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20. Detail of the central panel of The Epiphany, or The Adoration of the Magi, the Brouchorst Bosschuyse Triptych, oil on panel, 138 × 72 × 144 cm, Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid

Wilhelm Fränger began his study of Hieronymus Bosch and his work by deploring the “vulgar misunderstanding”[10] to which the master had been subjected by having his work passed off as mere mummery. Fränger insisted that with Bosch, symbols “entail a perfect simultaneity of vision and thought” and must be treated as such. The writer considered all other approaches as “fragmentary,” thus presented his study as a total view.

In order to understand why the painter would create a mute symbolism, the art historian sorted through the whole body of paintings, separating those of enigmatic content from those that contain little or none. Only if the “freakish riddles” on which Bosch’s reputation was founded occurred in all of the paintings could they be called “the irresponsible phantasmagoria of an ecstatic”. Fränger found that the deviant content existed only in a clearly defined group of altarpieces-the three large triptychs of the Garden of Earthly Delights, the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony, and the Hay-Wain.[11] In contrast, there was only a small amount of this symbolism in such paintings as the Epiphany triptych in the Prado and the Venice Martyrdom of Saint Julia. The remaining paintings, including those of the Passion and Adoration of the Magi themes, had little or none. He concluded, therefore, that an arbitrary distinction could be made between two main groups – the generally traditional, obviously created for the church, and the non-traditional, disparate ones.

Fränger concentrated on the second group, proposing that they could not have been made for a church congregation since they contained anti-clerical polemic such as would be implied by monks and nuns depicted in disgusting attitudes. Nor could these altarpieces have been made for pagan worship, since they also attacked pagan “priests” and their ritualistic excesses. Altarpieces, however, pointed to some kind of devotional patronage. The polar targets of their attack must have meant a group outside the church, at once inveighing against ecclesiastical offences and at the same time fighting the abundant mystery cults of the period. The only kind of society that could possibly answer the problem, according to Fränger, would be a militant heretical sect. Setting up an ideal contrary to the teachings of the Church, such a sect would be forced to fight the all – powerful tradition, but on the other hand, would find pagan abominations equally abhorrent. If Bosch should paint a devotional altarpiece for a society of this kind, he would mirror their “dual warfare, with all its polar tension” and his “eccentricities” would be explained.

21. The Epiphany, or The Adoration of the Magi, the Brouchorst Bosschuyse Triptych, oil on panel, 138 × 72 × 144 cm, Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid

22. Detail of the central panel of The Epiphany, or The Adoration of the Magi, the Brouchorst Bosschuyse Triptych, oil on panel, 138 × 72 × 144 cm, Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid

23. Detail of the central panel of The Epiphany, or The Adoration of the Magi, the Brouchorst Bosschuyse Triptych, oil on panel, 138 × 72 × 144 cm, Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid

24. Detail of the central panel of The Epiphany, or The Adoration of the Magi, the Brouchorst Bosschuyse Triptych, op. 138 × 72 × 144 cm, Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid

25. Detail of the left panel of The Epiphany, or The Adoration of the Magi, the Brouchorst Bosschuyse Triptych, op. 138 × 72 × 144 cm, Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid

According to the scholar, all previous interpretations of Bosch erred that did not approach his symbolism with this frame of reference. Because Bosch was not intelligible to them, most commentators assumed that he had not intended to communicate – and that the creatures he let loose in these paintings were mere “phantoms of hell.” This thinking placed an emphasis on the hell scenes that Bosch might not have intended. True, there are scenes which are set in the most horrific of all hells, but they are always balanced on the other side of the altarpiece by “an impeccable anchorite, or by Mount Ararat, or by the Garden of Eden.” In other words, if Bosch gave equal weight to the opposed “ideal scenes,” could we not assume that he intended to emphasize these scenes by their very contrast with Hell? This added further weight to Fränger’s theory of the heretical sect, because Bosch’s more positive scenes would reflect the idealism of such a society.

