Henry VIII

The picture on the outside panels is based on an illustration in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), with several changes.

Subtractions include:

1) the bambini at the top building a tabernacle from cut branches
2) the crystal orb representing the earth
3) the two columns at the sides, which since about 1516 had been a personal emblem of Charles V
4) the blank shields that could be filled in by the owner of a copy of the book.

Additions include:

1) a pope's crown
2) a book
3) a circular island, resembling the map in Thomas More's Utopia.

These are updates: around 1528, against the advice of Thomas More, the island king Henry VIII, who had written a book that was well received by the pope, was on the way to divorcing the queen and breaking with the Catholic Church.

The circa 1528 date comes from the allegorized Nahuatl picture writing on the inside panels, but perhaps the English connection is enough to suggest an approximate date on its own, at least to a time window when the king's decision was still up in the air.

added note: An object on the throne in the Nuremberg Chronicle illustration might be a book, but it is more prominent and recognizable on the triptych.

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.