It was breathtaking, and stole her attention the moment she entered the darkened room, illuminated only by the gentle glow of the security lighting and fire escape signs. She moved closer until the image filled even her periphery. Lucia realized she had almost stopped breathing as she stared at The Garden of Earthly Delights.
It felt like the painting was a magnet, pulling her closer, and without realizing it she stepped forward yet again, her eyes fixed on the wild, complicated image in front of her. She had only ever seen photos of it before, and was struck by how large it was in real life as her eyes crawled all over it, desperately trying to take it all in.
And how much there was to take in. The enormous work of art was divided into three panels, two slim images either side of a much larger painting, and together they constituted a startling and terrifying triptych that had been mystifying experts for centuries.
“I’ve never see this painting before, not in the flesh, so to speak,” Harry said in wonder.
“Bloody heathen,” his sister said.
The reverse of the painting was rendered in grisaille, or monochrome, on wooden panels that folded in to encase the art, and featured a distant God staring down at his creation of the world, but that was not the main attraction — which now stared the two of them in the face in all its intriguing and horrifying complexity.
And in the flesh was about the right way to describe it, Lucia considered. The image was overflowing with naked bodies, and their meaning had been open to interpretation for the five hundred years since its creation. “What’s it about?” she asked.
Harriet said, “The orthodox explanation is that the image is a straight-forward depiction of the fall of man — a doctrinal warning on the dangers of yielding to life’s wicked temptations — but the staggering complexity of its symbolism makes the work much harder to interpret than many would like.”
“It’s creeping me out,” said Lucia.
“You’re not the first,” Harriet replied. “The painting has caused many divisions.”
“Is it a warning of some kind?” Harry said.
“Maybe, maybe not. The fundamental disagreement surrounds that enigmatic central panel. While most believe it’s a warning, there are others who think it’s not a monition of the terrors to come if man gives in to temptation, but a nostalgic portrayal of a lost paradise, inhabited and enjoyed by man in his prelapsarian condition.”
Harry turned to Lucia. “And yet again, that is exactly what I was going to say.”
“Sure.”
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Harriet said.
A look of awe crossed Lucia’s face. “It’s magnificent, but so unsettling.”
Harriet agreed. “And no one even knows what it means. To me, that’s the most amazing thing of all.”
“If this is what Pablo was leading us to, I still don’t understand,” Harry said. He was leaning into the right-hand panel, and studying a small scene of grotesque depravity involving torture and humiliation he didn’t realize existed in renaissance art. “This is really out there.”
Harriet nodded and took another sip of her coffee. “I know what you mean. Many people over the years have claimed he might have been high on drugs when he painted it, others say he was just hundreds of years ahead of his time. If this Pablo was trying to send you a message encoded within the painting itself then he couldn’t have chosen a more difficult and ambiguous piece of art. Experts have argued about the symbolism in The Garden of Earthly Delight for centuries, and no one has ever convinced anyone else of their theories.”
Lucia sighed. “So why send us here?”
Harry took a deep breath and moved closer. “I don’t know. I’m sure of one thing though — this is where we are supposed to be. His reference to the woods can only point to El Bosco — and this is his most famous work. He couldn’t be referring to any other piece.”
“I can’t disagree with that,” Lucia said, still mesmerised by the lurid art in front of her. “It’s bewitching. He was thinking of this painting when he wrote those words, I just know it.”
“But where does that get us?” Harry asked.
“It gets us precisely where we are,” Harriet said with a weary sigh. “…standing in front of an enormous Flemish renaissance triptych without a clue.”
FIFTEEN
And Lucia knew she was right. Just a few inches in front of them was Bosch’s masterpiece — a tangled mess of misunderstood symbolism painted into the actions of dozens of naked figures, but there the trail seemed to end.
“Where do we start, Harry?” Lucia said. “We don’t have much time. It can’t be long before they work out where we are!”
“We start with what we already know. Pablo left us a coded message — beauty is in the eye of the beholder — this was highlighted in his copy of the Epistola.”
“In which he’d left a handwritten note to Anton Liška, remember.”
“Yes, and that might be important, but for now we focus on the clue, which we rearranged into the right order to give us a grid reference for the Prado — and so far so good. He had also singled out a sentence about the woods, which led us to Bosch, here, and his most famous work.”
“But there are no more clues.”
Harriet harrumphed noisily to get their attention. “So we start at the beginning of the painting,” she said.
“What do you mean, the beginning?”
“Paintings of this era were stories, and they’re read from left to right, in the way we read books today. In this case, the painting starts with Adam in the left-hand panel as he looks across the rest of the painting, or story. Most people in those times were completely illiterate, so they learnt about the world by reading paintings instead — if they could get close to them of course, which was hard because most were owned by royalty and kept in private collections in palaces and so on.”
Lucia listened to the way Harriet talked about the art. It reminded her of the way Pablo used to talk about things — art and science — even the Spanish football leagues — whatever was on his mind. Now she watched Harriet as she was taken over by her obsession — in this case fine art.
“I wish I was there now,” Harriet said with a sigh. “Must make a note to fly to Madrid soon.”
Lucia continued to study the painting too, following Harry’s avid gaze as he searched all over it for some kind of clue.
“This panel is unique in the world of art history,” Harriet continued. “Even just in the context of Bosch’s own body of work, it’s one of a kind, and where the mystery of this painting begins. Do you see the owls?”
Harry and Lucia’s eyes flicked all over the three panels — now she had mentioned it there were owls everywhere. This is why he had called her. “Yes — what’s their significance?”
“They’ve always had symbolic significance to various secret societies, including the Brotherhood of Our Lady.”
“Who are they?”
“They were an elite secret society back in Bosch’s day, and both he and other members of his family were in it. Some theorize it was through this society that he got so many important commissions for his work. This group was a highly elite affair, with a very secretive inner circle — they called themselves the sworn brothers and numbered only and exactly one hundred — Hieronymus Bosch was one of those hundred members along with other much more important people — powerful people — including princes and dukes.”
“Sounds like he knew how to get ahead,” Lucia said.
“Exactly. The contacts in this brotherhood got him important donors that enabled him to carry on painting and seeking commissions.”