About the author — Meinhard Michael

Art historian, studies in Leipzig 1981–1986, research studies 1986–1990. PhD 1991. Research Associate at the Institute of Aesthetics and Art Studies of the Academy of Sciences Berlin (East) 1989–1990. Afterwards newspaper editor, TV author and TV producer in Leipzig. Research on Bosch since 1994, on the Garden of Earthly Delights exclusively since 2013/2014.

In 2018 the book Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. The Senses and the Soul in Dream and Awakening appeared (Norderstedt: publIQation; translation Sabine Berendse and Paul Clements). (This is a summary of a German e-book from 2016. More recent essays go further.)

I am currently investigating the question of who might have commissioned the painting and with what specific political objective—approaching the matter not from the perspective of the painting’s location in the Nassau Palace a decade and a half (or more) after its creation, but exclusively through an analysis of its (political) content.

I am grateful for criticism, comments, and discussion.

Academic articles

Freely available at Art-Dok (Heidelberg) and Art-Hist.net (The links lead to the pages containing the annotations. Download only after that.)

Brr! Wie und warum die Zeit im Garten der Lüste von Jheronimus Bosch kurz stehenbleibt (2026)
Vision nach Psalm 68. Die theologische Grundlage der Höllentafel des Gartens der Lüste von Jheronimus Bosch (2025)
The female soul and its external and internal senses. Jheronimus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights as a satirical Psychology (2024)
A flap of wings before heaven or hell. The beautiful false butterfly in the Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch (2024)
The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch as a dream to be deciphered (2020)
Neues von der Nonnen-Sau. Die Hauptfigur und der Konzepteur des Gartens der Lüste von Hieronymus Bosch (2020)
Wenn Paradiestore sich in Luftschlösser verwandeln. Imagination und Vision im Garten der Lüste von Hieronymus Bosch (2018)
Von Hypokriten und falschen Hochzeiten. Die politische Positionierung des Gartens der Lüste von Jheronimus Bosch (I) (2022)
Einen Herzschlag lang hinüber. Die Disposition der Zeit im Garten der Lüste von Hieronymus Bosch (2018)
Der Garten der Lüste des Jheronimus Bosch als Traum – der zu entschlüsseln ist (2018)
Bestrafter ‚Geldwechsler’ ohne Maß und Verstand? ‚Discretio spirituum’ und der ‚Goldene Brief’ als Methode und als Quelle im ‚Garten der Lüste’ von Jheronimus Bosch (2018)
With the ›Rockman‹ from ›Bosch‹ to ›Van Oostsanen‹, in: Jheronimus Bosch, his workshop and his followers (Conference, ’s-Hertogenbosch 2023), S. 228–253 (auch auf academia.edu)

I have referred to Reindert L. Falkenburg’s findings on several occasions: Reindert Falkenburg: The Land of Unlikeness. Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (= Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History; Vol. X), Zwolle: Wbooks 2011.

For further literature, see, for example, the accompanying volumes to the 2016 exhibitions (from which I copied images of preliminary drawings): Bosch Research and Conservation Project (ed.), Hieronymus Bosch: Painter and Draughtsman. Catalogue Raisonné, Brussels: Mercatorfonds, 2016 / Pilar Silvia Maroto (ed.), El Bosco: La exposición del V centenario / Bosch: The 5th Centenary Exhibition, Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2016.

Regarding the question of the ’second’ Bosch—which I am not discussing— see Fritz Koreny, Hieronymus Bosch. Die Zeichnungen. Werkstatt und Nachfolge bis zum Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts, Turnhout: Brepols, 2012.