The author believed that one of the most widely misinterpreted of Bosch’s paintings was The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. In fact, he concentrated the remainder of his study of Bosch’s ideation upon a new interpretation of this painting. The reason for the confusion, he thought, was that it had for centuries been thoughtlessly associated with another of more obvious message, the Hay-Wain. Both triptychs have flanking panels of a Garden of Eden scene on the left and a hell scene on the right – thus, the message was assumed to be much the same.[12] Fränger saw many differences, however, that would belie the dual association. The Eden panel of the Hay-Wain contains sequences of the Fall of the Rebel Angels, the Creation of Eve, the Temptation, and the Expulsion from the Garden which are placed on a vertical axis in the same garden landscape. The grouping is traditional, but there is some Boschian originality in their presentation, as the “rebel angels” are presented as insects falling in swarms from Heaven and there is a peculiar rock formation at the site of the Creation of Eve, presaging the even stranger ones to be seen in The Garden of Earthly Delights. Nevertheless, little to be found in this panel is incomprehensible. The central painting, now supposed to be an illustration of the Flemish proverb: “the world is a haystack; everyone takes what he can grab thereof,”[13] is dominated by a gigantic hay wagon which, according to Jacques Combe, “evok[es] at the same time the late Gothic motive of the procession of pageant, and the Renaissance Triumph… drawn by semi-human, semi-animal monsters and headed straight for hell, followed by a cavalcade of ecclesiastical and lay dignitaries. From all sides of the wagon men scrabble over one another to pull hay from the giant stack. The only heed they take of their fellows is to thrust them out of their way or to raise hands against them. One sticks a knife into the throat of the unfortunate competitor whom he has pinned to the ground.”

Many among the greedy mob wear ecclesiastical garb, indicating Bosch’s attitude that the holy as well as profane are involved in this scavenging. A fat monk sits in a large chair and lazily sups a drink while several nuns do service for him, packing bundles of hay into the bag at his feet. One of his nuns turns to the lure of sexual enticement symbolized by the fool playing a bagpipe, to whom she offers a handful of hay in hopes of winning his favors.

26. Detail of the right panel of The Epiphany, or The Adoration of the Magi, the Brouchorst Bosschuyse Triptych, oil on panel, 138 × 72 × 144 cm, Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid

27. The Adoration of the Magi, the Brouchorst Bosschuyse Triptych, exterior view: The Mass of Saint Gregory, Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid

28. Detail of exterior view of The Adoration of the Magi, the Brouchorst Bosschuyse Triptych, Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid

29. Martyrdom of Saint Julia, or Crucified Martyr, central part of a triptych with “Saint Anthony,” left, and “Soldier Led by a Monk,” right, oil on panel, 104 × 119 cm, Ducal Palace, Venice

The clergy seem to be in the majority among the wicked brought under Bosch’s scathing attack in this altarpiece, but there are others, too, of the devil’s earthly disciples. There is a quack toothpuller whose hay filled pocket refers to the fees that have “lined his pockets,” garnered as they are from the gullible populace. There are gypsies, women and children, figures always suspect as servitors of Satan and a blind beggar led by a child to his share of the spoils. Two idling lovers embrace on top of the hay pile while two others enjoy the delights of music, played for their pleasure by a troubadour and a demon who fingers his own pipe-shaped snout. All are caught in a snare laid by Satan and ignore the angel who implores them to look to Heaven for their souls’ sake. Above them, an image of Christ in the clouds shows to a heedless mankind the signs of His martyrdom on earth – His stigmata. The scene is obviously an allegory of man’s sins on earth which foretell his inevitable progress into Hell. The monsters that draw him there administer tortures designed for each of his sins.

The hell scene of this triptych is as unusual in presentation as the Eden scene is traditional, demonstrating all of the master’s skills of painting and designing unusual torments. A flaming sky lights up the windows of a furnace in which can be seen figures engaged in demonic activity. Arms and legs protrude from a lake colored by the glow and heat of the sky. In the foreground are the sinners just received into Hell. Stripped bare, they are submitting passively to their individual punishments. Unusual in this scene is the construction work underway in the middle of the setting as if it were necessary to construct more torture chambers for the expected influx of sinners already crowding in from the fracas at the hay-wagon. This altarpiece contains some symbolism of an obscure nature, but there is not the overwhelming amount to be found in the Earthly Delights and the large Saint Anthony. Even Fränger is in agreement with the other writers that this triptych depicts the stigma of the Original Sin under which man is born and by which his course is set through life to its dénouement in Hell. The cryptic symbolism does not obscure the main theme, fairly direct in presentation, so there is naturally more unanimity of opinion concerning the message of this altarpiece.

