Main content
Europe 1300 - 1800
Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 6
Lesson 3: Hieronymus BoschBosch, the Last Judgment
Hieronymus Bosch, Last Judgment Triptych, 1504-08, Akademie für bildenden Künste, Vienna, overall dimensions 163 x 250 cm, central panel 163 x 128 cm, wings 163 x 60 cm. Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- I'm confused about the size of this painting. @it almost looks like someone is closing it with just two fingers, but in the rest of the video it seems quite large compared to the people viewing it. Does anyone know how big it is? 0:16(4 votes)
- I think the confusion is that a small replica is used as an example of how the painting is displayed.(10 votes)
- I must have missed this but is this egg tempera or oil?(4 votes)
- It is oil. Early Netherlandish painters started using oil paint at the beginning of the 15th century.(5 votes)
- Is there any known history regarding the life of the artist, Bosch? Was he considered sane?(2 votes)
- The fact that famous churches commissioned altarpieces from him probably points to the fact that he was considered sane.
And for his life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch
Hope this helps!(6 votes)
- Was this work commissioned or just out of the mind of the artist? It seems like a predecessor to propaganda. What more should we know about Bosch?(4 votes)
- If I remember correctly, the lower portion has two small shields that were never completed. It was thought that the person commissioning this had died before completion. Hope this helps.(2 votes)
- How original is this painting? As in, who else painted excrement and figures that torture before this? I can vaguely recall maybe some cruel Egyptian hieroglyphs, and some Minotaurs, but these torturing figures and excrement seem like a big leap forward to me in terms of painting from the imagination...who or what influenced Bosch to paint this painting full of torture and gross things?(2 votes)
- I would expect some of these features in Dante's Map of Hell painted by Botticelli ~1490(2 votes)
- Many of the "demons" are seemingly rendered "demonic" by the very fact that some of their body parts are animalistic. Could this be a rebellion thus against nature? Would a christian of this era not have viewed nature as just a collection of Gods creations?(1 vote)
- I think the general art historical consensus is that the hybridization of most of the animal features of the demonic creatures was a way of suggesting a kind of corruption and evil, that would have been understood in contrast to the "perfect" animal creatures in the Garden of Eden.(3 votes)
- Why are so many art pieces fold-able panels? And why do the look so familiar?(1 vote)
- Because many of them were made as altarpieces.(1 vote)
- Hi I have a quick question and was wondering if I could get anyones opinion? I'm writing a paper on how apocalyptic art pieces express the fears of that time period and am including this painting as one of the pieces. What would you say does the painting express in terms of what was feared would end the world at the time?
I hope that makes sense, thank you!(1 vote)- I see fear of pain, of death, of demonic forces, and of sex.(1 vote)
Video transcript
STEVEN ZUCKER: As
with many triptychs, viewers could see the exterior
of the closed triptych during the weekdays. And on feast days
or on the weekends, the painting would be opened up. You would move from the
rather prosaic expressions of our world to a
brilliantly colored scene of the horrors of limbo
and the horrors of hell. BETH HARRIS: We see
a saint on each wing. And these are painted in
grisaille, in tones of gray. So it really would
have been amazing when it opened to
this colorful vision. STEVEN ZUCKER: The
idea of painting the exterior in grisaille was
meant to mimic the exterior, that is, the stone,
of the church. But here the artist
has moved far beyond that earlier tradition. And he's actually not painting
niches and sculptures, but actual people, a
city and the landscape. BETH HARRIS: So here
in grisaille one side, we see St. Bavo,
who was associated with the northern city of Ghent. He's shown distributing alms
to the sick and the poor through a doorway, a
view of a Flemish city. STEVEN ZUCKER: Showing
the wonderful detail of that cityscape. Let's walk around
to the other side and take a look at St. James. You can see he's traveled
past all kinds of expressions of wickedness. His faith, however,
has kept him safe. And he's very much
associated with pilgrimage. It is his pilgrimage that
so many medieval faithful would follow. BETH HARRIS: These wings
could have given us clues to the patron of this
very large triptych, but unfortunately, the
coat of arms is blank. STEVEN ZUCKER: We
don't know why, but some art historians
have suggested that perhaps the
donor may have died before the work was finished. Let's look inside. The image, in a sense,
unfolds as a kind of story, beginning in the left wing. We see God in heaven. He is in majesty, in a kind of
brilliant mandorla surrounded by clouds. But when you look
more closely, you see that there are
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of angels that seem to
be battling each other. This is the fall of
the rebel angels. BETH HARRIS: This is
a rebellion of angels led by Lucifer, the devil. STEVEN ZUCKER: And they
will be expelled from heaven and, of course, will
go to reside in hell. And down at the very
foot of the panel, we can see God extracting
Eve from Adam's side. That is the last part of the
creation of Adam and Eve. Just above that, we
have the Temptation. There is a sense of
peace in the foreground. But this act of defiance
against God's law is this important
breaking point because you can see that beyond
that original sin, you have one animal
eating another instead of living in harmony. And then you have
