Three of these innumerable positive portrayals of music and musical instruments are shown below. 1450–1516) depicts as torture devices in hell in his Garden of Earthly Delights are shown by other painters played by humans and angels to worship God, Christ and the Virgin. The sum total of Bosch’s musical depictions raises the question: What was the nature of his beliefs that he imagined all musicians as wicked sinners and monstrous creatures who are eternally punished in hell ? We search for answers in his locality, his biography, and the clues he left with his brush.īefore, during and after his lifetime, the instruments Jheronimus Bosch (c. Every musical image is presented with a brief description and explanation, referencing literature Bosch would have known.

Here we survey the rest of Bosch’s entire works, his paintings and drawings, for music and musicians. That leads us to the central question of this third and final article on Bosch’s relationship with music.

In Part 2, we surveyed all the musical imagery and the overall schema of The Garden of Earthly Delights, exploring historical sources for the meaning of each musician punished in hell, their instruments used as torture devices against them. As the present article will show, Bosch painted equally faux and unreadable Strichnotation in two more paintings and one drawing. We saw that it is not Gregorian notation, as is repeatedly claimed, but a faux and unreadable imitation of Strichnotation. Along the way, art historian and Bosch expert Stefan Fischer reveals the most important themes and influences in these cryptic, mesmerizing masterpieces.In Part 1, we explored the modern myth that the ‘music’ on the backside of a sinner in Jheronimus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is real and playable. We encounter his hybrid creatures, his nightmarish scenarios, his religious and moral framework, and his pictorial versions of contemporary proverbs and idioms. Through full spreads and carefully curated details, we explore the full reach and compelling inventions of the artist’s genius as well as disturbing imagination. This edition offers the complete and haunting Bosch world in one compact format. 500 years on from his death, his works continue to inspire scholars, artists, designers, and musicians, death metal band names and designer dresses. 1450–1516) but in their fantastical visions they have secured his place as one of the most cult artists in history. Only 20 paintings and eight drawings are confidently assigned to Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch (c.

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