Such is not the case with The Garden of Earthly Delights. The Eden panel of this painting is not a setting for several traditional events concerning Adam and Eve. They are seen only once, Adam sitting and Eve kneeling on either side of the Lord. The group is placed on a lawn between two pools, from which crawl hybrid animals engaged in bizarre activities. A fountain in the center or the middle pool and a rock structure in the upper background appear to have become organic and grown to their odd conformations. There is an entire apple grove behind the Creator and Created, but no tree seems to be distinguished as the Tree of Life – this must be the palm-like tree to the side of Adam. Its leaves are shaped like coins, their weight causing the tendrils to sway in awkward heaviness. The forbidden fruit must be the enlarged berries which droop from the vine curling about the trunk.

The central scene seems to be set in the same kind of landscape, but its plants have rigidified like minerals and its mineral structures grown like plants.

30. The Crowning with Thorns, oil on panel, 73.7 × 58.7, National Gallery, London

31. The Crowning with Thorns, c. 1510–1515, oil on panel, 163 × 191 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Valencia

This land is overwhelmed with human and animal beings, fairly normal in their appearances although abnormal in their relative sizes. The humans are well-proportioned nudes that diminish in size according to the laws of perspective, but the animals, although appearing to be normal when seen separately, are not always related to the humans in size-sometimes entirely dwarfing them. Nor are their colors or activities proper to their biological requirements. The activities of the humans, as they eat upon outsized fruits, or engage in erotic play, have caused writers from the time of Father Joseph de Seguença to believe this to be a testament to the deadly sin of lust, or “luxuria.” In the words of a modern historian: “Yet, in the belief of the Middle Ages, all sins and vices are interwoven and one derives from the other. Therefore, it is not only ‘luxuria’ which is depicted here but all the sins brought forth by this vice and all the vices which cause ‘luxuria.’ This is quite evident in the right wing which, in a horrifying inferno, presents the punishment of all kinds of sins.” (Philip, 12)

The hell scene of this altarpiece is Bosch’s diabolic masterpiece. Throughout its far reaches sinners are being tortured in a night-lit landscape that is so marvelously painted as to be a work of genius. This scene is dominated by a wondrous egg-tree monster that floats upon the inky water on two boat feet from which tree-trunk legs are sprouting. The body of this creature is a cracked – open egg-shell that serves as a tavern interior its occupants must have reached by a ladder from the water below. Attached to the top of the egg is a hat on which a procession of nudes paired with demons parades around a large pink bagpipe, symbolic of lust. Around and below the egg-man are areas of Hell where sinners of various professions (knights, monks, musicians, gamblers, etc.) undergo excruciatingly appropriate tortures in a visualization unequaled in art history for its inventiveness. Comparing these two triptychs, Fränger saw at least five arguments which would oppose the association of the two in the Hay-Wain’s obvious theme of creation: sinful-life: hell. “First of all, there is the basic difference in breaks and coherences,” said the historian. In the Hay-Wain, a break in continuity occurs between the Garden of Eden panel and the middle panel, and there is decided coherence between the center scene and Hell. This can be seen in the fact that the hybrid creatures pulling the wagon into Hell from the middle panel are obviously minions of Satan; their parade continues with no break into Hell. In the Earthly Delights, no such separation exists between the Garden of Eden panel and the central one, but a continuity of landscape from one into the other. This difference in continuities in the two works indicated to Fränger that Bosch intended a different idea in the two, and it should not be assumed that just because the scene following the Garden in the Hay-Wain represents wickedness, the corresponding scene of the Delights automatically does the same.

As his second argument, Fränger pointed out that the nude creatures disporting themselves in the central panel of Earthly Delights are not doing so in what has appeared to all others besides him to be wanton display, but, they “are peacefully frolicking about the tranquil garden in vegetative innocence, at one with animals and plants, and the sexuality that inspires them appears to be pure joy, pure bliss”. Thirdly, Fränger argued that although the hell scene is divided into areas of torture for sinners among the knights, the religious orders, the musicians, and the gamblers, “not a single adept of carnal love” is being tortured.

