Week 13; Monica S.; The Garden of Earthly Delights

At this point in this class I find myself listening more to what others are discussing than speaking myself and I have a reason for this. I'm not Christian or of any other religious belief and that fact makes interpreting art from the Italian Renaissance almost alien and nondescript. Over my lifetime I think I've read about ten pages from the Bible and I have never been to a mass. My whole perception of Christianity almost does not exist except for what I've learned in this class. I have almost no knowledge of Christian beliefs or what the Bible says or the history of Earth in religious context. Therefore, my analysis of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights is going to be short and probably far-fetched.

However, I think that the composition is like this: The left panel is of the garden of Eden before Adam and Eve mess everything up according to the Bible (I'm not sure how it all goes though), the center panel is still of the garden of Eden after Adam and Eve start having all the children and they are having a good time taking advantage of everything the garden provides, and I think the right panel is a social commentary on the contemporary world and all of the destruction humanity has created. I wish I had more knowledge of religion so that I could take a closer look at this piece and actually know what was going on. However, I think this is a really intense painting and I will definitely look into what other analyses say to gain some more knowledge.