Vanitas (continued): lines from Ecclesiastes

This is a follow-up to an earlier post about how in a 2006 article, José Manuel Cruz Valdevinos noted that the original title of The Garden of Earthly Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias appears to have been "La Banidad del Mundo," The Vanity of the World.

More so than the better known “vanitas” still life paintings that often include skulls and/or flowers and expensive objects as a reminder of death, The Garden of Earthly Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias is about the whole book of Ecclesiastes. To start to show how the two outside panels and three inside panels relate to the book, I have picked out some verses that seem to match the different panels.

Whether its audience found them entertaining or annoying, the purpose of the innumerable seemingly nonsensical details in the painting was apparently to illustrate things that seem impossible to show in a picture, including Ecclesiastes 1:11, "There is no remembrance of the former things. Indeed, neither shall there be any record of past things in the future, for those who will exist at the very end." The exceptions include the Bible, illustrated by the picture with Adam and Eve, and the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, exemplified by the verse from Psalms on the outside panels. Almost everything else is obscure, leading to disagreements among art historians, but in many places things are not too obscure to decipher. Explanations tend to sound pedantic because "all is vanity" and because the artist chose some good examples of things that would be forgotten by many, including Nahuatl histories of Mexico.

I have included only the first few verses that seem relevant to the large center inside panel and the hell scene because it is easier to read the original Latin and English text separately than as a long picture caption running several pages. The text shown here is copied from an online Latin English Study Bible that shows the whole book of Ecclesiastes on one page in an easy to read format with only a little commentary. There are larger pictures of both the inside and outside panels on Wikipedia, and on newer computers the inside panels are shown in amazing detail in Google Earth (at the Museo del Prado, Madrid). The detail here, from Google Earth, shows how "the race is not to the swift" (Ecclesiastes 9:11) maybe because a swift horse is faster than a swift bear, or vice versa, or because winning has to do with motivation, or for whatever reason. If "La Banidad del Mundo" was the original title, it seems clear that the painting was not meant to be completely enigmatic.

I am working on an article that will look at one of the riddle-pictures in detail by way of texts familiar to art historians including Ovid's Metamorphoses. The picture represents Minerva turning Arachne into a spider.

Clarification

“Al hooi" (all hay; in modern English all hooey and in Spanish nonada) is a translation of Martin Luther’s stroern (straw). In the introduction to his 1522 translation of the Bible, Luther called the Epistle of James, which supports the doctrine of salvation by works, “a real epistle of straw” (eyn rechte stroern Epistel). Luther’s downgrading of this and other parts of the New Testament was regarded as heretical, although it should be noted (even though the issues are complex and I am not expert in these matters) that as of 1999 the Catholic church no longer regards the doctrine of salvation by grace as heretical. In any event the haywain pictures are connected not just to Luther’s discourses in general (“all hooey”), but also specifically to his calling part of the Christian Bible “straw.”
The following is from Luther’s introduction:

Summa, Sanct Johannis Euangeli vnd seyne erste Epistel, Sanct Paulus Epistel, sonderlich die zu den Romern, Galatern, Ephesern, vnnd Sanct Peters erste Epistel, das sind die bucher, die dyr Christum zeygen, vnd alles leren, das dyr zu wissen nott vnd selig ist, ob du schon kein ander buch noch lere nummer sehest noch horist, Darumb ist sanct Jacobs Epistel eyn rechte stroern Epistel gegen sie, denn sie doch keyn Euangelisch art an yhr hat, Doch dauon weytter ynn andern vorrheden.

The reason for making the paintings look like the work of Hieronymus Bosch, and for the fake Hieronymus Bosch signatures, was to make it appear as though they came from a more innocent age, from before Martin Luther had begun to publish what the artist of the haywain pictures evidently considered to be his heresies. The paintings were made to be obscure in their meaning so as not to introduce new audiences to Luther’s ideas. The parts of the paintings that make sense to any viewer show people engaged in good works, for instance the child leading a blind man. The hay represents a good thing (part of the Bible) that Luther said was of no value, and this is why the painting shows nuns faithfully collecting hay and bringing it to their superior. The deception implied by the fake Hieronymus Bosch signature was minor compared to the potential harm of publicizing a heresy that threatened the Catholic church.