If Bosch were holding up the sin of lust to reproach, asked Fränger, would he not in a logical sequence conclude with its punishment in Hell? In the case of the Hay-Wain, the greedy are not only to be found in their state of eternal damnation in Hell – but also, the demons of Hell swarm into the world of the central panel to assist in drawing the wagon all the faster in its fateful course. Here again, the writer refuted one of the parallelisms that had been too closely drawn. The author cited the situation in the Paradise panels for his fourth argument: the Eden of the Earthly Delights contains no sign of conflict as in that of the other triptych. Not only is there evidence of the primal conflict in the Hay-Wain’s rout of the wicked angels from Heaven (transformed as they are by Bosch’s inventiveness into those marvelous insect forms but also, testimony to Original Sin in the fact that Adam and Eve are being expelled by threat of the “fiery sword”. In the Earthly Delights, on the other hand, this scholar observed that Adam, Eve, and the Lord (in the form of the Son – a medieval transposition) are beheld in a moment of cosmic unity.

Fränger suggested later that the three are forming “a closed circuit, a complex of magical energy” by the physical contact between them. Adam’s feet touch the Creator’s, who in turn holds the hand of Eve. That is “himself (Christ) the image of God, he is the transmitter of this image to the two beings he has created, standing between them as their coeval”. This fact indicated to Fränger a positive and good estate, with no presentiment of the ultimate “fall.”

Continuing his line of defense, the historian suggested that since the children of Adam and Eve were born after the expulsion, it followed that the original pair were the only people in “Paradise.” Thus, the humans abounding there must represent their progeny, had Adam and Eve not fallen from grace.

Since the dogma of Original Sin and the Expulsion cannot be ignored if there were children, however, here is “a millennial condition that would arise if, after expiation of Original Sin, humanity were permitted to return to Paradise and to a state of tranquil harmony embracing all creation”.

Such a promise, Fränger believed, inhered in the symbolism contained on the outside of the triptych, seen when the volets are closed. This was his final argument, and to him, the most compelling. Almost covering the surface of both wings is the crystal sphere, containing a flat disk which cuts through its center (This idea of the aspect of the universe Bosch had taken from an ancient cosmology, said Fränger, not in currency in his time. Even if this were too early for Columbus’s discovery to have penetrated iconography, the earth had been depicted as being round for some time, generally as a small sphere concentrically set inside several larger spheres on which the fixed stars and the zodiacal signs were distributed.

This must be, Fränger believed, the third day of Creation, that “’fruitful moment’ in the six days of Creation, the very moment when the first rain falls upon the yet barren earth, out of which the first trees and bushes are about to sprout”. Fränger believed that the awe – inspiring message of this Creation is made clear in the quotations from the Psalms, XXXIII and CXLVIII, placed along the upper edges of the volets and also, by God’s image, which appears above and to the left of the sphere: “For he spake and it was done,” and “He commanded and it stood fast.” The Lord, seated as on a heavenly throne, holds on His lap a book, symbolic of the “Word” which is becoming incarnate below. Fränger saw the throne as a prefiguration of the great world globe, for it seems to repeat the shape of the large crystal globe by being a miniature crystal enclosure. In reverse, God’s throne is repeated and realized in the larger cosmological symbol, which finds its fulfillment when the wings of the altarpiece are thrown open. “The great ball divides, and its ordered realms represented by the zones of heaven, earth, sea and the underworld, are repeated in the corresponding zones of the Garden of Eden, the Millennial Paradise, and Hell”.

Therefore, the scholar’s conclusion must be that the central section of the interior is an earthly paradise – the fulfillment of the Word of God with implicit positive, rather than negative intent. “After that solemn prelude in the crystal globe the history of the world could not possibly gravitate towards a stew of defilement and hence into Hell…” Bosch has in this painting, Fränger said, sought to deny the dualism that was seen as existing between things of the flesh and things of God. In other words, he has tried to raise fleshly delights out of the realm of shame into which they had been deposed in traditional theology.

