The Lisbon Triptych

The pre-eminent treatment of the Temptation of Saint Anthony theme by Hieronymus Bosch is found on the triptych now in the National Art Museum of Lisbon. There is some confusion as to whether the painting was presented as a royal gift from Philip II to the king of Portugal, or whether it was purchased from Philip’s collection by a Portuguese painter. By whatever means, it is known to have entered Portugal between the years 1525 and 1545.

When closed, the altarpiece is approximately four square feet (1.2 metres) in size, slightly larger in height than in width. It is nearly eight feet (2.4 metres) in width when the panels are opened out. The exterior surfaces of the panels are painted in grisaille, giving an unearthly appearance to the Passion episodes presented thereon. Christ is centred in each panel, and backed by frenzied mobs in such a way that the main action in both paintings is concentrated in the upper registers. The minor episodes, set in the foreground areas, are isolated by space. There is no coherence of action from one scene to another, but there does seem to be a continuity of setting. The stream that separates foreground from middle ground is continuous, as is the band of darkened land seen behind the two mobs. There is a difference in time of action, however, as the sky is dark in one scene and light in the other.

The left panel depicts the arrest of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Lord, fallen to his knees, submits to the taunts of the crowd, delivered with gesticulation and facial contortion. A soldier handles the girdle of the Master as if it were a harness. He kicks at Christ from behind. A man in front, participating in this terrible game, pulls Christ forwards by tugging at the girdle strings. There is the illusion of chaotic action as the figures in the forefront of the crowd turn and bend in all directions. The impression of a dinning noise is conveyed as men clash weapons, blow horns, and open their mouths in outcry. In the background of the crowd, individual figures dissolve into a many-headed Hydra. Below the stream, Saint Peter raises his sword to cut off the ear of Malchus, whose belongings lie about him in disarray. The only observers to the scene are a man turning his back, as if in cowardice – and the ravens idling on the ground.

The right panel, depicting Christ Carrying the Cross, shows the Master fallen under the weight of the cross. This mob (constructed of different personages than the one on the left) is momentarily stilled to await the Cyrene’s assistance to Christ. Saint Veronica displays the sudarium, which has received the miraculous transfer of the Lord’s face.

In the foreground of this scene are the two thieves: the penitent one listening to the earnest entreaties of a confessor, and the impenitent one hearing, but not heeding, the advice proffered to him.

The presentations are somewhat unorthodox in setting, with parched earth and curious laminations of the land. The accoutrements assembled here are not those of any traditional precedence. There is a chalice elevated upon a hillock. A rat hangs suspended upside-down

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, central panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, central panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. from a tree. Bones are scattered upon the ground. It could be that these are cryptic symbols, yet it is possible that their presence here is merely to suggest the desolation of this place. Certainly there is little in the scenes to disabuse the viewer of the intended message – that Christ, archetype of good, was insulted, beaten, and then killed, in a desecrated place – by evil, blind humanity. Here is the prologue of the entire triptych –the good man’s travail, having its prototype in the tragedy of Christ’s story, being replayed in the hagiographical episode.

Within the altarpiece there is much more complication. Time has elapsed from the death of Christ until the ordeal of Saint Anthony. Evil has multiplied; wickedness is omnipresent. The panels of the altarpiece unfold to reveal its temporal environment –another earthly place of desolation. Here is no simple Calvary place. This is many settings of imbricated dramas. At one and the same time, this is the tomb outside Anthony’s village where the Devil first sent his demons against the saint to lash him into submissiveness. It is where Anthony challenged Satan to do his worst and was pummelled and goaded by the phantom beasts returned in answer from the infuriated Devil. In this place the Lord stood by to watch the holy man stay steadfast in action. It is the deserted fort of Pispir on the “Outer Mountain” where the saint settled down among the creeping things that infested the ravaged building, and where he again fell prey to the tumultuous spectres of demons. This is also Anthony’s final retreat on the “Inner Mountain” where he was plagued by invisible foes until his death.

Not only the hermit’s retreat, this is the hidden ceremonial ground of the Witches Sabbath on which Satan’s worshippers converged. It is the ruined monument (the castle, fort, or monastery) where the necromancer performed his evocations. It is the lightningstruck tower of the Tarot, the citadel of alchemy, and the melancholy setting lit by Saturn’s astral light. Not only a place, however, here the fort is suspended in the centre of a square, each corner of which is dominated by an element. By this device, it becomes the macrocosm of the alchemist and qabalist. Bosch superimposed the lot to create his mise-en-scène.

Anthony’s “tomb”, or “fortress”, is laid open in the manner of a theatrical set, its roof and forewall removed as if to reveal action on the centre stage. In fact, Bosch’s arrangement of levels for subordinate and dominant plots seems to anticipate later theatrical planning.

