Jheronimus Bosch Art Center

Op verkenning in de Tuin der Lusten 7 - Een zoekprentje voor pubers en volwassenen

De Bruyn 2022f
De Bruyn, Eric
Genre: Non fiction, art history
Uitgave datum: 2022
Bron: Bossche Kringen, vol. 9, nr. 5 (December 2022), pp. 56-58

De Bruyn 2022f

 

 

“Op verkenning in de Tuin der Lusten 7 – Een zoekprentje voor pubers en volwassenen” (Eric De Bruyn) 2022

 

[in: Bossche Kringen, vol. 9, nr. 5 (December 2022), pp. 56-58]

 

 

The Garden of Delights triptych was intended for the highest nobility in the Low Countries around 1500. Engelbrecht II of Nassau and his nephew Henry III of Nassau, both potential commissioners of the painting, had a reputation of being womanizers. They will have appreciated the erotic innuendos of many details in the central panel. Three examples of such details are analyzed: the man with a giant owl between his arms, the men who are sitting around a giant strawberry, and the men who are entering a giant empty eggshell. At the same time it should not be forgotten that these details function within a devotional context warning of the vanity and sinfulness of all earthly (also sexual) pleasures, the final message being: do not indulge in this, because behaviour of this kind leads to eternal damnation in Hell. Maybe, as Paul Vandenbroeck suggested in 2017, it was Engelbrecht’s wife, Cimburga, who commissioned the triptych with the intention of rebuking the dissolute conduct of her husband.

 

[explicit 31 December 2022]

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