Fränger answered his own question as to the specific nature of a cult for which this altarpiece could have been painted by reasoning that, since Adam and Eve figure strongly in other prominent Netherlandish paintings – by Jan van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes, and Hans Memling – it must have been an Adamite cult. This cult is known to have advocated the practice on earth of sinless perfection – a practice that could incorporate man’s physical desires by outlining an ideal physical relationship between the sexes – so attained, man could then return to the state of bliss which our progenitors had lost by their sin.

32. Lucas van Leyden, The Crowning with Thorns, 1519, engraving, 17.2 × 13.1 cm

33. Christ Carrying the Cross, oil on panel, 57.2 × 32 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

34. Christ Carrying the Cross, reverse, Playing Child oil on panel, 57.2 × 32 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

35. Christ Carrying the Cross, side panel, oil on panel, 150 × 94 cm, Palacio Real, Madrid

To Fränger, this explanation of a heretical cult resolved all conflicting elements. Even “the high pitched boundless frenzy” of the Earthly Delights Hell scene would be explicable. Because a secret society must risk possible discovery and persecution, it would tend toward self-justification and would direct the terrors of Hell toward others, not its own members. Because the members must flout established tradition, deep-rooted even in themselves, they would defend their society’s precepts all the more intensely. Obversely, they would deny its privileges to the uninitiated and would place the outsiders, not themselves, in Hell.

For incontrovertible evidence of his theory Fränger offered the record of a trial in the Episcopal court at Cambrai in 1411, which charged the Carmelite friar, Willem van Hildernissen, with heresy. This man was one of the leaders of the Homines Intelligentiae of Brussels, a radical branch of a religious movement active in the territory from the Rhineland to the Netherlands. Because of inferences, which Fränger made from certain statements in the trial record, he assured himself that this was the group for which Bosch produced his altarpiece. Its members called themselves “Brothers and Sisters of the Free (or High) Spirit” in the belief that they were the incarnation of the Holy Ghost and through its power exalted to a state of spirituality that was immune from sin even in the flesh, with its subjection to lusts, so that on earth they lived in a state of paradisiacal innocence.” He suggested first, however, that the group’s constitution rested upon a tenet of equality of the sexes that is implicit in its very name. Since “the word homines means ‘men’ in the general sense of ‘human beings,’ which amounts to claiming for man a dignity that-since it is based on the fact that Adam was made in the image of God-admits no modification on the score of birth or class, rank or possessions… then the distinction between man and woman was also sublimated in the loftier concept of homo.”

This must mean, Fränger thought, that the female enjoyed equal status with man in this society, and if she were thus exalted in position over the inferiority accorded her by the church, she must have lost her denigration as the “sinful vessel.” As to what this implies of the beliefs or activities of these men and women within the society, the writer answered by turning to the Cambrai record. One of the points of indictment stated: “Likewise they created among themselves a peculiar mode of discourse which they call the act of sexual union “the joy of Paradise” or, by another name, “the way to the heights” (acclivitas). And in this manner they speak of such a lustful act to others, who do not understand it, in a favorable sense.”[14]

From this statement, Fränger surmised that the cult’s second principle was that its members lived together according to high moral values. To these brethren, “the strictest sanctification of love” was the way by which they could reach human perfection; this estate they saw embodied in Adam and Eve, who were themselves made in the image of God’s divine perfection. The converse became the second principle; that because man is made in the image of God, he can only endure in this highest of all estates by the practice of a sublimated act of love. As to the nature of this act, Fränger saw in the court record two possible answers. To indicate one of them, he quoted the following portion: “Secondly, that the natural sexual act could take place in such a manner that it was equal in value to a prayer in the sight of God.”

In other words, it could mean the natural act so purified in the mind “that it should no longer be felt as a humiliating animal act, but as the expression of an exalting, divine, creative principle”. The scholar preferred to seek the clue in a statement pertaining to another leader of the Brethren (a man who was being tried posthumously), that “he exercises a special mode of sexual intercourse, yet not contrary to Nature, of which he says it was that of Adam in Paradise”. If this “special mode” refers to an act distinct from the animal one, “yet not contrary to nature,” then it is clearly sinless, and could be practiced in perfect innocence – providing pure pleasure not befouled by any sense of shame. In this statement, thought the writer, lay the real meaning of the Earthly Delights center section. It was an illustration of this “special mode” of sexual play, the “immortal expression to this Adamite eroticism,” that was revealed in the painting, not directly, but secreted in a mesh of symbolic communications. Having brought us to this conclusion, Fränger proceeded to his prime purpose-that of translating “…this Free Spirit ars amandi out of the secret code of symbolism into generally comprehensible language.”