Two platforms rise above the watery foreground; the upper platform is separated from the lower one by a curving parapet through which two steps are cut. A high, crumbling wall extends around the upper platform to form the sides and back of the fortress. The wall begins on its right side with a tower ruin and ends on the left with a set of screens that form a backdrop to the actors on the platform. A portion of vaulted ceiling hangs cantilevered from the back part of the wall – the cracked edges and curious angle at which the fragment curves suggest an enlarged piece of eggshell more than an architectural structure. The tie rods below the overhang would have been required to hold the walls together in a vaulted room, but their placement here does not suggest any attempt on Bosch’s part at accuracy. As with his every structure, this “room” is the fanciful

projection of a man who does not observe details, nor how things are constructed. The illusion is what the painter sought; this is a fitting, even spectacular, arena for the action of Saint Anthony’s story.

Placed in the exact centre of the central panel, the saint kneels against the low parapet wall. He points with two upraised fingers to the fort before him. Looking back over his shoulder as if to attract the spectator’s gaze, he directs it with his benedictory gesture towards Christ, standing beside an altar in an arched recess of the back wall. A beam of light from a side window illuminates the Lord as He, in turn, points towards the crucifix on the altar. His presence here represents two things: the Lord’s appearance to the saint in the narrative of Saint Anthony, and Bosch’s message to the viewer. It is as if he spoke (in visual terms) to the worshipper – to look steadfastly towards the Lord and not gaze on evil things, no matter how overwhelmed the world has become with such distractions.

Christ points to the crucifix to remind the saint of His own great suffering as interpreted by Bosch on the outer panels. If these two figures are the only representatives of good on this canvas, the message is that there is very little of that quality in the world. Bosch endowed the saint with some of his traditional iconographical attributes. He is an old man, bearded and with a cane beside him. The crutch lies a distance from him, at the edge of the lower platform. The saint wears the habit and cowl of a monk, designating his authorship of monachism. His shoulder is marked with a T, the first letter of Theos, indicative that he is one of God’s elect. From the monk’s belt hangs the Tau cross, worn by Antonites; this not only signifies the Theos reference, but also the resemblance of the letter’s form to Anthony’s crutch. Bosch did not show the hog, which was often placed near the saint to denote the gluttony and sensuality that he conquered. Instead, he gave pig-snouted faces to two figures near Saint Anthony, one, the black-clothed man coming up behind the hermit and, two, the tonsured priest reading from a book at the edge of the platform. For the fire associated with Saint Anthony, there is the burning village in the background of the painting.

Around the saint the painter arrayed the Devil’s hosts, given the many forms that devilry assumed in his time. Bosch fashioned this crowd compositely, not only from the invisible demons of Satan’s kingdom (rendered visible by the Devil, or a human agent), but from attributes of the Devil’s human agents, the sorcerers. On the same platform Bosch placed a necromancer dressed in white ephod and high crowned hat, who leans back against the low forewall to survey a handiwork of his design. The foot lying on the platform before him undoubtedly refers to an appalling aspect of the disease “St Anthony’s Fire”, that caused limbs of the sufferers to become gangrenous, necessitating their amputation.

To the necromancer’s right, a tonsured helper is incanting the awful ceremony of exorcism from the Black Book. This is the time of quiet after the storm of atmospheric flashes and tremblings, ear-splitting yells and shrieks accompanying the painful process by which the demons were rendered into bestial form. Bosch substituted the holy presence of Christ and the saint for the purified circle of necromancy. Drawn into

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, central panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, central panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (tritpych, detail, central panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. (p. 166)

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, central panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. (p. 167) this charmed area, the demons change into submissive human form. To emphasise the evil nature of necromancy, suggested in the snouted face of the helper reading the book, the painter opened a rent in the man’s ephod to expose his rotted entrails. This man’s pig-like face refers not only to necromancy and to the saint’s iconography, but to the Witches Sabbath as well. His book with its black pages and light letters is suggestive of the book of the Black Mass read at that ceremony. That the book is held here by a man in priestly robe implies that men of the Church were among those who served the Devil.

The parodied Eucharist enacted on the platform by Saint Anthony also suggests the Sabbath ceremony, but the painter drew the participants from many contexts. The Moorish man might represent Satan himself, who once appeared to Anthony in the form of a black child. Black was a colour often applied to the Devil, as well as to evil in general. The egg held aloft by the Moor may signify “the spirit of fornication”, which appellation the Devil claimed while masquerading thus. In addition, the egg relates to the Philosopher’s Stone, the “sealed vessel”, and the universe (or, that is, the cosmological nature of alchemy as a whole). The toad displaying the egg is an animal form the Devil was believed to assume. The lizard and dog, others of the Devil’s disguises, emphasise his ubiquitous nature. The owl on the snouted man’s head represents the heretic – who will not see the truth.

