In a new book published in 2006,
El Bosco y la tradición pictórica de lo fantástico, page 118, note 38, José Manuel Cruz Valdevinos observed that two or three letters in a single word in an old inventory seem to have been misread:
…Cuando la entrega se denomina una pintura "de la banidad del mundo", si bien los autores transcriben "bariedad"… (When it was delivered it was listed as a painting of "the vanity of the world", even though the authors transcribe it as "variety"…)
Professor Cruz Valdevinos does not state that he examined the 1593 inventory himself, but since he teaches in Madrid, presumably his note is based on his own observation. Perhaps new books on El Bosco should include a photograph of the original handwritten page, since the difference between
variedad and
vanidad is important. (In modern spelling,
b has changed to
v in both words.) The two words look similar even in a computer font that mimics cursive handwriting, and the apparent misreading might have been caused by a slightly ambiguous dot on the letter
i. If this new reading is correct, then the anonymous author of the 1593 inventory identified the subject of the triptych that has since been called
El Jardín de las Delicias as "the vanity of the world".
In other words, it was already identified in 1593 as belonging to what by the seventeenth century had become a whole genre of paintings, mostly still life, that illustrate the famous verse from the book of Ecclesiastes,
Vanitas vanitatum, dixit Ecclesiastes; vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas. (Ecclesiastes 1:2)
This makes explaining
El Jardín de las Delicias much simpler. It includes some of the same still life objects as a seventeenth century painting signed "J. Vermeulen" (perhaps a pseudonym) because it represents the same subject. Its correct designation as a
vanitas painting seems to have become lost precisely because it was too easy to see.
Vanitas vanitatum is a rare if not unique subject for a triptych, but it is not at all unusual for a European painting.
The question still remains as to how new the subject of
vanitas was in 1528 when
El Jardín de las Delicias was painted. (
Please see the notes page for the phrase la vanidad del mundo in the preface to a book by Antonio de Guevara, Libro Áureo de Marco Aurelio, published in 1528.) Is it the first large painting with a
vanitas subject? (
Please see the notes page for a hypothetical reconstruction of a lost triptych of uncertain date.) If so, then far from being a mysterious and unrepeatable picture, in fact it was widely imitated. Just google
vanitas.
For some previous attempts to explain
El Jardín de las Delicias as a
vanitas painting in the elbosco blog, please see "
(56) vanitas and books" and "
(57) vanitas".
There will be more notes here on
El Bosco y la tradición pictórica de lo fantástico, which is a remarkable collection of lectures that took place at the Museo del Prado in 2005-2006. The authors all continued the traditional (and I think incorrect) identification of Hieronymus Bosch as the author of
El Jardín de las Delicias, but they have greatly expanded the range of ideas being considered.