This is enough of Fränger’s argument to illustrate the nature of his interpretation and his characteristic mode of thought-a thoroughly rational, in fact, brilliantly logical analysis which on its surface was exceedingly convincing. Upon more careful scrutiny, however, it was the scholar’s logic, not Bosch’s, that he revealed. What Fränger did consistently here, was to follow a system of reasoning that set up a hypothesis as an arbitrary starting point and then, through misleading inferences, arrived at subsequent hypotheses and developed the conclusions implicit in them, ad infinitum. A construction of thought was created, no portion of which could be removed without damage to the whole, nor explained without reference to the whole. But the entire structure rested upon the original hypothesis, a very shaky foundation indeed. This was Fränger’s hypothesis: that the paintings containing the major part of Bosch’s enigmatic symbolism, being in the form of altarpieces, must have been made for a devotional purpose. They contain anticlerical and anti-pagan invective that could have been made neither for the Church nor for a pagan group.

An example of the anticlerical has already been shown in the fat monk being served by his nuns in the Hay Wain. Another is in the cowled pig soliciting the affections of a man in the Hell scene of the Garden. Since it was not the practice of a late medieval artist to paint merely for his own satisfaction, nor is it conceivable that private commissioners would have wanted such odd altarpieces for their own chapels, then there must have been a group outside the Church, operating between its severe discipline and pagan anarchy, but fighting both. These paintings must have been made for a heretical sect, therefore, which was forced to hide its ideas in secret symbols whose explanations would clarify Bosch’s enigmatic figures. To Fränger, this meant without question the Adamite cult. Are the points of the hypothesis defensible? The fact of the traditional altarpiece form strongly implied to the historian a devotional purpose – therefore, he had to seek the type of group, which would use Bosch’s altarpieces for such a purpose. It is not absolutely necessary, however, to think of these paintings as having a devotional purpose. This was not a time of strict adherence to tradition. Northern Europe at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries was in a period of great transition.

36. Detail of Christ Carrying the Cross, side panel, oil on panel, 150 × 94 cm, Palacio Real, Madrid

37. Detail of Christ Carrying the Cross, side panel, oil on panel, 150 × 94 cm, Palacio Real, Madrid

Already, the influence of the Renaissance from the South had been felt, entailing a discard of many old forms and ways. There was a growing secularization, resulting in a patronage for artists widened far beyond the extent of the Church. It is conceivable that the altarpiece form could have been used for a non-devotional painting commissioned by a private patron – merely because it allowed for intriguing complexity. But why could these paintings not have had a devotional purpose for this private patron – or for the Church, for that matter? It is the symbols of the pagan cults, which Fränger called signs of “swampy procreation and ritual promiscuity” that he did not believe could have been shown on church altars. Perhaps they could not be shown on our church altars, but in that time of less tender sensibility evil practices of all kinds were denounced in descriptive detail from the very pulpits. In fact, such practices are denounced even today from fundamentalist Protestant pulpits.

Fränger had pointed out that Bosch’s altarpieces always present an ideal content to balance the evil. Perhaps this would have justified their use as devotional altar paintings. If the worshipper would reflect upon the ideal scene (for instance, of a saint who remained faithful even in the face of all the forces of evil that Satan could bring to bear on him), he would be prepared to renounce his evil ways. As an added bit of goad, his possible future in Hell was cast-in case he paid no heed to the admonishment.