Between Saint Anthony and the Moor are three women acting as priestesses who serve the bread and wine. Kneeling beside the saint and crowding him in an irritating attempt at distraction, one of these women passes a plate to a nun. At first, the woman appears to be dressed fashionably; further observation shows her skirt to end in a tail-like train and her headdress to be tucked up to reveal a thorny vine trailing down her back.

Fränger suggested in his description that the vine referred to the wickedness ascribed by Moses to those that break the Lord’s Covenant, when he warned the Israelites: “For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter. Their wine is the poison of asps” (Deuteronomy, 32:32, 33). Fränger suggested further that the snakes adorning the headdress of the middle priestess (with the basilisk stare) are the asps in the reference, and that the wine she is serving is “the poison of dragons”.

These figures also have their counterparts in the major trump series of the Tarot. The central woman is akin to the High Priestess who wears the papal tiara in that system of imagery. The woman on the left could have been inspired by the tarot Empress (also the “faire white woman” who signified mercury as associated with Luna in some alchemical references). There is a hermit (Saint Anthony) in the tarot pack, and a fool – among these figures, he is possibly the pig-snouted man who shuffles in a manner suggestive of cerebellar disturbance.

The dog accompanying the fool wears a foolscap, again strengthening the tarot connection. To the left of the fool, the wooden-legged old man was a figure often used to denote Saturn, and the dog in his path would have additional meaning in this context, since it was an animal identified with the melancholy humour, and, by implication,

with Saturn. The musical instruments carried by the two men would produce the antidotal music required to dispel saturnine mysticism – already pervasive in the doleful anchorage.

Music was also considered a demonic snare and these instruments, the hurdy-gurdy and the lute, were among those said to be played in hell. Emphasising this point, Bosch placed a demon behind the High Priestess who fingers his woodwind snout; the “music” that he exudes emerges as noxious fumes.

It is hard to believe that the affable little fellow who toasts the crowd from a perch opposite Saint Anthony is another embodiment of evil, but the Devil is as capable of assuming attractive forms as he is repulsive ones. In fact, the use of these would be among his most effective stratagems. The creature’s lack of a torso can be ascribed to Bosch’s narration on the composite gargoyle theme. Instead of combining sections of different organisms, he has merely pieced together the non-connected parts of one. A more orthodox demonic creature is the winged lizard that hangs down from a tie rod to observe the crowd. Two others of this species stand upon the roof; one has yet only halfhatched from its egg-shell, conveniently fitted with legs.

The same conjoining of sorcerous and biblical connotations seen in the ceremony around Saint Anthony can also be inferred from the scenes presumably sculpted or painted on the tower. The subject of the uppermost mural seems, at first glance, to be simply that of Moses’ receipt of the Tables of the Law. Moses kneels, as on Mount Sinai, to take the tablets from the hand of God plunging through the cloud above the prophet. The golden calf has been raised on an adjoining mount, and the idolatrous children of Israel dance and genuflect before it. A closer look shows Moses to have a horned hat, the “calf” to be in reality a goat, and the Israelites to have snakes curling around their bodies. The presence of a goat surrounded by worshipful revellers strongly hints of the Witches Sabbath. It is intriguing to wonder why these two ideas had connected themselves in the painter’s mind. One of the derivative passages for knowledge concerning sorcery was to be found in the long exhortation made by Moses to remind the Israelites of their covenant with God. In the words of the prophet:

Thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those other nations. There shalt not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. (Deuteronomy 18:9-11)

By dressing the Israelites in asps, and by making them worship the goat (or Devil) instead of the graven image, Bosch equated their sin with the “abominations of those other nations”. He intimated, in addition, that the wicked followers of Satan (the sorcerers), in Saint Anthony’s time, as well as in his own, had abandoned themselves to those practices condemned by Moses in the name of the Lord.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, central panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, central panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

We may ask why the painter gave horns to Moses. Was it because of a current misconception that Moses had worn horns, due to a mistranslation of a biblical passage that referred to rays emanating from the prophet’s head?

