The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch

The outside of the triptych.

The central table is 220x195cm and both side tables 220x97cm

Hello and welcome here :)

Today I have the absolute pleasure of bringing to you a little bit of an analysis of one of the most fascinating paintings (to me). The Garden of Earthly Delights...sigh... just by the name you know it is going to be good! Gotta love it.
I stumbled upon this piece in ♥♥History of Art♥♥ class (History of Art&Literature best subjects evaaar) and although I had liked the majority of things so far (sorry Romanic paintings aren't mah thing, you know...), this clicked within me like none other. It has so many details and it is so imaginative. It surprised me a lot because I've always had these kind of little world imagining things in my head and this was like the closest thing because of the style of tiny nonsense things. I just find it very compelling.

This is a very long post, we are going to go through historical and cultural context of the piece and many other things such as the analysis of the structure and the materials it is done with etc.

Hope you can appreciate and enjoy it.

Let's get started.


***I've listened to whole hours of music while writing all of this but right now I'm listening to this***

The Garden of Earthly Delights is one of the summit works of Gothic painting and flemish style masterpiece and the most enigmatic of Hieronymus Aeken, as known as "the Bosch" (1450-1516). Its amazing scenes, creatures that defy all logic and the strange symbolism used turn this painting and its author into one of the most studied ones in recent times.

Here's the great painting, zoom in for the details

History of the picture

It was made for Henry II of Nassau. The first owners of the work were the members of the house of Nassau. The first Bosch's biographer, Antonio de Beatis (a man travelling in the entourage of the Cardinal of Aragon, in 1517) got to see it in their palace in Brussels. His description leaves no doubt: "Then there are some tables with various extravagancies, in which he imitated seas, skies and fields, woods and many other things, some that leave a seashell, others defecate cranes, men and women, black and white in different acts and ways, birds, animals of all classes and performed with great naturalism, things so nice and fantastic that in no way could be described to those who do not have seen it".

The painting was inherited by William of Orange, leader of the Dutch revolt against the Habsburg crown. Later it was seized by the Duke of Alba, and was included in his inventory, which for that reason was written the 20 January 1568. The Duke left the paintings to Mr. Fernando, his natural son and Father prior of the Order of San Juan.

Later Philip II acquired it in the auction of the assets of Mr. Fernando and sent it to the Monastery  of the Escorial the 8th of July of 1593. It was placed in the king's bedroom, where it remained until his death. At the start the painting was called "A painting on the variety of the world". Later on,  "The painting of the strawberries". In 1912, cataloging the works of the Prado Museum, it was known as "The triptych of carnal pleasures". From there on it takes its current name "The Garden of Delights" and "The Garden of Earthly Delights".

1. Chronological, historical and cultural context

Chronology 1510-1515 

Historical Background

We are in the Middle Ages (from the late XII century to the XV century): there are major social and economical changes. A more optimistic view of the world was being implemented, and Gothic was the artistic manifestation of this new mentality typical of urban culture.

        -Economy: improvements in agricultural production: the development of trade and crafts (guilds).

     
       -Society: demographic growth. Renaissance of the cities. Continuation of estate society;     emergence of the bourgeoisie. The nobility is urban and courtesan.

         -Politics: strengthening of the power of the kings. Allied with the church (bishops) and the bourgeoisie.

       -Religion and Culture: emergence of the mendicant orders (new mentality). God is more humanized, which loves, forgives and promises salvation to men. Assessment of the world of the senses (Aristotle).  Role of Universities. Scientific and technical development. 

The revitalization of the cities and the bourgeoisie brings the construction of great cathedrals to accommodate the growing number of believers and become the new symbol of economic might of the new cities. The higher and greater was the cathedral, the largest and richest were the city burghers who financed it and therefore attracted more traders. The cathedrals were symbols of the importance of the city. They also built civilian buildings: palaces, town halls, markets...

Early fifteenth century: the stage of maximum splendor of the Spanish Monarchy, with the conquest and exploitation of American gold and silver. Great ideological rigidity based on the defense of the Christian religion and the confrontation with Protestants. Importance of the Inquisition (repression). 

Since 1477 Flanders passed, by inheritance, in the hands of the Habsburg dynasty, to finally end up, with Carlos I, joining the Spanish Empire. 

The development and growth of the cities was linked to the production of woolen fabrics: Bruges became the main commercial centre of Occidental Europe. This bourgeois society values ​​what is practical even in religion (the divine spirit can be found in each one of the little things). We are, therefore, in a realist period.

Cultural context

The foundation of universities, independent or controlled by ecclesiastical bodies, led to the final separation of the culture respecting the monastic scriptoria. Thus, the cities were great cultural centers. As a symbol of this new situation of prosperity and strength, they began to build great cathedrals. 

New religious orders such as the Franciscans and Dominicans, known as mendicant orders, developed their activities in cities devoted to helping the poor through almsgiving, and also facilitated the change of mentality. They advocate a return to evangelical poverty and become leaders of the new intellectuals of the Middle Ages. In front of the resignation of the world of contemplative Orders appears a new humanism in the predications of St. Francis of Assis. 

