”: simply visit CACOFONIA Store. Then you can analyze Bosch whenever you want to ☺