Since horns were usually associated with the Devil and the fact that certain animals, such as the toad, goat, and owl were horned causing them to be given an evil designation, Bosch may actually have believed that Moses was one of Satan’s disciples. The painter equated the prophet and the goat by placing them on adjoining mounts; the revellers worship as before both. The derogatory slur at Moses seems to be continued in the tower’s lowest register. Here are seen two men who have returned from the “promised land” with a cluster of enormous grapes, but they are walking into darkness. Conditions of light and dark were commonly assigned to good and evil, making it seem that Bosch considered the place where they should find the Jews to be an evil one. The intimation is further emphasised in the tower’s middle register, which the artist so conveniently swelled out to incorporate all the figures of the scene. An enthroned monkey (the transformed Devil) is seated on a drum and receives a sacrificial offering from men who are dressed in the same manner as the Israelites above. An owl peers out of a crevasse behind the monkey’s throne – endowing the scene with the stigma of heresy. Since the painter in these references associated Moses, the Israelites, and the food (both allowed and forbidden to them) with the Devil, he must have considered anything Jewish as evil.

In other portions of the painting, Bosch employed the Mosaic animals as conveyances on which to bring delegates to the meeting place. What appear to be two horses and a rat (both among the unclean animals) are the mounts that stand in the water at the foot of the tower (Ill. 96). The designation of a degree at which mercury heated as the belly of a horse in alchemical symbolism, Bosch translated literally. The torso of the horse on the left has been transformed into the vessel in which mercury and sulphur were conjoined. Such a jug also had diabolical significance; it was a sign of Satan as well as of woman in her role as “sinful vessel”. The riders are demons, some of which fall into specific classifications. For instance, Bosch fashioned a knight-falconer as the rider of the jug-bellied horse.

This image is one of the painter’s most evocative creations and could be used as the typical illustration of his modus operandi. To be the rider to this already magical animal, Bosch conceived the falconer of humorous symbolism. The painter then produced a falconer, complete with hunting horn and hooded bird on wrist. In the process of making this figure, he thought of another hunter, or fighter – the knight-figurative in the tarot game. He added a knight’s armour to the falconer and, in a burst of fancy, attached wings to the shoulders. If a logical explanation is needed for this action, the temperament for which the falconer was sometimes emblematic was the sanguine, allied to the element of air. Traditionally, the falconer used in this context would be shown walking on air amidst clouds and stars. Since Bosch did not put his figure in the air, he gave him wings, as suggestive of air as clouds and stars, and surely as logical as a figure walking on air.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, right panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, right panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

Hieronymus Bosch’s difference was that he did not confine himself to the traditional reference. He used the method by which the common symbols had been made –evolving as they did from countless origins, formed by free association of ideas in many minds, accepted into common usage if they had universal impact. The painter simply made his own associations, but the images which he created are not to be looked upon as having objective meaning that can be disassociated from the visual creation. The thistle-headed, winged knight-falconer, astride a jug-bellied horse, cannot be considered as an autonomous symbol of a detachable idea. It has meaning only in the context of the whole structure and significance of the painting. It is, as everything else in the painting, a layered fabrication of many associated ideas. For instance, Mâle cites the belief of Saint Bonaventura that the thistle is “an image of the temptations that pass through the dreams of Sloth, occasionally goading it”. To be considered the same are the other figures in this group, made up of an old man with an egg-shaped pack on his back, a richly dressed rider with a sphere topped by a vine as adornment on his hat, and a demon in knight’s armour.

The most readable image is the involved figure formed by a tree with a branch that becomes an arm to the woman whose face peers out from the hollow. The idea probably came from alchemy since any hollow place was looked upon as the matrix of the alchemist’s furnace. An egg-shaped child (or Philosopher’s Stone) is seemingly being produced out of the hollow, giving further support to this idea. The woman is seated in a sieve, or vessel, used in the Great Work. Her lower body is a scaly tail, perhaps pure embroidery on Bosch’s part, perhaps representing the alchemical process sometimes denoted by the zodiacal sign of Pisces. Another egg-shaped child is playing in the water – the “child’s play” ascribed to the operation of the Great Work after its primitive material had been found.

The fish-craft are conveyances more natural to the watery element that fills the lower right quadrant of the canvas. With the flying boats in the air directly above them, these are among the most extraordinary of Boschian inventions. One boat is made of a hull vaguely reminiscent of a horseshoe crab shell turned over on its back. Imprisoned inside is a man whose hands project through holes in the side as if they are the paddling mechanism. The boat is manoeuvred by a black monkey who handles a sail made partially of a skate, or ray, threaded onto a transparent net. Another boat is formed of a carp with an unlikely tail. Outfitted with a red blanket, a plate of armour, and fanciful rigging, it is “manned” by two black monkeys. One paddles with a long spoon and the other drags a net which has reaped, among other fish, versions of a spoon-billed catfish, a bream, and an eel (both “clean” and “unclean” in the Law).