The fourteenth century is the era of the great expansion of mendicant Orders: they spread throughout Europe and suggest a vision of religion that moves on from the severity of the Romanic period.

But these economical and social changes bring a new mentality, secularization of culture, which would affect all strata of feudal society and will be reflected in art. But religion is still very important in life in the Gothic. 

New patrons appeared: many works, especially in sculpture and painting, were commissioned by the bourgeoisie and the unions, royalty or nobility who joined the church.

In most cases artists remain anonymous and continued to be considered skilled craftsmen. They remain enrolled in the guilds, controlled and helped, many of them did not even sign their works, just the most prominent painters do so.

The work of Bosch is a reflection of the rapid changes of the XV and XVI centuries: he lives the changes of two periods, the end of the medieval world and the beginning of the Renaissance period, a time of social and economic changes. The crisis of values, heresy, plagues and wars in northern Europe are also new circumstances that may also help to explain the work of this painter. The insecurity of the new times may also eventually lead to religious fanaticism (processions of penitents), to the hardness of the religion fights of the XV century, and to social and bloody repressions.

2. Style

It belongs to Flemish painting (Early Netherlandish). The technique used was oil, this allows to paint very intensely colorful tones as well as transparent glazes to soften the tone of the table.

With the spatial conception of the scenes, he intuitively gets an illusionist landscape in which the figures are inserted. The detail is painstaking extraordinary and there's a variety of subjects: religious and bourgeois.

He has the will to represent things as the human eye sees them, with great detail: hence the importance portrait acquires, as well as the other various details involved in pictorial composition, that's how this favors, paradoxically, the symbolism of the elements represented.

About the figure of Jerome van Aken figure "The Bosch" (1453-1516) is little what we know with certainty. Born into a family of artisan painters, he developed his entire artistic life in the small town of Hertogen Bosch (Duke's Bosch), in Holland. He probably learned his job in his father's or one of his uncles workshop. 

At the beginning of the sixteenth century he already was an artist established in the Netherlands, commissioned by high public figures, and even his fame extended outside of the country. His economic relieved situation granted him a certain freedom to express his ideas in painting more personally than most painters of the time. His religious, alchemical, heretics, humanists relations etc. have been investigated in order to relate them to his work, full of enigmatic symbolism that goes beyond any artistic movement.

Bosch's lives the change between two eras, its roots are in the medieval tradition but are already announced in the Renaissance humanism. Bosch is the result of the work of apocalyptic visions that during the Middle Ages, the church had to scattered. It was a time when religious crises created doubts and anxieties, heresies infiltrated all levels of society and the church itself was questioned. In rural areas, where Bosch lived, this phenomenon of religious instability was lived most intensely. No wonder, then, that in such a fragile religious area the Lutheran theses prevailed, trying to bring order to a Church more concerned about worldly affairs than spiritual matters.

Through his paintings, removed from the traditions dominant in Flemish painting and imbued with boundless fantasy and popular experience, the Bosch makes a critique of the institutions and customs of his environment, in line with other spiritual movements of the time (Erasmus of Rotterdam...).

His remarkable works include, in addition to The Garden of Earthly Delights, the Hay Wagon, The Seven Deadly Sins, The Extraction of the Stone of Madness and The Temptations of St. Anthony.

While we can relate his painting to the Flemish school, he really is a world of his own, as it is absolutely personal. The detail, the way he treats the coloring and the creation of spaces and volumes are typical of the Flemish school. But the themes and how he deals with the symbolism distances him from other painters. His originality comes from his strange allegoric compositions with monsters and fantastic figures, with an unusual iconography and satirical details. But also for his sense of the shapes: small figures with great detail and remarkable dynamism. He paints alla prima, with a few tweaks.

Transcendence of the work

Bosch had a great dissemination as many prints were made and they cast their visions across the Western world. Suffice to say, however, that he did not have many followers, although the old painters such as Brueghel for example, maintain aesthetics and irony that are close to him. The great thoroughness in the elaboration and the execution with great detail of what he represented, together with the enormous symbolism, deemed the Bosch to be the direct forerunner of the surrealism of the twentieth century, and that this movement was inspired by him: Dalí, for example, recreated  one of his works in the Temptations of St. Anthony, or the tree man inspires the biomorphic face of The Great Masturbator. 

Hieronymus Bosch is one of the most enigmatic artists but still has many admirers today: although the meaning of many of his works is unclear.

3. Formal characteristics; composition; techniques; support.

The work is a triptych (three tables) made with oil paint.

Formal elements: The work presents an apparent importance of color, but what predominates is the  drawing, meticulous and precise. Outside, representing the creation of the world, is made in grisaille (composition painted with a range of grays, black and white) in muted tones of gray and green, which contrast with the explosion of color when we open the table or triptych. 

Here, there are also different color ranges used to represent the various environments and the themes: Paradise is predominantly green, blue and yellow (cool colors that convey an air of purity and renewal); in the Garden still predominates green, but it is more yellowish, it includes figures which stand out for the clarity and the light emitting that their white, bare bodies emit, and finally, in Hell we find red, brown and black (warm colors and symbol of evil). 

