Devil On Night Chair by Hieronymus Bosch from Garden of Earthly Delights
In the early late 1400's, a painter from the Netherlands, Hieronymos Bosch, created paintings for churches which illustrated heaven and hell. He reached into the depth of his imagination and created fantastical images to teach Christians about good and bad behavior. This statue recreates one of his painted characters. We see the Devil eating a person on a chair where he will excrete the human remains. Hieronymus Bosch's style arises from the tradition of the book illuminations (manuscript illustrations from the Middle Ages). The caricatured representation of evil tones down its terrifying implications, but also serves as a defiant warning with a theological basis.
ABOUT HIERONYMUS BOSCH
It is presumed that somehow Bosch had knowledge of the Visio Tnugdali (Latin: Vision of Tnugdalus, sometimes spelled Visio Tungdali), a twelfth century handwriting that describes a vision of a journey through hell. This was possibly the basis for this devil, crowned with a cauldron, symbolizing the diabolical inferno fire. He is sat on a night chair, which offers him the possibility of excreting the gorged souls. His curious footwear in the shape of pitchers symbolizes dipsomania.
THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
Hieronymus Bosch shows us how we mortal souls, arisen from earthly paradise, are on our way to the atrocious ordeals of hell via our unchaste lives on earth. The dark painting on the closed panels shows the Creation, surrounded by water, in accordance with medieval traditions. From an artistic point of view, the world famous brilliant forerunner of surrealism was, in his day, unique and radically different. Hieronymus (Jeroen for short) Bosch was born (ca. 1450-1516) during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in ¬s-Hertogenbosch, in the Duchy of Brabant. Bosch places visionary images in a hostile world full of mysticism, with the conviction that the human being, due to its own stupidity and sinfulness has become prey to the devil hi