Standing on land but supping at the water’s edge, on the left-hand side, are animals both imaginary and real. These are the roebuck and hart, considered “suitable” by Moses. An “unclean” rat stands nearby, but the creature next to that animal is an unreal beast constructed of an egg-shaped body, long neck, and a face that projects from the outer skin covering as from a helmet, with sabots on its feet. This is the mount for an even stranger mixture of a cloaked armoured human body surmounted by the skull of an ass

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, right panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

(the jawbone with which Samson slew the Philistines?). The rider plays with spidery fingers upon a lyre. These figures are followed by an ass, a heron (in armor), and a cormorant (all “unclean”). They stand in front of a huge apple skin (symbolic of the “Fall”). Its skin is open in several places and emerging from its hollow interior (the matrix of the alchemical furnace?) are playful demons. One sits in a basket that hangs from a giant thistle; he brandishes a sword. This may be another vague reference to alchemy since a sword, or cutting instrument, betokened fire.

Above this group is one of creatures that follow Saturn onto the central platform. First arrive two dogs dressed in armour which fits them stylishly. Behind the dogs, a woman whose head is made of a hollow tree from which dangle snakes (the creeping things forbidden by Moses) leads a curious, composite creature.

Its backside resembles that of a horse, with the exception of the tail, which is rat-like. There is no torso at all (a favourite deletion of Bosch’s). Large moth wings grow from the back of a bat-like head. Its curiously curled mouth ejects a long forked tongue. An arrow (that could refer to the passage: “For lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart” [Psalms 11:1, 2]) protrudes from beneath the creature’s tail. Judging from the stout hold the woman has on the wings of this “gargoyle” and the long bow and barbed stick that she carries on her other arm, she must have captured this animal in a hunt – now she brings it to the Sabbath.

A pig-snouted demon, who sports a jug of flowers as a hat, carries a wheel (of the type used for execution by exposure) on which are to be seen a human limb and a raven (an “unclean” bird) that is perched on one of the spokes. A rat dangles upside-down from this wheel, its legs pierced by a spike to which the supporting rope is attached.

In the air above the tower are flying craft, some formed of “unclean” animals. Two flying boats which head towards one another as if going into battle are formed around the “forbidden” swan and hawk. Their rigging is intact, if not conventional, as it seems to require the self-sacrificing efforts of crewmen acting as turn-buckles and mastheads to hold it together. As the animals have meaning in various contexts, they perform several functions for Bosch. In alchemy, winged animals represented the volatile nature of mercury, the swan stood for the white colour important in the Great Work, and the hawk was sometimes emblematic of the sanguinary temperament, because of the association of both the bird and temperament with air. That Bosch intended the right upper quadrant of the painting to be dominated by the element of air is apparent in that the clear blue sky of this side is so distinctly divided from the sky of the left upper quadrant, which is filled with the smoke and flames of a huge fire. On that side, the crafts most clearly visible are a scaleless, “unclean” fish on which a demon rides, and a winged egg straddled by a frog. The frog and egg have demonic and cosmological significance, respectively. Passengers on this side of the painting seem to be a demon and a frog that lights their way through the smoke-darkened sky with its own torch.

The fire that whips the massive smoke clouds with flames on the left side of the panel is surely one of the most spectacular displays in all of art history. A fire was suggested to

Bosch from many sources: flames figured in the Saint Anthony iconography to signify hell fire and “Saint Anthony’s fire”.

Fire was coeval with the archetypal world of the Qabalah and the staff sign of the Tarot. It was not only one of the Aristotelian elements of most importance to the Great Work, it was also allied to the choleric temperament. Bosch used the burning village to demonstrate one of the most nefarious of demonic activities. Demons were believed to set such fires; here they compound the confusion by flying in with ladders to aid in pulling down the church steeple and tearing the roof off a tower. They fly about fanning the flames and, in general, stirring up more trouble than the stupefied onlookers beside the church can comprehend. Although the entire area is suffused with the glare of the fire,

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, right panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, right panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, left panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, right panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. even causing the stream to appear like molten metal, a woman nonchalantly washes her clothing at the water’s edge.

It seems quite possible that this homely, inappropriate activity was inspired from the alchemist’s assurance that, once the primitive materials had been found, the hermetic process would be no more than “woman’s work”.

Behind this woman are more, rather unconcerned, personages. From the doorway of a house, a woman looks out at a man who rests upon a bench beside the door. The inclusion of these figures was perhaps due to the representation of Slothfulness (when linked with the melancholy temperament) as a lazy couple. In the traditional versions of this vice, they were occasionally linked with a hermit. The horsemen meandering across the bridge may be soldiers – in this place so overspread with demons, perhaps referring to the soldiers with whom Saint Anthony contended in one of his hermitages.