proposed triptych, revised

(updated August 6, 2007)
For this version of the proposed reconstruction, The Miser, NGW, Ship of Fools, Louvre, and Allegory, New Haven are regarded as copies of larger lost originals. The change is based on iconography, scale, and style.
Outside: an image of poverty with a scene from the life of St. Martin (outside panels, The Haywain, Madrid, replacing the previous version's The Pedlar, Rotterdam)
Inside, left: St. Francis, suffering an illness as a teenager, from which he recovered (panel painting, The Death of the Miser, Washington, DC)
Inside, center: St. Clara continuing the work of St. Francis (lost panel painting, perhaps approximately copied in the tapestry shown here, The Haywain, Madrid)
Inside, right: an uncertain future since the allegory could represent either the marriage of Martin Luther and Katharina Von Bora in 1525 or innocent Franciscans and Poor Clares; possibly cut in half to separate the St. Martin’s Day barrel from the lute associated with Martin Luther (panel painting, The Ship of Fools, Paris, and panel painting, Allegory of Intemperance, New Haven)

Notes on the revised “new triptych” (click on links):

• scale: (1) Benjamin Binstock's "digital connoisseurship," (2) panels and tapestry
• previous studies of Bosch triptychs
• the dendrochronological analyses of The Pedlar (Rotterdam) , The Miser, The Ship of Fools, and Allegory of Intemperance
• transparent paint
• the theory that The Pedlar (Rotterdam) was formerly in two parts
  
• interpretations of The Pedlar, The Miser, the Haywain tapestry, the Haywain triptychs, The Ship of Fools, and Allegory of Intemperance
• previous reconstructions, including a previous suggestion that the center panel was a Haywain picture
• Haywain triptychs, Haywain paintings, and lost Haywain paintings
• the complete series of tapestries
• Franciscans in pictures by Hieronymus Bosch and imitators
• Luther and lute players

proposed triptych of sts francis and clara

This reconstruction has been modified; see above.

la vanidad del mundo

In a new book published in 2006, El Bosco y la tradición pictórica de lo fantástico, page 118, note 38, José Manuel Cruz Valdevinos observed that two or three letters in a single word in an old inventory seem to have been misread:

…Cuando la entrega se denomina una pintura "de la banidad del mundo", si bien los autores transcriben "bariedad"… (When it was delivered it was listed as a painting of "the vanity of the world", even though the authors transcribe it as "variety"…)

(The rest of this note has been moved to the notes page.)

timeline

Labels with the wrong names or dates can drain almost all the meaning out of pictures. The age of the confusing news picture began long before Photoshop and YouTube.
(click image to enlarge)

Intro

There is overwhelming evidence that El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights dates from no earlier than 1527 or 1528. The indication of the exact date comes from the artist’s unique and eccentric version of Nahuatl picture writing, and corroboration for the date comes from images relating to at least four topics that have been completely unexplored by art historians in studies of this extremely famous painting:

1. satires directed against Martin Luther
2. Juana la Loca and her son and co-regent of Spain Carlos I (aka Charles V)
3. parodies of some famous artists, including Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael et al.
4. European scholars’ interest in native picture writing in the context of the 1528 trial of Hernán Cortés; or anything pertaining to New Spain/Mexico

A tacit attitude seems to persist among art historians where Hieronymus Bosch paintings can be regarded as easy in the sense that since Bosch died a few years before Martin Luther became prominent, the paintings are still Catholic and medieval. It is not easy to disentangle the reasons why the Bosch paintings were enigmatic in the first place and why they have remained enigmatic in the face of scholarly efforts; for instance what seems like an effect of censorship might sometimes have been an effort to filter information to keep explanations of heresy from reaching Juana la Loca in her seclusion at Tordesillas. What seems like obtuseness with regard to Nahuatl picture writing may have started with Pedro da Gante’s simplified picture catechisms, but it evolves into a set of preferences that have more to do with how Europeans regard European art than with the original hieroglyphics.
It is obvious that the twenty or more paintings and triptychs found in books about Hieronymus Bosch are not all by the same person, and it has been misleading to assume that if they are not all by Hieronymus Bosch, they must be imitations, forgeries, or attempts to rival Hieronymus Bosch. It is more complicated than that. Some are anti-Catholic and some are anti-Protestant, and the artists remained anonymous for different reasons, including but not limited to selling imitations of old paintings.
Changing the name of the artist who painted a famous painting is never easy, and it seems fortunate that El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights is already labeled “El Bosco”; perhaps the nickname will still apply to the real artist when and if she or he is identified by name, particularly if (as seems likely) the artist who painted El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights was Spanish or at least lived in Spain.
This online project is comprised of five blogs, with this page functioning as an index and a place to look for updates. The plan is to have this intro continue to be at the top of the page, followed by a conventional blog with the newest posting at the top. The postings will consist of consist of short summaries with highlighted links that will make it easy to find pictures and explanations.