Garden of Earthly Delights is triptych painted by Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch, known for his master dark depictions in his paintings. Even though it depicts heaven, earth and hell, it is named after the central and the largest panel - the most intriguing and most controversial but also not the longest period of the human existence, the human life on earth, and it presents avant-garde vision of the surrealistic fantasy and vivid hallucinatory scenes that are melted together in this horror world. The three planes of the human condition are hierarchical structure consisted of the highest plane of godlike moral norms, human conscious acts and organised life, as well as the world of the subconscious fantasies, fears, passions and morally and/or socially forbidden joy. Biblically posed and accordingly to the values of its time, this horror painting shows human fate which undoubtedly led from the paradise lost across the vale to the abyss of hell. Its terrifying allegory is everlasting Memento Mori and for five hundred years it hasn’t stopped fascinating and frightening.

Triptych

Ben Parr