The female soul and its external and internal senses : Jheronimus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights as a satirical psychology

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Jheronimus Bosch is, as has already been discussed several times, not a hidden object painting, but an extremely sophisticated composition with almost ‘theoretical scientific’ content, admittedly for the purpose of a caricature. In this essay, which supplements and corrects earlier findings, the iconographic background for the Wheel of the Senses in the picture is first expanded. This Wheel of the Senses was created around 1500, before a convention for the representation of the senses had developed. It turns out that the older Bestiaire d’amour by Richard de Fournival (also in the Burgundian library around 1500) or a practice based on it could have provided motivic inspiration. This would solve the previous mystery of the motif for the sense of hearing in the painting and also provide a welcome motif for the sum of the abused senses. The ‘sensory theory’ of the picture goes far beyond the five external senses. In order to understand the deduction via an Aristotle illustration by Conrad Gesner, the three-part structure of the picture is first explained – the three parts can be quickly distinguished from front-bottom to back-top on the center panel. The tripartite division also has a psychological level: anima vegetative / sensitive / rationalis. It is discussed how the front third is marked as the area of the anima rationalis with ‘scenes depicting freedom of will’ and how the two upper areas are strictly separated from the lower one – how the body, consisting of the anima sensitiva and anima vegetativa, is strictly separated from the mind. Once this tripartite division has become clear, it can be understood, based on Gesner/Aristotle, how the tree-tent is staged as a form of cogitative power (vis cogitativa). Based on this, the two other small architectures associated with the tree-tent can be identified as forms for imagination/memory and the (negative) fantasy. It is thus a complete staging of the five external senses and the (also five) internal powers of the soul together. In this respect, the Garden of Earthly Delights is understood as an image that transforms content that is usually depicted diagrammatically into a landscape scene. The Psychology is not an end in itself. The triptych denounces the psyche of the woman in the cave who, as shown elsewhere, is just awakening from a dream. (The essay is a largely identical version of the German article Das Lehrbild als Karikatur. Misogyne Psychologie im Garten der Lüste von Jheronimus Bosch (Heidelberg, Art-Dok 2024). It expands and corrects my earlier essays: Hüte deine Seele! – Fünf Sinne und ein Verhaltensgebot im Garten der Lüste von Hieronymus Bosch, Heidelberg: Art-Dok, 2017; Wenn Paradiestore sich in Luftschlösser verwandeln. Imagination und Vision im Garten der Lüste von Jheronimus Bosch, Heidelberg: Art-Dok, 2018).