So in the table, the light contrasts with the darkness, symbol of sin (the red tone of Hell reminds us of fire). 

Thanks to the postures and the variety of the represented groups we can say that it is full of dynamism.

The landscape is not credible but it is created in kind of a real enough way so we can imagine, it's the abolition of space somewhere where time has ceased to exist.

It has no interest for perspective but acquires visual profundity by varying the sizes of what is represented. The figures are so small, well outlined and very thorough but rather flat; which allows the artist to represent a lot of gestures and scenes with a clean exhibition, although they have some stereotyped character. 

Compositional Specifications

Closed (doesn't "interact" with the outside) and symmetric (the weight of the sides is equal).

Organized around specific groups; to join the three tables of the triptych, he makes a horizontal division of the landscape into three spaces and takes also the areas of the ponds to maintain a certain coherence between the three spaces. The Paradise and Earth are united with the same clarity and the same horizon, repeating in them the circular structure and the lagoons. However, Hell is different , nocturnal and hopeless. Lines are vertical, horizontal and diagonal, creating a dynamic and chaotic read at first glance. In the central panel there are the concentric circles, in Hell we find triangular structures, more dynamic, all while in Paradise there's more verticality.
The line of the horizon is high to to achieve the vision of all the layouts that, despite their independence, melt with one another.

Technical specifications and Support

This is an oil painting on wood. The support timber must be covered with a layer of plaster. Later it is scraped and they add four or five layers of glue, to reduce the porosity of the wood, plus a primer of drying colors. Then they apply with a brush pigments dissolved in many drying oils, such as flaxseed, that work as a binder. It dries up slowly so it allows adjustments and glazes.

4. Themes represented. Literary model. Meaning and function

Topic

It is an allegory of the pleasures of life, which are considered ephemeral and the terrible consequences that result. The triptych develops the story of the world and the progression of sin: it begins in the outer tables with the Creation of the world and continues in the interior with the origin of sin in Paradise (creation of Eve) on the left, on the center there's a world dominated earthly pleasures, and it ends with the torments of Hell at the right. The creation of women seems to be the trigger of the scene, dedicated to the sin of Lust and its punishment. 

Source of the topic

The iconographic program of the Garden of Delights,  is inspired, very openly, in the Old Testament, especially in the book of Genesis. It is enriched with a medieval symbology and iconography: Dutch manuscripts, engravings, legends, etc. but also by the overflowing imagination of the painter. 

Iconography

The Garden of Delights, today, still is an iconographic hieroglyphic difficult to interpret. Overall it is a very personal representation of the world through a triple sequence: Creation,  Paradise, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and Hell. The great proliferation of symbols it contains, however, does raise serious doubts about the intentions of the author when he conceived the work. 

In its exterior when it is closed, the triptych shows the third day of the creation of the world narrated in Genesis, represented by a crystal sphere with the earth inside: the Bosch follows the conventions of his time and represents the earth flat. 

Once opened, we find an exceptional triptych, full of images of a an overflowing fantasy. 

Left panel: The Garden of Eden

The table of Paradise represents the creation of Eve from Adam by God, the landscape is idyllic, full of rocks, exotic plants and real and fantastic animals. In the center there is a pond with the fountain of life. 

Although the tree of forbidden fruit with the snake already exists, Adam and Eve are still free of sin. It is the origin of the sin of lust which develops in the central table. The Bosch reproduces the medieval mentality that blames Eve as the beginning of the evils of humanity. 

He presents a figure of a very young God, very frequent convention in XV century Dutch literature. As usual in the Bosch, Paradise does not exist without a foreshadowing of the devil, which appears as a moat dark pit on the foreground, from which a variety of creatures come out. 

Central panel: The Garden of Delights 

It is a continuation of the previous painting through the pound with five fountains, which represent the five planets known to man back then.

In the central zone humanity rides animals which represent their vices, surrounding a small lake that dramatizes the bath of Venus, represented by women of all races. The rest is made up of many animals, some real and some fantastic and a big number of other men and women with lewd poses, surrounded by strange objects, spheres that seem matrices, tropical birds, fish, impossible plants, exotic fruits, symbolizing lust. The group expresses a libertine life, in which people have abandoned themselves to the production of pleasure and the temptations of the "flesh".

In the Middle Ages it was popular to believe that lust was the origin of all sins and that the rest  appeared after. It was also believed that the source of this temptation and sin was the woman. 

Although at first impression disorder seems to reign, the scene is sorted into three levels:

- The top, with details that are hardly perceived by both its small size and its rarity, (winged humans, gryphons...). It appears dominated by fantastic buildings, among which the Fountain of the Four Rivers in the Earthly Paradise, false source of Paradise, unstable, stands out, threatening to ruin with its walls. 

- In the center of the composition, the big cavalcade of desire, turning around in a circle around a pond where groups of women bathe.