an avenging angel who is expelling Adam
and Eve from Paradise and leading them into to
the world that we know. BETH HARRIS: We have an
unfolding of events at the top, beginning with God and the fall
of the rebel angels, the event that happens first. Then we jump down to the
bottom and the creation of Eve, then just above
that the Temptation, and above that the
expulsion of Adam and Even from the
Garden of Eden. And of course, this is the
origin of original sin. And after the expulsion
of Adam and Eve from the Garden of
Eden, mankind knows sin and temptation and death. STEVEN ZUCKER: These
stories echo each other. You have Lucifer disobeying God. You have Adam and
Eve disobeying God. You have Lucifer being
expelled from heaven. And you have man being
expelled from the garden. So there is this parallel of
the heavenly and the earthly. BETH HARRIS: And what Bosch
is really concerned with are the wages of sin. This is what Bosch was
famous, for even in his time. STEVEN ZUCKER: This deeply
pessimistic philosophy, this questioning, is
there any possibility of redemption given
the sins of the world? BETH HARRIS: It certainly
doesn't seem that way. STEVEN ZUCKER: Well, let's
take a look at the evidence that he offers. OK, so we're moving
to the central panel. At the top, we see Christ,
functioning as judge. We see angels with
long golden trumpets who are announcing
the end of time. BETH HARRIS: And
below it, taking up most of the central panel, is
limbo, or the edges of hell. And this is a scene
that Bosch has combined with images of the seven
deadly sins, the sins that cause mankind to
spend eternity in hell. STEVEN ZUCKER: This is a
painting whose bottom 2/3 is filled with torture
and the terrible crimes that people inflict
upon each other, but here enacted by devils
and composite creatures that are incredibly fantastic. BETH HARRIS: The
punishments that we see here are punishments
for specific crimes. And the punishments are
related to the crimes. STEVEN ZUCKER: Let's take
a look at a few specifics. BETH HARRIS: On
the left side, we see something that
resembles an inn. On the roof, a figure
who seems remarkably oblivious to everything
that's going on. She walks as though she's
on a fashion runway. But surrounding her and biting
her is a hideous insect. And she's led by
a hideous dragon. STEVEN ZUCKER: Led to a
kind of hellish brothel. BETH HARRIS: And all
accompanied by a lute, played by another demon. STEVEN ZUCKER: As well as a horn
played by a demon in the back, where the horn actually
looks as if it's an extension of this nose. Bosch uses music as one
vehicle for sinfulness. BETH HARRIS: A kind of sign
of indulgence in pleasure. STEVEN ZUCKER: Below
the representation of pride or vanity, you
have the sins of gluttony. You see a rather
overweight man who's having liquid forcibly
poured in to him as he's restrained by devils. BETH HARRIS: And it's
not a very nice liquid. STEVEN ZUCKER: No. If you look a little
bit above that barrel, you can see that
there's a siphon that's receiving the
excrement of a devil whose backside just be seen
through the gated window. Below that, you see one large
demonic fish devouring another, which seems to be a reference
to a northern proverb, the big fish eats the little. BETH HARRIS: That
we take advantage of those who are smaller
and weaker and less powerful than we are. STEVEN ZUCKER: To
the right of that, we can see just inside the inn
a series of hanging figures, and below that, a large cauldron
with a series of figures that seem to be boiling. And we know that they're boiling
in molten metal, the metal that had been melted
from their money. BETH HARRIS: So this is the
sin of avarice or greed. STEVEN ZUCKER: There are
endless representations of pain and suffering. You see men being roasted
or fried by demonic frogs. You see, in one case, a frying
pan with pieces of a body. This frog-like figure seems
ready to take her two eggs that sit beside her and crack
those into the pan as well. BETH HARRIS: And
make a yummy omelet. STEVEN ZUCKER: Yeah. BETH HARRIS: I think
that what's so disturbing here is the everydayness
of the devilish figures who torture the human beings. They're just going about
their roasting and cooking and frying and
torturing as thought it were a normal,
everyday activity. And it reminds us
that hell is eternity. STEVEN ZUCKER: In the
middle of the large panel, you can see the sin of anger. And it's represented
by three knights who are particularly awful. There's one knight in the
middle who has upon his helmet a severed, blinded head. Below that, you see
images of corruption. And scattered throughout
the foreground, you see images of bodies
that have been mutilated, that have been shot with arrows. Bodies have been cut and wounded
and devoured in various ways. And all of this, of course, is
a lead-in to the right panel, to hell itself. BETH HARRIS: When we think
about the triptych as a whole, we have God in the
upper left and Satan diagonally across
on the lower right. STEVEN ZUCKER: Lucifer
here sits in a kind of mock judgement
of the souls that have been found to
have been sinful. And here he is meting out
the terrible punishments according to their
crimes in life. BETH HARRIS: And you can see
in the doorway behind him images of toads, which
often torture figures in images of the last
judgment, and then above, on the roof, all of
the damned in hell who've recognized where they're
spending eternity, who are wailing and crying
and flailing their arms. STEVEN ZUCKER: And
will populate the city of hell, which we see
rising above this image. It is a place of
fire and brimstone. It is a place of ruined
cities, of absolute neglect. It is an apocalyptic
scene most horrible. BETH HARRIS: And
if this didn't make you want to live a virtuous
life, I don't know what would. [MUSIC PLAYING]