Humanity does not exist within the emptiness of a vacuum. We do not simply spontaneously burst forth into mature form from the moment of conception. We are the result of countless environmental factors that mold us into the form that we shall eventually assume, factors which will result in life's direction, our motivations. Hieronymus Bosch, a Dutch Renaissance painter, was no exception. We know little of his personal life, yet from the details with which we are familiar we can perhaps glean the basic motivations of the master. What was it Bosch was trying to tell his world? What factors were the catalysts that caused Bosch to act in this fashion? These are broad questions are attempts to understand Bosch's work in the context of his world, his time, and his socio-cultural heritage without losing touch with the individualism of the master.

In regards to the first query, I follow Joseph-Emile Muller who writes, "Bosch wished to warn his time of the dangers it was running by yielding to the devil."⁽¹⁾ Bosch's complex paintings and prints were detailed metaphors for humanity and the sins which humanity so commits in such profusion. Bosch's work is pessimistic, "a world of senses turned sinful and terrifying...."⁽²⁾

Following the Gothic tradition as well as the newly developing conventions of the Dutch Renaissance, Bosch would seek to accomplish his moralizing task through the use of iconography. His work was flush with symbols and metaphors of human sin, particularly those sins of the senses. In his work The Garden of Earthly Delights, for instance, perhaps the greatest work of Bosch's life, we see the full majesty of Bosch's iconographic skill.

The Garden of Earthly Delights, composed of three panels, each showing the development of evil in association with humanity. When closed, the "beginning" of the narrative, "the triptych represents the world on the third day of creation, a transparent sphere with a central section that shows the dry land, already covered with vegetation, separating from the waters...."⁽³⁾ In the beginning, Bosch is saying, existence was perfect and without flaw, a true paradise of complete order. When opened, the first panel is a scene from the Garden of Eden. It show the Father with Adam and Eve, set in an idyllic landscape, a tropical forest set with ponds and fountains and filled with an array of animal life, both mythological and real. At first glance the panel appears to portray another scene of Earthly perfection, yet upon a more detailed inquiry the viewer notes the preludes to the age of sin soon to come. A cat devours a mouse.⁽⁴⁾ Several small, evil beasts are shown crawling from the Fountain of Life. The owl of witchcraft sits high in the boughs of the trees, watching all that happens in the garden. Eve, still asleep, is presented in a seductive pose to the reawakened Adam. As one critic says, "Everything in this peaceful garden seems to breathe serenity and innocence, but in reality it is marked with the stigma of unnaturalness and corruption."⁽⁵⁾

The first panel, in other words, is a symbolic representation of the sin which is inherent in humanity, a recognition that in its very essence the human is evil.

The center panel illustrates humanity after the expulsion, a massive metaphor for, "eroticism, gluttony, rhythmic movements, [and] open-air revels."⁽⁶⁾ Bosch is illustrating the pleasures of the flesh, using explicit multiple metaphors to condemn the sensuality which Bosch sees as inherent in the human character. A few critics have argued that Bosch was not criticizing the sensuality of the Adamites, but rather was exalting them, promoting a heresy quite to the contrary of his other works and the ultra-Catholic nature of his greatest patrons, Phillip II of Spain.⁽⁷⁾ Furthermore, if Bosch was not condemning the sensuality of humanity through his super-metaphor of the left and center panels, then why would he include the right panel, which includes one of his most graphic and powerful portrayals of Hell?

The Garden of Earthly Delights Hell panel is the conclusion of the story of humanity. Having begun with the perfect, pre-human Earth we then moved onto the temptations of Eden, then we arrive in the ultimate manifestation of human evil, the sensualist humans which have perverted the gifts of God. The cycle ends in the eternal punishment of the abyss with its specialized Hells, such as the "Musicians' Hell" and the "Gamblers' Hell." ⁽⁸⁾ Humanity is damned through its own sensuality from the moment of its creation. "No one escapes; no one is saved."⁽⁹⁾ Bosch seems to be indicating that no human deserves salvation, and perhaps none shall be saved.

Thus we have used The Garden of Earthly Delights as an explanation of Bosch's work: it was a social critique. But why was Bosch engaged in the creation of such a work?

Bosch lived in a world of upheaval and chaos. The entire Western world, including Bosch's own Holland, were in the midst of transformation. The Medieval system was being challenged in every sphere. The Catholic church was "confronted with ideas and trends that some saw as liberating, others as dangerous. Bosch was no doubt of the latter opinion."⁽¹⁰⁾ Feudalism was finally coming apart and with it the entire social structure of Europe was in shambles. Daniel puts it extremely well, saying:

In north-west Europe the Black Death, war, famine, pestilence,
and other camp followers of the Four Horsemen had spurred man into
heavy intellectual exercise outside the oppressive confines of the official Church.
Individualism was developing. This period overlapping Bosch
was the time of Wycliffe, Huss, and Luther. Society was in a state of its greatest flux....
Here was a historical period when those who produced
man's earthly goods staked out a claim to some of the products of their
sweat and toil. This was the period of the Peasants Rising in England,
the Jacquerie in France, ika and the Hussite wars in Bohemia and
later the Peasant's War in Germany, and the Peasant Rising of Dozsa in Hungary.⁽¹¹⁾

Politically the states were asserting their independence from the Church. The Protestant Reformation was about to alter the face of Western Christianity forever. Feudalist economy was being pushed aside by Capitalism. Humanism and individualism were evolving. Simply put, Western Europe's social order was being torn apart and reconstituted in the most dramatic fashion since the beginning of the Middle Ages some ten centuries before. The system had no stability, and thus there was no feeling of safety, no faith in the social system. This is when the critics come out to play.

It is important at this time to explain the difference between a social critic and a social theorist. A social theorist is anyone who tries to explain the order of things, often proposing ways in which the social order can be improved in the sense of made more efficient. A social critic, on the other hand, is a social theorist who feels that the current social order is in fact an anti-order, or a system which goes against the natural or moral current which humans should in fact be following.

Social critics invariably arise during times of social upheaval. Thomas Hobbes, author of the Leviathan, developer of the biological conceptualization of humanity, and supporter of authoritarianism wrote during the era of the Puritan revolutions in England. Niccollo Bernardo di Machiavelli, author of The Prince and the ultimate utilitarian, developing the credo "the Ends justify the Means" lived in the Italian city-states where he worked as a political envoy and was eventually thrown from office, tortured, and banished. Sun-Tzu, the Chinese master of warcraft and strategy (embodied in his masterpiece The Art of War), who in many ways was echoed Machiavelli, lived in a period of intense civil war among the Chinese states known as the Warring States Period. Confucius, an even greater social critic, was to become the greatest single influence on Chinese history, his works arising in a similar period of political dissolution known as the Spring and Autumn Period. Indeed, even Jesus of Nazareth with his astounding declarations of pacificism and demand for social and religious reform, wrote during a period in which the region around Palestine was constantly embroiled in some form of conflict with the Roman Empire, which would eventually culminate in the Diaspora. Bosch was no different, save that his medium was art and his language iconography.

Thus we have determined that the primary motivation for Hieronymus Bosch was one of social criticism. We have also seen how his social criticism, rooted in the religious and supernatural realm of ethics and morality, develops as a reaction to social, political, cultural, economic, and theological upheaval. Bosch's criticism was not that of a revolutionary, but rather that of one who conceives that the changing state of a society is not in fact evolution, but rather dissolution. Bosch knows what society is doing and is condemning it, coining himself a Medieval Jeremiah, doing all that he can to change the tide. Bosch the prophet, whose mighty words, in the form of pictures, still resound through the ears today.