EL EDEN refrigerator magnet Musée NACIONAL DEL PRADO MADRID SPAIN
 
3 5/8" x 1 3/8" rectangular
The Garden of Earthly Delights is Bosch’s most complex and enigmatic creation. For Falkenburg the overall theme of The Garden of Earthly Delights is the fate of humanity, as in The Haywain (P02052), although Bosch visualizes this concept very differently and in a much more explicit manner in the centre panel of that triptych than in The Garden of Earthly Delights. In order to analyse the work’s meaning the content of each panel must be identified. On the outer faces of the triptych Bosch depicted in grisaille the Third Day of the Creation of the World, when the waters were separated from the earth and the earthly Paradise (Eden) created. At the top left we see God the Father as the Creator, according to two Latin inscriptions, one on each panel: For he spake, and it was done and For he commanded, and they were created (Psalms 33:9 and 148:5). On the inner face of the triptych, painted in brilliant colours which contrast with the grisaille, Bosch painted three scenes that share the single common denominator of the concept of sin, which starts in Paradise or Eden on the left panel, with Adam and Eve, and is punished in Hell in the right panel. The centre panel depicts a Paradise that deceives the senses, a false Paradise given over to the sin of lust. This deception is encouraged by the fact that the centre panel is shown as a continuation of Eden through the use of a single, continuous landscape with a high horizon line that allows for a broad, panoramic composition arranged as three superimposed planes, in the panels of the earthly Paradise, the Garden of Earthly Delights and Hell." [MUSEO NACIONAL DEL PRADO website]
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