Fränger previously placed Bosch’s paintings on the Passion theme and those on the Adoration of the Child into a group distinct from the controversial altarpieces – calling those paintings “straightforward, intelligible, and traditional”. It is well known that these paintings also exhibit many instances of evil workings in the world. Especially in his Passions, the painter gave the most hideous aspect to the ordinary humanity that crucified Christ. This group cannot be completely divorced from the large triptychs Fränger discussed. Perhaps the interpretation given the large triptychs by Fray Joseph de Siguença should be reconsidered in spite of Fränger’s elaborate argument to the contrary. Siguença was the first interpreter of the Earthly Delights painting according to an association with the Hay-Wain. He saw both of these triptychs as containing the same idea incipient in Bosch’s earlier works – that wicked blind humanity would not heed the lessons of the Christian faith, but indulged in a sinful life in the world that must surely end in Hell.

One of the contentions upon which Fränger based his divergent interpretation of the Earthly Delights was that Bosch’s early and late works could not be associated closely. Since the earlier ones were more straightforward than the later ones, there must be a special meaning for the covert symbolism of the latter. The scholar did not believe, in addition, that the same intentions should inevitably be read into any two of the paintings, for instance – the late Earthly Delights and the earlier Hay-Wain. If one could find reasons to belie the dual association of these paintings, it could be said that the message of the first painting was positive rather than negative. There surely is not a sharp cleavage between early and late works in message – nor between that of the two works in question – only an elaboration of the same message; therefore, this position of the author’s cannot be considered tenable.

If the large triptych paintings are seen as carrying on the same ideas contained in Bosch’s earlier works, it would seem that if any of the paintings was suitable to place before a worshipping body in the Church, these could have had their place at the altar, too. It would not then be necessary to look for a patron outside the church to justify their existence. But Fränger discarded too quickly the possibility of there being a private individual who would commission the work for his own home chapel. Even if such an individual did not have so serious or specific a purpose for the altarpiece as an addendum to a private chapel, he might have commissioned a Bosch painting merely because it was fascinating in itself.

The artist’s popular appeal is shown by the fact that his manner and subject treatments were adopted so quickly by artists such as Huys and Brueghel. It may be that Bosch painted for a delighted audience, only too happy to keep him in commissions. We know from records quoted above that he was held in repute by his fellow townsmen. We know, too, that both the Emperor Charles V and one of his courtiers, Felipe de Guevara, had acquired several of Bosch’s paintings within a remarkably short time after the painter’s death. The fact that Charles’s son Philip confiscated one altarpiece from a rebellious Netherlandish Burgher makes it seem more likely that some paintings were owned privately rather than being part of the sacred equipment of churches; but it suggests as even less of a likelihood that the paintings were the hidden and guarded property of heretical sects. If such were the case, it is improbable that the paintings would have been in free circulation at such an early time after the artist’s death.

Fränger’s system of reasoning is so tightly constructed, with so little possibility of error that he seems to assume that mass intelligence would inevitably reach the same conclusions-once he had cleared away a few obstacles and pointed the direction, that is. One example will suffice to show to what fantastic excesses such thinking can and does lead in this interpretation. Fränger had previously demonstrated in his analysis of the central panel of Earthly Delights his belief that this fabulous display of erotic activity was in celebration of an actual marriage event. Therefore, he assumed that this also became the occasion for a pictorial revelation of the “society’s” mysteries – including all of the levels of knowledge members could attain by instruction and by which they could finally reach full association in the group. Since he thought the painting such a “unique pictorial creation, in which the whole universe has been assembled to sing praises such as no king and queen ever heard on their wedding-day”, it must be a truly “god-like couple” who are being married, Fränger went on to find them in the lower right corner of the panel, half-hidden in a cave. The man is the only clothed figure among the abounding nude ones, he said, and proposed further differentiations as well.

A man who exalts himself by such self-awareness as this one exhibits, and who is further being exalted by such a wedding celebration, could be one of only two people to Fränger – either the painter Bosch, or the man who inspired the triptych. Since this is not a portrait of Bosch, it must be according to the writer: “…the face of the man who commissioned such an extraordinary work of art and inspired its intellectual conception, [and] we can go even further and make the conjecture that this portrayal of the bridegroom is also that of the Grand Master of the Free Spirit, who meets us with a piercing, scrutinizing gaze on the threshold of his paradisiacal world.”