- in the lower level, sexuality manifests itself in a thousand ways, both in the actions of the mass of men and women, all of them of unequivocal erotic sign, as in the sexual connotations of plants, fruits and animals. In the angles appear two peculiar attention focus. On the left, a group that points the table on the left (Paradise) to Eve, stressing the role played into temptation. On the right, the Cave, there are Adam and Eve, where they see what is happening in the world because of their cause, and Adam, with his finger accuses Eve.

The Garden of Earthly Delights is a garden of the false misleading earthly pleasures, a consequence of the original sin. Every detail of this "world upside down" warns us: it is the paradisiacal dream i, it is the kingdom of what is temporary. On the table of the right the time of penance and punishment for sinners for their sins has arrived (lust, greed, pride, love games, music sensuality, customs of the clergy...).

Right panel: Hell 

The last part end of the triptych represents Hell. It is the scene that represents the results of a life of immorality and sin, where artist describes different punishments for different sins. The same characters from the central table purged their sins in Hell. Beauty, pleasure and lust are fleeting, temporary and false. "The pleasures of the false earthly paradise lead to eternal damnation". It is the eternal damnation of the whole of humanity. This closes the cycle, and society is punished for being seduced by the pleasures that were offered in the Garden the Earthly Delights. 

The landscape has changed significantly and is now fearsome, dominated by black and red fire; everything indicates destruction and punishment under a dark and eerie night. On the top there is  a city on fire represented, the water of the ponds now is dark and rotten, and around them there are whitish remnants of skeletons. In the center there is the tree-man. His body is a hollow egg, his legs are two tree trunks submerged in boats, his head is made of a great disc and a bagpipe, while his face turned towards us, stares at us with melancholic look. The painting is completed with a collection of grotesque creatures and scenes of cruel torture addressed to cause the suffering of sinners; including a killing machine that consist of two ears supporting a razor blade. 

Meaning: iconology 

The triptych shows in an allegorical manner that the pleasures of life are ephemeral and that the consequences of letting them take over are suffering, disgrace and the impossibility of being happy.

It presents a closed and coherent thematic cycle: what started badly with original sin becomes a world based on material pleasures and in the end there can be only be the suffering of the eternal punishment.

It is a painting of enormous symbolic complexity: 

- fruit and animals, symbols of sexual pleasures and its expiry.

- apples represent women's breasts and fish relate to the phallic organ.

- inversion symbols: animals are bigger than people, animals hunters of men...

- symbols of evil: owl and snake.

- alchemical symbols

The orthodox interpretation that historians have made of the The Garden of Earthly Delights would be a warning against earthly pleasures and temptations, exemplified in the figure of Eve and its fatal consequences that can carry, exemplified in the punishments of hell. According to this interpretation, the picture was intent at moralizing which would have been understandable to the people of the age; thus the picture can be understood as a warning against the pleasure of "flesh" from the author, origin of terrible punishment and even the destruction of the world, as the burning towns surrounded by fire in the right distance seem to imply. So you can say that this painting is a work in the same apocalyptic line of many medieval works that can be seen in doorways and other altarpieces. 

This painting is certainly difficult to understand, as one has to have a certain knowledge of the Old Testament in order to relate the iconography with the historical context and mindset that surrounded the man who lived between two centuries, two eras and two different artistic movements, and that knew to equilibrate them so well in this triptych that at first seem religious but then becomes secular. 

Function

The work can be considered a sermon, a moralizing allegory through which the artist tries to remember how earthly pleasures are ephemeral and just how terrible is the condemnation derived. 

The function of the triptych is, therefore, religious and moralistic in nature: so heartbreakingly but also pessimistically shows his society that salvation should be achieved at the expense of great hardship and privation, otherwise what awaits us, the most mortals, is suffering in hell. 

It is, in short, a harsh criticism of the animality of man, subject to the temptations of the flesh and pleasure. Sin is the junction between the three tables: in Paradise, the snake and Eve; in the World, the deception of the senses, and in Hell, the punishment.

Bosch wants to show us a false Paradise, and how its beauty expires and leads, especially men (theoretically, women were there already) to ruin, and the condemnation of hell, a very common subject in medieval literature. 

I personally love this scene

I find everything about this painting so interesting, I can spend hours staring at it it is just so great. It would be wonderful to be able to see it in person one day!

That's it! After several days of typing I've said what I wanted to say about this magnificent piece.

So, how do you see this?

Hope at least you see this with new eyes.

If you wish to dig in further I leave a few short videos about the painting that show details in more detail!

Catalan video about the painting

This zooms in into the detail but it is a little bit longer

This one is awesome but should not be watched after 12am :P

See you,

B.

Silly doodle from 5 years ago or so (thought that here wouldn't be as off key heh)

Tales of the world (II)

Today I'm coming to you about another story about the stars! (ehehehe), this one is an Australian one.

The seven sisters

Once upon a time there were seven very pretty hunter sisters. They were called Meamei and they all had long black hair and bright bodies due to the icicles they had on their skin. They were like a gulp of icy water in the hot country they lived.

They never joined any other groups while hunting: in spite of this, there was a family of brothers called Berai-Berai, who admired the beauty of the sisters and wanted to marry them. The Berai-Berai were honey hunter experts and they would often leave sweet beehives outside the Meamei's campsite.

