The Painter of Human Vice

Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) represented his visions or phantasms

of human vice on large paintings with miniature personages and

mythic animals. He depicted the discrepancy between the Christian

ideal and the bitter realism of human debauchery to warn the viewer. In

The Garden of Earthly Delights, we are made aware of the sacred bond

between Adam and eve being introduced to each other by Christ and

the world of vice that they fall into, dragging all of humanity with them.

The fall into Hell is their punishment. The Fall implies their regression

into an animalistic state in which they are devoured by ogre-like creatures.

Hell is the state of perversion in which music crucifies instead of healing,

and war reigns over life. Hell, in its darkness, spits out human effort

as useless. Hell is the inevitable consequence of the Fall.

Bosch was the precursor of the surrealists and influenced Dali.