In later paintings such seemingly minor figures would merely act as padding, but this altarpiece is typically medieval in assigning symbolic, more than genre, significance to such figures.

As has been pointed out, however, Bosch took liberties with traditional usages; he attempted to give his own inventions some environment rather than employing them in a typically arbitrary fashion; in many parts of his painting, particularly the fire scenes, he went far beyond medievalism. The subtleties of transition from yellows through the reds to deep browns in this section suggest his technique could already be considered Baroque. One of the loveliest, if grim, passages of the painting is the area between the apse of the church and the fortress wall. It is lit with a sulphurous glow that transforms the trees into negative structures with the spaces between and around the branches becoming palpable. Especially evocative is the ghostly figure rushing away between the trees. This tract forms a liaison between the dark sky and the light one of the two upper quadrants. The modulation from night to day, although handled with skill by the artist, is still arbitrary –thus medieval in feel. Bosch has devoted most of the right upper region to a presentation of the element of air, but he has included within the quadrant an intriguing annex to the fortress. An enclosed bridge extends behind the fortress from the right to form a passageway to a bulbous structure that grows like a great plant from the water. The outer skins of this monstrosity have been removed, suggesting a bulb peeled by giant hands. Its ovoid shape infers the hermetically sealed vessel of “the work”. Since a tower was often used to connote the furnace in which this vessel was heated, it is significant that the tower and “vessel” in the painting have been placed close together, connected even, by the arcaded bridge between them. Set within the “peeled” top of the bulbous building is a curious construction.

The lower part seems to be a high-windowed abode, of a type inhabited in Mediterranean countries. Set on stilts atop this structure is a kettle form with smoking chimney. Since the openings are round and rather small, it may be intended as a birdhouse; a bird does sit on a pole extending from one of these openings and others sit upon its thatched roof. The use of birds here suggests the alchemical language that describes certain stages in the process of fusing mercury and sulphur. The reappearance of the initial black colour of these materials in a later stage of their

fusion was inferred in the cryptic phrase that the young crows were returning to their nest. The white colour was hailed as a stage of completion when the White Stone, capable of transmuting base metals to silver, was found. Since Bosch shows white crows on their nest in this section of the painting, he has apparently blended the two stages in the one portrayal.

The bulbous building has a tent stretched out behind it, supported on one side by a tree that grows out of the wall. Hanging from a branch of this tree is a bellows, a device used in producing the necessary heat in the furnace. Quack alchemists, known as “puffers” or “bellows-blowers”, were often shown under the sign of the bellows. That the painter placed this sign over the enclosure wherein can be seen a potatory abbess and monk may mean that he considered the clergy as equal to quacks. He surely considered drink as evil, because he placed a jug (connotative of the Devil) on a barrel supplying the drinkers. A diver who has hung his clothes on the parapet outside this trysting place now prepares to spring into the water below. This is a strangely normal action in such an abnormal setting; perhaps, it looks back to Anthony’s recollection of childhood pleasures at the instigation of the Devil. A swimmer already in the water is about to be joined by a demon being ousted from the bridge by an irate woman. This demon, along with others that can be seen on the arcaded gallery of the passageway, shatter the momentary illusion of normalcy.

A clock hanging on the wall below the gallery shows the hour to be deep in the night – the hour of the Sabbath – and of necromancy – most appropriate to evil-doing. Another look at the clock reveals it to have fourteen hour symbols, the number of processes required in the operation of the Great Work. The signs vaguely resemble those of the Zodiac, sometimes related to the alchemical processes in the works that describe the number as twelve. These symbols also resemble Hebraic letters used on the magic pentacles of necromancers, as described in the Black Book. Draw-chains fastened to pulleys on the side of the passage wall support a cruelly barbed rod, perhaps an instrument used to fend off invaders who would attempt to scale a fortress wall. The water at this part of the building appears to be a moat, although it is not continuous around the wall. If this is not an allusion to the allegory in which the Great Work was called a fort or citadel surrounded by a moat of water, surely the image on the right wing of the altarpiece is such. In alchemical phraseology the adept could only reach the Philosopher’s Stone by crossing a drawbridge – open just to those of the highest personal qualifications.

