Hieronymus Bosch, Last Judgment Triptych, 1504-08, overall dimensions 163 x 250 cm, central panel 163 x 128 cm, wings 163 x 60 cm (Akademie für bildenden Künste, Vienna)
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:03] As with many triptychs, viewers could see the exterior, 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.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:26] We see a saint on each wing. These are painted and in grisaille, in tones of gray. It really would have been amazing when it opened to this colorful vision.
Dr. Zucker: [0:38] 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. He’s actually not painting niches and sculptures, but actual people, a city and a landscape.
Dr. Harris: [0:55] Here in grisaille, on one side, we see Saint Bavo, who was associated with the northern city of Ghent. He’s shown distributing alms to the sick and the poor, [and] through a doorway, a view of a Flemish city.
Dr. Zucker: [1:08] Showing the wonderful detail of that cityscape. Let’s walk around to the other side and take a look at Saint James. You can see he’s traveled past all kinds of expressions of wickedness. His faith, however, has kept him safe. He’s very much associated with pilgrimage. It is his pilgrimage that so many medieval faithful would follow.
Dr. Harris: [1:28] These wings could have given us clues to the patron of this very large triptych, but unfortunately, the coat of arms is blank.
Dr. Zucker: [1:37] 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.
[1:46] The image, in a sense, unfolds as a story. Beginning in the left wing, we see God in heaven. He is in majesty, in a 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.
Dr. Harris: [2:08] This is a rebellion of angels led by Lucifer, the devil.
Dr. Zucker: [2:12] They will be expelled from heaven, and, of course, will go to reside in hell. 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.
[2:26] Just above that, we have the Temptation. There is a sense of peace in the foreground. 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. Then you have an avenging angel who’s expelling Adam and Eve from Paradise and leading them into the world that we know.
Dr. Harris: [2:54] 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. Then above that, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Of course, this is the origin of Original Sin.
[3:16] After the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, mankind knows sin, and temptation, and death.
Dr. Zucker: [3:23] These stories echo each other. We have Lucifer disobeying God. You have Adam and Eve disobeying God. You have Lucifer being expelled from heaven. You have man being expelled from the garden. There is this parallel of the heavenly and the earthly.
Dr. Harris: [3:39] And what Bosch is really concerned with are the wages of sin. This is what Bosch was famous for, even in his time.
Dr. Zucker: [3:47] This deeply pessimistic philosophy, this questioning. Is there any possibility of redemption given the sins of the world?
Dr. Harris: [3:56] It certainly doesn’t seem that way.
Dr. Zucker: [3:57] Well, let’s take a look at the evidence that he offers. 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.
Dr. Harris: [4:11] And below it, taking up most of the central panel, is limbo, or the edges of hell. 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.
Dr. Zucker: [4:27] This is a painting whose bottom two-thirds 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.
Dr. Harris: [4:41] The punishments that we see here are punishments for specific crimes. The punishments are related to the crimes.
Dr. Zucker: [4:48] Let’s take a look at a few specifics.
Dr. Harris: [4:50] 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. She’s led by a hideous dragon.
Dr. Zucker: [5:10] Led to a hellish brothel.
Dr. Harris: [5:12] And all accompanied by a lute played by another demon.
Dr. Zucker: [5:16] As well as a horn played by a demon in the back, where the horn actually looks as if it’s an extension of his nose. Bosch uses music as one vehicle for sinfulness.
Dr. Harris: [5:28] A sign of indulgence in pleasure.
Dr. Zucker: [5:31] 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 into him as he’s restrained by devils.
Dr. Harris: [5:44] And it’s not a very nice liquid.
Dr. Zucker: [5:45] No. If you look a little bit above that barrel, you can see that there’s a siphon that’s receiving the excrement of the devil whose backside can 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.”
Dr. Harris: [6:06] That we take advantage of those who are smaller and weaker and less powerful than we are.
Dr. Zucker: [6:12] To the right of that, we can see just inside the inn a series of hanging figures. Below that, a large cauldron with a series of figures that seem to be boiling. We know that they’re boiling in molten metal, the metal that had been melted from their money.
Dr. Harris: [6:30] This is the sin of avarice or greed.
Dr. Zucker: [6:33] 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.
Dr. Harris: [6:53] And make a yummy omelet. 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, cooking, frying, and torturing as though it were normal everyday activity. It reminds us that hell is eternity.
Dr. Zucker: [7:13] In the middle of the large panel, you can see the sin of anger. 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.
[7:36] Bodies have been cut, wounded, and devoured in various ways. All of this, of course, is a lead-in to the right panel, to hell itself.
Dr. Harris: [7:45] When we think about the triptych as a whole, we have God in the upper left and Satan diagonally across on the lower right.
Dr. Zucker: [7:53] Lucifer here sits in a mock judgment of the souls that have been found to have been sinful. Here he is meting out the terrible punishments according to their crimes in life.
Dr. Harris: [8:05] 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.
Dr. Zucker: [8:22] 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.
Dr. Harris: [8:36] And if this didn’t make you want to live a virtuous life, I don’t know what would.
[8:40] [music]
