Yuki/Xuezhu Wu)1364814
World Art
Ann Sargent Wooster
2015.2
Friday 9AM class

Hieronymus Bosch, born on c.1450 and died on 09 August 1516. His style influent and also imitated by numerous followers. Bosch signed only seven of his works, and none of them had date. Thus, there are only 25 remaining paintings that are sure to be his.

The alchemical interpretation of Bosch This appears to begin with the publication of Jheronimus Bosch by Jacques Combe in 1946 . In his book Combe investigates Bosch's works, and suggests that he used alchemical ideas and image, particularly in the Garden of Earthly Delights. Combe have rich technical knowledge of alchemical literature, as an example consider his statement about an image on the lower right side of the central panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights.
"A conical red coral, with a dual alchemistic symbol encloses sinning couples. Nearby men are assembled in an odd-looking orange-coloured edifice budding and beaded (orange is also one of the colours frequently attributed to the Philosopher's Stone in the course of its sublimation)."

The Garden of Earthly Delights The “Garden of Earthly Delights,” 220 x 390 cm, is one of Bosch's later works. Again depicting the world through sin, primarily lust, a beautiful garden becomes a dark, evil nightmare in the last panel of this triptych. This work, like so many of his pieces, serves as a visual lecture on morality. It also represents Bosch's best, shows the earthly paradise with the creation of woman, the first temptation, and the fall. The painting’s beautiful and unsettling images of sensuality and of the dreams that afflict the people who live in a pleasure-seeking world. Multitudes of nude human figures, giant birds, otherworldly landscape, and all the elements come together to produce a perfect, harmonious whole. I practically like this part of the painting, one of the reason is my drawing teacher gave me drawing assignment to draw this scene in the class. This is a machine-like structures that seem designed to process human flesh. Some of these are disturbing. Near the center, a bird-like creature seated in a latrine chair, like a king on a throne, ingests humans and excretes them out again; nearby a wretched human is encouraged to vomit coins into a well in which other human faces swirl beneath the water. Overall, there is a marked emphasis on musical instruments as symbols of evil distraction, in fact, many of the symbols and the tortures here are pretty standard in the catalogue of the Seven Deadly Sins, in which our senses deceive our thoughts into self-indulgent over-consumption.