PART III: NOTES TO THE STUDIES OF THE PRODIGAL SON AND THE TEMPTATIONS OF ST. ANTHONY

Notes to The Prodigal Son

NOTE 1, Section 2

The triptych is known as The Garden of Delights, in French Jardin des Delices. In later times this name was turned into Garden of Enjoyment.

Herrade de Landsberg, Abbess of the Cloister of St. Odile in Alsace (1167-1195) presented her inner visions in the form of illustrations [35], and entitled her writing Hortus Deliciarum, Garden of Delights, Joys or Blessedness. It can be assumed that this famous book was known to Bosch.

NOTE 2, Section 10

In The Garden if Heavenly Delights Bosch has painted a whole group of soul-birds, which is directed towards the human beings like the tip of a spear; it makes no difference whether the people have danced in pairs through the world, or have almost suffocated in loneliness within the cask of their soul: the soul moods represented by these birds are no stranger to anyone.

Fig. 106. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: Soul birds from the central panel of The Garden of Heavenly Delights. Madrid, Prado Museum.

We give a list here of these soul birds and their most important meanings (see Fig. 106).

Both the coal-tit and the jay can be seen in the middle of the central panel, near the large red alpha. The former bird, with its inability to sit still is a picture of human thinking which flutters hither and yon.

All these imaginations can be tested if one studies nature and the life-habits of these creatures carefully, and then adduces the ways in which they are utilised in the visual arts, in fairy tales, myths and legends.

NOTE 3, Section 9

The gate can also be found in the book Sinnepoppen by Roemer Visscher [63], who lived about 100 years after Bosch, and who was, as is historically verifiable, the head of the Rosicrucian movement in Holland. There too it marks the threshold between life on earth and life in the spiritual world.

This book was mentioned earlier in this study (see pp. 20 and 23). Before discussing the gate we venture to show a cartoon by a Dutch contemporary of Roemer Visscher, Pieter Quast, of which unfortunately there only remains an etching by Pieter Nolpe. This cartoon is exhaustively discussed by Rehorst [48] (see Fig. 107).

According to this writer the fact that Torrentius, as the head of the Rosicrucian movement, stood in intimate relationship to Roemer Visscher and his circle, is emphasised in a cartoon on the Rosicrucians from the 17th century.

Fig. 107. Cartoon of the group around Roemer Visscher after PIETER QUAST, etched by Pieter Nolpe. Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam.

From left to right are the well-known personalities of the circle about Roemer Visscher: Brederode (poet), Maria Tesselschade (daughter of Roemer Visscher), P. C. Hooft (poet), Torrentius (painter, and after Roemer Visscher head of the Rosicrucian movement), an unknown man, Vondel (poet) who is juggling with a Church, because it took a long time before he decided to join the Roman Catholic Church; Roemer Visscher as an old king, Rodenburgh (from Belgium, appearing as a devil) and doctor Samuel Koster, The book The Fama lies on the ground.

Duycken en ghenoeghen.
Fig. 108. From the book Sinnepoppen by ROEMER VISSCHER, 1614 [63]

Underneath a short poem.

To return now to the gate in "Sinnepoppen" Vol. II No. 6 by Roemer Visscher, we reproduce here the drawing entitled: "Duycken (i.e. be modest) en Ghenoeghen" (i.e. be content) (see Fig. 108).

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