The lovely girls would eat, giggling, but didn't even want to hear about their admirers when they talked about marriage.

Nevertheless, they had an even more dangerous wooer. Wurrunnah, the Scorching Ancestor, who set up a trap and captured them. But even for him, the seven strong hunters were too difficult to control, so he took five and deposited them on the sky. He kept two, and he tried to melt their icicles, but the only thing he accomplished was to put out their own fire.

After fighting with all their might, the two sisters escaped the claws of Murrunnah and reunited with the others on the sky. But if you look at the Pleiades, which is in what the Meamei turned, you'll see that there are two of them who don't shine as bright as the others do. They are the two sisters whose light was attenuated by Wurrunah's embrace.

The Berai-Berai were bereaved at the loss of the precious Meamei and didn't even want to consider the possibility of marrying any other girls. They didn't want to eat, and little by little they would languish while contemplating the seven stars. After their death, the spirits took pity on them and now you can also see the boys up in the sky. On the north they are known as the belt and the sword of Orion, but the Australian aboriginals call them Berai-Berai.

The Berai-Berai still go hunt honey among the stars and the Meamei sing nocturnal songs for them from their campsite. When it is cold, some break little pieces of ice from their bodies and throw them at the Earth. When the aboriginals see the frost in the morning they know that the Meamei haven't forgotten about them. And when there's thunder, they say that the Meamei jump in the water, while they play betting who makes the most noise when falling. Then they know that the rain is coming.

The end.

Behind the story

Image credit: Marco Lorenzi

Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the Pleiades are one of the clusters that make up the constellation Taurus and can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades is one of the brightest and closest open clusters. The Pleiades contains over 3000 stars, is about 400 light years away, and only 13 light years across. Quite evident in the above photograph are the blue reflection nebulae that surround the brighter cluster stars. Low mass, faint, brown dwarfs have also been found in the Pleiades.

The Pleiades are a prominent sight in winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and have been known since antiquity to cultures all around the world, including the Celts, Māori, Aboriginal Australians, the Persians, the Arabs (known as Thurayya), the Chinese, the Japanese, the Maya, the Aztec, the Sioux and Cherokee. 

This celestial entity has several meanings in different cultures and traditions. There are so many points of view! Which come to show how different we all are. Here are some:

• In Hinduism, the Pleiades are known as Krittika and are associated with the war-god Kartikeya (also known as Murugan or Skanda), who derives his name from them. The god is raised by the six Krittika sisters, also known as the Matrikas.

Lost Pleiad (1884) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

• In Greek mythology, The Pleiades, companions of Artemis (sister of Apollo, goddess of hunting, always accompanied with a deer, a bow and some arrows), were the seven daughters of the titan Atlas  (the primordial Titan who held up the sky. He is also the titan of astronomy and navigation) and the sea-nymph Pleione. The Pleiades were nymphs in the train of Artemis, and together with the seven Hyades were called the Atlantides, Dodonides, or Nysiades, nursemaids and teachers to the infant Bacchus (the god of theatre, wine and ritual madness). 

Their story goes as this:After Atlas was forced to carry the heavens on his shoulders,Orionbegan to pursue all of the Pleiades, and Zeus transformed them first into doves, and then into stars to comfort their father. The constellation of Orion is said to still pursue them across the night sky.

• In Japan, the Pleiades are known as 昴 Subaru which means "coming together" or cluster in Japanese, and have given their name to the car manufacturer whose logo incorporates six stars to represent the five companies that merged into one.

This is the logo

• A Cheyenne myth "The Girl Who Married a Dog", states that the group of seven stars known as the Pleiades originated from seven puppies which a Cheyenne chief's daughter gave birth to after mysteriously being visited by a dog in human form to whom she vowed "Wherever you go, I go".

• A Cherokee myth indicates that seven boys who would not do their ceremonial chores and wanted only to play, ran around and around the ceremonial ball court in a circle, and rose up into the sky. Only six of the boys made it to the sky; the seventh was caught by his mother and fell to the ground with such force that he sank into the ground. A pine tree grew over his resting place.

• In Thailand the Pleiades are known as Dao Luk Kai or the "Chick Stars", from a Thai folk tale. The story tells that a poor elderly couple who lived in a forest had raised a family of chickens: a mother hen and her six (or alternately seven) chicks. One day a monk arrived at the couple's home during his Dhutanga journey. Worried that they had no suitable food to offer him, the elderly couple contemplated cooking the mother hen. The hen overheard the conversation, and rushed back to the coop to say farewell to her children. She told them to take care of themselves, and that her death would repay the kindness of the elderly couple, who had taken care of all of them for so long. As the mother hen's feathers were being burned over a fire, the chicks threw themselves into fire in order to die along with their mother. The deity, impressed by and in remembrance of their love, immortalized the seven chickens as the stars of the Pleiades. In tellings of the story in which there were only six chicks, the mother is included, but often includes only the seven chicks.

• Surprisingly, on a similar note, to the Vikings (Norse mythology), the Pleiades were Freyja's (a goddess) hens, and their name in many old European languages compares them to a hen with chicks.