After winning his way into the citadel, the adept then had to fight his way past a guardian dragon. In a typical twist, Bosch placed the dragon fight outside the citadel, in the water itself, where it is witnessed by an army of men hanging over the wall –plus a few curious rats and demons that join the fighters in the water. The walls of the stronghold further evoke alchemy since they appear to imitate the major vessels used in the “work”. One of them has a fire (of much importance in alchemy) burning on its summit. Soaring above the scene is a flying fish craft, the conveyance of a man and woman: “the couple”, or sulphur and mercury in fusion. Bosch placed the saint in the

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, left panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (triptych, detail, right panel), 1505-1506. Oil on panel, 131.5 x 119 cm. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

The Last Judgement, c. 1504-1508. Oil on panel, 163 x 128 cm (central panel), 167 x 60 cm (each wing). Die Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna. (pp. 186-187) centre of the middle painting, but he occupies the same approximate position as on the right panel. Hooded, with a tau-marked cloak, he rests upon a hillock, using his cane for support. He reads from the book often included in his iconography. The hermit looks away in sorrow from a disgusting, devilish pastiche. Arranged around a tree are a nude woman peering provocatively at the saint and a conglomeration of demons tempting him with food and drink. A demon displays a fish before him; a witch pours liquid from a jug into the cup of a creature who, like his companion, awaits it with upturned mouth. One of the demons prepares to climb a ladder into the tree; another peers at Saint Anthony from around a root. A raven surveys the crowd from its perch on a branch. The nude woman refers, of course, to one of the first temptations laid on Anthony by the Devil.

Since she stands in water, there is an alchemical reference to mercury, with its liquidity and fusibility, as woman. The saint cannot escape the sight of evil. As he looks away from the first group his eyes turn towards a round table in the forefront of the picture. It is held up by nude men, one of whom lies on his back to support it with his forelimbs. Another bears his part of the table on his shoulder and upper arm. A demon which has the appearance of a bear (used to represent the fixed material, salt, of the alchemical “quest”) holds up the other side. Giant rats peer out from between the men; one of them thrusts a sword through the neck of the reclining man with whom he fights and who futilely waves his sword. These swords are significant of the cutting, penetrating, and wounding implements which were sometimes used to depict fire. There are other, more obvious, evidences of fire (important throughout the painting). The leg of the man who supports the table with his arm has been burned. His other leg is thrust into a jug, making it necessary for him to support himself with a crutch. The feet of the man standing next to him are both burned, as if he has walked through the water of the molten stream nearby. Their burned limbs also suggest that they suffer from “St Anthony’s Fire”. The man with scalded feet blows upon a trumpet which turns back quixotically towards himself. Protruding from its sound hole is a horn that emits noxious fumes for music. A sausage (“unclean” food) is dangling from the horn.

The food in this scene may be an apparition of the rich foods designed to tempt Saint Anthony, but the repast on the table is actually very meagre. A few cruciate flowers lie there, two eggs, and a cup supporting a cloven hoof (of an “unclean” animal). A frog (the Devil incarnate) peers out from under the tablecloth. Bosch’s shocking allusions in this section to the clergy were made either in denunciation of them, or else, in affirmation that the Devil can masquerade in clerical clothing. The painter dressed three of the characters in the lower section of this panel in cowls. The trumpeter is garbed in this fashion as is the headless demonic creature seated to the right of the table. As if to correct this anatomical oversight, the artist set ears to either side of the fellow’s stomach and hair atop it. This gargoyle wears an enveloping hood which reveals a tail protruding from its back. The creature has little concern for the dagger thrust in its stomach-face. A third cowled creature scoots above the saint, confined in a sort-of pushchair, like a child. His infantile stature obviously infers Bosch’s attitude that the clergy indulge in childish pastimes. On the

left wing of the triptych Saint Anthony is depicted in two places. His collapsed figure is supported by his fellow monks as they carry him to a retreat. This allusion is to the saint’s return to the tomb after he had been beaten by the demons and carried to his village for dead. The man with his face turned to the onlooker resembles the known portrait of Bosch, suggesting that the painter might have signed the painting in this fashion.

That the artist placed his portrait on a man who helps the fainting hermit surely means that Bosch affirmed his action. The saint also appears in the air in what is one of the most striking sections of the painting. A scene like this is recounted in the Athanasius story. When Anthony stood up to pray, he felt himself carried aloft in spirit and met in the air loathsome beings that demanded an accounting from his birth. In this passage of the painting, the old man prays as he is ferried on the prone figures of bat-winged, fork-tailed demons that beat him with branch and mallet. Flying towards him is a counterpart to the winged falconer astride the jug-bellied horse of the central section, but the knight here has wings for legs, instead of arms. He cuts an elegant figure, propelling with these “legs” from the back of a bass, as he carries a trout in his arms. A raven hikes a ride by perching on a tendril of the bass’s tail. Another marvellous flying boat approaches from behind the saint, this one supported on the back of a huge bat. Its mast is broken and its red sail droops, but a demon attempts repair by climbing up a rope held taut by a helpful fish. Another demon provides ballast in the back of the boat by adding his weight to the anchor; yet another performs no useful function, save that of making a face at the poor saint from between his legs. Bosch made some of his demons quite intriguing, such as the one standing on his head in a “glider” attached to the bat-monster’s tail. Another most appealing demon is the “jet-propelled” creature that darts away with the scythe.