38. Michiel Sittow, student of Hans Memling in Bruges, Jesus-Christ Walking to the Calvary, oil on panel, 37.5 × 29.5 cm, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

39. Christ Carrying the Cross, 1510–1535, oil on panel, 76.7 × 83.5 cm, Palacio Real, Madrid

Having established the leader’s identity and personality from this “evidence” of the painting, Fränger asserted other instances in which his invention revealed himself. The author saw his face in that of the egg-tree monster placed in the center of Hell as if to demonstrate allegorically a basic doctrine of the cult – that one must make a public confession of sin before being able to return to a “state of purity”. Because a crow can be seen near the man’s “portrait,” Fränger believed this to be his symbol; therefore, wherever there was a crow (as at Adam’s feet in the Garden of Eden, there was the “Grand Master” participating in a cosmic event important to the whole revelation.

Fränger understood the cave of the bride and bridegroom not only to symbolize the consummation of their marriage, soon to take place, but the tie – in with Neo-Pythagorean philosophy, since caves had figured strongly in the history of Pythagorianism. The scholar’s purpose in making these Italian connections was obviously to justify finding in the North such an esoteric community as is known to have existed in Renaissance Italy. (Fränger had stated earlier, when first introducing the idea of the Adamite cult, that it was of particular importance in the early Renaissance period when: “Ideas of Platonic, Augustinian, Neo-Pythagorean and Gnostic origin fused to form an attitude that saw Original man as the archetype of spiritual renewal and hence of a pure, free state of human life”).

To explain his cult’s mysteries according to those of the Italian societies, and their appearance in this Netherlandish cult, Fränger had to introduce the “Grand Master” and show cause for this man’s having brought these ideas back from his own schooling days in Italy-thus the author’s assertion that the man has the look of an Italian intellectual and the further strengthening point that the woman behind him (his “bride”) has Italian coloring and features. Having so thoroughly convinced himself of his assertions, Fränger introduced the elusive “Grand Master” into “early Dutch social and art history [as] a powerful spiritual personality, hitherto completely unknown, one who is worthy to rank with those three great men of the same country and the same century, Erasmus Desiderius of Rotterdam, Johannes Secundus, and Johannes Baptist van Helmont”. Thus, Fränger not only endowed his invention with physical aspect, personality, bride, and philosophy, but he bestowed on him greatness. In the process, he destroyed Bosch not only as a personality but also as an artist.

He did this first by declaring that the altarpiece’s symbolism was a “system of sexual-ethical teachings, in which the pictorial motifs were didactic symbols… clear reflections of Renaissance natural philosophy, and hence patterns of a modern intellectual kind, pointing towards the future”. The author’s more devastating conclusion was that since there was a personality behind the painter’s inventions, his “pictorial ideas were not his own at all, but were laid down for him by a mentor of encyclopedic erudition, with an exquisite sense of detail, yet capable of planning on a magnificent scale and imperturbably sure of his purpose”.

It was not merely subject matter dictation that Fränger believed Bosch had received, but the “mentor” had even designed the color and formal composition. He had obviously designed the color because it bears symbolic relationship in every instance to the idea involved, but he strongly influenced the composition by allowing Bosch to break with his previous practice of placing dominant ideas along the axes of the panels, as in the two “Paradise-panels”, and to disorganize the Hell scene in a manner planned as a symbolic reverse of the very order of the other two “worlds”.

Fränger seemed to believe that such systematic disorganization grew out of a profound understanding of the destructive forces of society that could only belong to a man “who had the ideal image of creative harmony steadily before his inner eye.” It indicated that “the inspirer extended his influence even to the very realm of motifs and forms that has hitherto been regarded as Bosch’s own private territory as ‘faizeur de diables’; and hence the painter’s own created world seems on the point of vanishing…” The scholar went on to push Bosch over the edge with his next words, that if “we have to ascribe even the painter’s most peculiar originality to a mentor, it seems as though his own share in the achievement must sink to that of a craftsman, no matter how highly qualified, merely executing somebody else’s orders… it might have been more logical to devote all our energies to working out the personality of the real spiritual creator and – leaving Bosch on one side – to reinstate the actual origination of this profound work.” At this point, Fränger did admit that “such a strictly logical process would reduce itself to absurdity, since it would be impossible to reconcile it with the visual data of the picture itself, which, in spite of the guidance to which the painter was subject, blossoms out in complete pictorial freedom.”