Curiosity! A bronze disk, 1600 BC, from Nebra, Germany, is one of the oldest known representations of the cosmos. The Pleiades are top right!

The name

The name of the Pleiades comes from Ancient Greek. It probably derives from plein ('to sail') because of the cluster's importance in delimiting the sailing season in the Mediterranean Sea. However, the name was later mythologised as the name of seven divine sisters, whose name was imagined to derive from that of their mother Pleione, effectively meaning 'daughters of Pleione'. However, in reality the name of the star-cluster almost certainly came first, and Pleione was invented to explain it.

The Pleiades (1885) by the Symbolist painter Elihu Vedder

A map of the Pleiades

It's curious how everyone interprets things their own different or similar way, right? We all see things differently and that's so enriching as long as we don't put others down just for having other ideas, it's awesome.

That's it for today, not sure what else to say!

See you,

B.

For more stories about the Pleiades go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades_in_folklore_and_literature#Norse_mythology

Garcilaso, revisited

and fickle time will alter everything,

if only to be constant in its habit.

— Garcilaso de la Vega, excerpt from “Sonnet XXIII,”

More or less, with this tiny "painting" I tried to represent what I imagine while reading the last poem of this post

***Listening to Una Mattina by Ludovico Einaudi***

Yo,

I think Renaissance men were really cool. These days we tend to focus on one specific thing and specialize in it. To me, personally, this can be a problem: I am an indecisive person and I like to try everything. I find it very hard to choose one or two things to devote yourself for the rest of your life. Today I'm into letters (and thankfully I consider history and art history to be close to that), but I've always also been curious about biology and the situation on the outer space, it's hard to consider it plenty of it with just reading about it. I'd like to try to investigate those things too, why must I choose something without trying it all?

That's why Renaissance men are awesome. They didn't just conform with one specialty, they were good at many, different, things.

If there's some aspect I have to highlight from my country, that is literature, especially poems, especially old. They are so different and describe such different things that I can't help it but feel compelled by the unknown.

Warning! If you're not too fond of literature or history, which means, a lot of text, refrain from this. We'll be going through history, an artistic movement, and... poems! <3.

Maybe you're not familiar with Spanish literature, then this is going to be new to you!, and if you are already familiar with it but didn't particularly enjoy it or understand it, I try to break it down in a simple way here to deliver it more easily.

My favourite periods of Spanish literature have to be Renaissance and Romanticism. Old times that evoke ideals as well as beauty and things I've never seen or could imagine if it weren't for history sound fantastic. And I love fantasy. I like other periods too, but it's not the period so much but a particular poet, like Federico García Lorca or Juan Ramón Jiménez.

1. Presentation 

Let's travel back to the time when men used to ride horses to battle and made loyalty oaths to their lords. When men used to kill each other for a bit of land (huh wait, are you sure we're going back??) and social classes were everything. To the time when maps were expanded based on recent expeditions or hypothesis, portraits were painted and women were burnt alive for witchcraft.

The Golden Age (XVI and XVII centuries) was the period of biggest splendor of the Spanish Empire, under the dinasty of the Austriacs. It comprises the realm of Carlos I, Felipe II, Felipe III, Felipe IV and Charles II (a king famous for his fragility). With Carlos I Spain was a superpower, but still does not beat France nor England when it comes to the sea.

Around this time Columbus is meant to "discover" America (1492), the Canary Islands are conquered (1493) and William Shakespeare lived. 

In this context we find Garcilaso, who is a knight of the Order of Santiago (like Manrique and Quevedo), friend of Carlos I, and also a man of many arts.

2. Introduction to the period: the sixteenth century 

The sixteenth century is the maximum splendor of the Spanish Empire, world power of the time, which owns all of Europe except France and England, in addition to the American colonies, newly discovered. The Spanish Renaissance went through two stages:

• Pre-renaissance (XV century): trends and humanistic knowledge of Greco-Roman antiquity are developed but not a total restoration occurs. 

• Full Renaissance: with two very distinct periods: the early Renaissance corresponds to the reign of Carlos I, 1517-1555. It is characterized by the influence of Greek and Latin and Italian literature and has a pagan character. The political successes and the new approach of life cause more optimism in all art forms. The main theme is love and mythology (YAY!). In this stage of military wars belongs Garcilaso de la Vega. The Second Renaissance, corresponds to the reign of Felipe II, 1555-1598. When, as a reaction against the Protestant Reformation in Spain, he reacts defending Catholic orthodoxy in the arts and letters; a movement called Counter-Reformation that makes ascetic, religious and mystical themes become the trend, so, religion replaces the courtier as human ideal. At this stage of cultural war belong Fray Luis de León and San Juan de a Cruz. 