The latter is the instrument often associated with Saturn. There are some very interesting, but elusive, ancillary characters in this panel, in addition to the ones that are directly involved with Anthony. Under the bridge over which the saint is being drawn, a rapacious looking cleric huddles in conference with a rat and a bat (both “unclean” under Mosaic law, and always prophetic of evil). Many writers have suggested that this reference is to the Church practice of selling indulgences, an offence deplored by would-be reformers. The monk holds an “indulgence”, over which the three confer in a secret place, unseen by the good men above. A crossbill skates up with another indulgence filed on his own bill. This clever creature is well-equipped for the cold which indicates a change of time in this section of the painting. He wears a mantle, long stockings, and a scarf pulled over his head, under an upturned funnel denotative of folly. Alchemical allusion here can be seen in the arrows and the ubiquitous egg out of which a cormorant sprouts.

Standing on top of the egg, is a pelican that throatily swallows a frog. Both birds shown here are of the “unclean” variety. Another fabricated figure crouches in the background. Its face is that of a man and its backside that of a dog. It wears a feathered headdress and plays a bagpipe, symbolic of lust. A sword blade is thrust through its thigh and an arrow through its knees; a hooded falcon sits on its tail. Perhaps this is the captured prey of some hunter as was the creature shot by bow and arrow left of centre

The Last Judgement (exterior), c. 1504-1508. Oil on panel, 163 x 128 cm (central panel), 167 x 60 cm (each wing). Die Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna.

The Seven Deadly Sins in a Peel of Terrestrial Globe. Oil on panel, 86 x 56 cm. Private collection, Geneva. in the middle panel. Just above this specimen of evil is a machine similar to the flying boats. It is propelled by large wheels set in its centre, as well as by grasshopper legs attached on either side behind the wheels.

The machine is formed of three fish, each swallowing one smaller than itself. A tower-like structure on top of the larger fish makes a passenger compartment. A demon coachman drives the contraption towards a group of assorted “clergymen” ascending the path to a hovel. The demon dressed in a chasuble which covers all save his spoonbill walks beside a mantled stag (a food permitted to Israelites – also an oft-used symbol of sexuality). They are led by a man in mitred headdress; this figure could have been inspired by the Pope card of the tarot. Since he holds a crozier with a crescent (Bosch often used the crescent to signify an infidel) and ball atop it, and since his mitre is inscribed with a circle of Hebraic symbols in its centre, the reference more likely refers to the Jews. The mitre was worn by the high priest of Jewish antiquity and was adopted into Christianity. Assuredly, Bosch meant to consign this man to “hell”, having placed a roaring fire in the top of his headdress. The “priest” leads the others to a hut, curiously anthropomorphised, whose beams and ridgepole form the limbs of a man on all fours. The doorway is the opening between his legs; they seemingly suggested plants to Bosch, because he affixed rootlets to the legs. He hung a sign on one of these, as over an inn door. From the rooms annexed to one side of the immobile man a woman peers out of a window by which are to be seen a jug and a long pole (signs of the Devil – the pole was used to prod sinners into the waters of hell). This hut is undoubtedly conceived as the anchorage of Anthony; because one of Bosch’s earlier interpretations of the Anthony theme included a house that grew around the head of a woman.

The artist’s reason for fastening the house to the man in this painting is not clear. The position in which he kneels suggests a crouched animal, as if to imply man’s bestial nature. Perhaps the reference is to the constant fight which Anthony waged against his own bodily requirements – considered of animal necessity – and therefore shameful. This man has an arrow projecting from his head, as if he has been shot like an animal.

The entrapped man looks aghast towards a burning ship sinking through the ice, which already holds other ruined vessels immobilised. The whole vista is one of waste and stagnation, of a neglected place quite different from the carefully husbanded coastal hinterlands of the painter’s native Holland. Signs of death abound, for execution wheels are everywhere, a man hangs suspended by one foot from a tree (the tarot figure?), and there is a morbid putty colour to the sea and land, alike. Could this be the Promised Land in a terrible reference to the Jews – that their “promised land” is ironically a place of evil and death? Is it, instead, a general reference to the fate of mankind – as promised in the awful words, “The wages of sin is death”? (Romans 6:23). Man is, in the end, a victim of his own evil. He is enslaved by his own animal nature, impaled with his own instruments of torture, bound to watch the same fate applied to all his fellow sinners – who grovel to false gods and will not look up to see the truth.