The Land of Unlikeness

The latest of many attempts to understand The Garden of Earthly Delights, Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch's (c.1450–1516) most famous work, this dense reading of the fantastical painting attempts to view it as Bosch's noble Burgundian patrons might have seen it. The method is speculative; Falkenburg (dean, humanities & arts, New York Univ., Abu Dhabi; The Fruit of Devotion: Mysticism and the Imagery of Love in Flemish Paintings of the Virgin and Child, 1450–1550) acknowledges this weakness but also adds that no reading of this supremely complex work can be definitive. His essential argument is that the painting was created for a wealthy audience as a contemplative mirror to reflect how humanity's divine origins are perverted by evil, although there is enough complexity in Bosch's depiction of paradise to allow for other, contradictory interpretations.