 3. Introduction to current: The Renaissance (XVI-XVII) 

Ideologically opposed to medieval theocentrism, Renaissance bets for an anthropocentric worldview and culture. The philosophy of humanism, places man at the center of intellectual reflection and artistic expression and, without losing sight of his destination to Heaven, encourages him to enjoy earthly pleasures offered by the Creation, as if being a divine work, life becomes a time to enjoy the beauty in all its forms. The artist is devoted to life and seeks fame and recognition through his art. Humanism also promotes the study of Greek and Latin classical languages, making the work of the great philosophers and writers of antiquity as well as its vision of the world well-known. The Renaissance originated in Italy in the fourteenth century, and spread to Europe through works of Francesco Petrarca, which will influence the work of Garcilaso de la Vega. So in short, artistically speaking, it was the time of the Dolce Stil Novo in Spain (in Italy it took off two centuries before).

4. The lyric of the Renaissance 

Medieval eight-syllable and alexandrine verses are replaced by the combined hendecasyllable with heptasyllable. The rhyme keeps always its consonance, resulting sonnets, lyres, octaves, stanzas, silvas and triplets chains. Thematically, the early Renaissance bears more of a profane character. It revolves around a new conception of love taken from Petrarca and his style creation, Dolce Stil Novo. Petrarca, on his behalf, takes the ideas Plato explains in his dialogue The Banquet. For Plato, love is a desire for beauty. The man begins to desire for it in beautiful bodies, but then discovers inner or spiritual beauty, that leads to a desire for Absolute Beauty and ultimately to God, the author of that beauty. Renaissance poets devote their platonic love to a lady who stands out for her intellectual and spiritual qualities, the donna angelicata (Petrarchism), who the poet does not possess physically. The suffering that this causes spiritualizes and ennobles the man and takes him closer to God. The theme of platonic love, in the Renaissance, appears linked to mythology, extracted from the Metamorphosis of Latin poet Ovidius (great book by the way). 

Another important issue is beauty, manifested in nature. Feminine beauty is described with the descriptio puellae: a woman with long blond hair and blue eyes, white skin and neck and hands stylized and elegant. The beauty of the landscape, locus amoenus, is also described following the model of the Latin poets Virgil and Horace: a place that offers eternal beauty for the five senses, in eternal spring. To highlight the beauty, Renaissance descriptions are always idealized. The enjoyment of beauty, life and love is expressed on the issues of Carpe Diem and Collige Virgo Rosas (maiden grab roses of love). The Renaissance style is characterized by its harmony, natural simplicity and beauty. 

“As the nightingale with a mournful song

complains, hidden among the leaves, lamenting

the merciless farmer, who with heartless stealth

robbed the nest of all her tender fledglings

while she was absent from the well-loved branch,

and the pain of the nightingale 

fills her throat, turns to melody

utterly altered and changed,

and the night remains silent and does not restrain

her devoted lamentations and complaints,

and brings heaven and the stars

to bear witness to her terrible grief:

in this same manner I now give free reign

to my sorrow, and I lament in vain

the harsh ire, the pitiless wrath of Death,

who thrust a cruel hand deep into my heart

where she did find and steal my dearest love,

for there love had her nest and her abode.

O Death so full of fury!”

—  from “Eclogue I” by Garcilaso de la Vega, trans. from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. The Golden Age: Poems of the Spanish Renaissance (W.W. Norton & Co, 2006)

Found a picture where he doesn't look like an alien!

5. Life and work of Garcilaso de la Vega 

Garcilaso de la Vega lived between 1501 and 1536. Early fatherless, he grew up in court with the KIng Carlos I, in Toledo, which made him the perfect Renaissance courtier: skilled in battle and letters, cult and an artist. In 1525 he married Elena Zuñiga, with which he acquired social position and had children. After marriage he met a maiden from lady Isabel of Portugal entourage, future wife of Carlos I. This lady was Isabel Freyre, who would leave her stamp on eclogues and other compositions as his absolute muse. He travelled to Naples with the emperor and came into contact with Italian Renaissance lyric. Following Petrarca in his Canzionere, who had dedicated his poems to his donna angelicata, Laura, Garcilaso writes for Isabel Freyre, who married another man and died giving birth. 

Garcilaso was exiled by the king on a Danube island because he attended a prohibited wedding. After being pardoned, he died in combat raiding a fortress in Provence, Nice. As a punishment, the king ordered to kill all its inhabitants (you don't realize what you had until you lose it then you get pissed, huh?). Garcilaso alternated his warrior duties with his literary activity (the war, and letters, something typical of the Renaissance period). 

In 1526, visiting Barcelona, ​​he holds a conversation with the poet Juan Boscán who convinces him to write poetry, but the Italian way. From the formal point of view, the most characteristic of this poetry was the use of hendecasyllable (11 syllables), and the use of some verses, like the sonnet, the triplets and the silva. The most characteristic theme of this Italianate poetry is love. This arises from the contemplation of feminine beauty, a reflection of the spiritual beauty of the lady that impresses the soul of the beholder. It also treats mythological and nature themes. 

We can observe three stages in the work of Garcilaso: 

• First stage: Castilian tradition compositions are characterized by the use of octosyllable and its conceptual and abstract language, allegories in which love is associated with war or hunting, The "love" feeling is connected with the troubadour lyric: the lover is the servant of a woman with the characteristics of a feudal lord. What is new is that the lady has become a cruel lady, who despises her lover mercilessly, so he becomes a martyr lover, who ends up committing  suicide (I remember that the first time I heard this 4 years ago I found it amusing, sorry). 

• Second stage (transition): Garcilaso, after the conversation with Boscán and Navagiero, decided to adopt the new Italian metric which includes the excellence of the "Dolce Stil Novo": the sonnet (Curiosity! The Marqués de Santillana attempts to adapt the sonnet to Castilian in the fifteenth century but who achieved it was Garcilaso de la Vega in the sixteenth century, giving it the shape that is still cultivated in our days). The content, however, is still linked to the poetry inspired from Chansonniers.

• Third stage: during his stay in Naples, Garcilaso deepens his knowledge of the authors of the " Dolce Stil Novo ", Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, and incorporates into his poetry the themes of platonic love, seen as a way of purification through worship of the donna angelicata; mythology, which focuses on those myths related to love and suffering, and nature, inspired by the Greek and Latin bucolic poets such as Horatius, Virgilius and Teocritus (Curiosity! bucholism has to do with pastoral themes in a more or less idealized landscape and has its origin in Teocritus of Siracusa). The Italianate poetic production of Garcilaso is brief: 3 eclogues, 5 songs, two elegies, 1 epistle (letter in verse, addressed to Juan Boscán) and 40 sonnets. He didn't publish any of his work while alive: his entire poetic production was kept with Juan Boscán and was published in 1542 (7 years after his death), along with his poems. 

Soneto V

Escrito está en mi alma vuestro gesto, 

y cuanto yo escribir de vos deseo;

vos sola lo escribisteis, yo lo leo 

tan solo, que aun de vos me guardo en esto.

En esto estoy y estaré siempre puesto; 

que aunque no cabe en mí cuanto en vos veo, 

de tanto bien lo que no entiendo creo, 

tomando ya la fe por presupuesto.

Yo no nací sino para quereros; 

mi alma os ha cortado a su medida; 

por hábito del alma mismo os quiero.

Cuando tengo confieso yo deberos; 

por vos nací, por vos tengo la vida, 

por vos he de morir, y por vos muero.

-Garcilaso de la Vega

All of Garcilaso's work is lyrical, because he focuses on the expression of feelings. In this case, the sonnet expresses the pain felt by the poet for the death of Isabel Freyre and melancholy, so the subgenre would be the elegy, the lamentation over the death of a loved one. 

Looking at a sonnet

Hermosas ninfas, que, en el río metidas,
contentas habitáis en las moradas
de relucientes piedras fabricadas
y en columnas de vidrio sostenidas;

agora estéis labrando embebecidas
o tejiendo las telas delicadas,
agora unas con otras apartadas
contándoos los amores y las vidas:

dejad un rato la labor, alzando
vuestras rubias cabezas a mirarme,
y no os detendréis mucho según ando,

que o no podréis de lástima escucharme,
o convertido en agua aquí llorando,
podréis allá despacio consolarme.

Beautiful nymphs who through the river pass,

living in contentment on your own

in your mansions built of shimmering stone

and upheld by columns made of glass:

now, one embroiders lovely trifles as

another weaves a cloth of delicate tone;

and now, a few of you go off alone,

each telling of the life and loves she has;

for a while, put your work aside

and lift your golden heads to look at me,

and I won't keep you long, I confide;

you'll be too sad to listen, or I'll be

changed to water crying at your side,

and then there will be time for sympathy. 

I like this poem because Greek mythology, duh.

In this sonnet the poet pleads the nymphs for attention and to listen to the story of his inconsolable misery while they are getting on with their usual occupations.

The predominant form of utterance is the description, which is subjectively expressed in a direct style and in first person,  showing the immense sadness of his soul.

First, he invokes the nymphs and describes their dwellings (first stanza) and activities (second quartet), then he asks them to listen and reveals the reason for his invocation (two last triplets).

In regards to the structure of the content, Renaissance sonnets have a symmetrical structure: it responds to a desire for harmony and balance at the same time. The quartets are usually descriptive. The triplets tend to enclose a meditation or contemplation, an advice or a philosophical reflection. Although the poem is rich in rhetoric figures it is not hard to understand. It has a simple vocabulary and overall gives a sense of balance, as is typical of the Renaissance 

In this poem, we find the Renaissance topics. Renaissance aesthetic ideals, integrated in the harmonic beauty of nature (locus amoenus). Regarding both mythological beings (beautiful nymphs who dwell happily...) and the idealized nature (shiny stones, glass columns who remind us of the Greek past). The theme of love is a central axis, which in this case reflects the inconsolable misery of the poet.

To conclude, Garcilaso truly embodies the values of the Renaissance man. He is a man of war (dies defending his king, even though he exiled him) and a poet (in contact with the Italian Renaissance literary movement). Regarding courtly love, he mourns the death of his muse (Isabel Freyre), as did Francesco Petrarca with Laura. Versatile cool guy right here!

Thank you Garcilaso for this trip!

And thank you for reading! Now you've got a master on Garcilaso de la Vega, show it around proudly ;)

See you,

B.