Behind The "earthly Paradise" Image Research: Sex Orgy Of Redemption

Garden of Earthly Delights, the most controversial work of Hieronymus Bosch, is produced in the turn of the15th century and the16th century, with the wild sex being the core of the controversy. In this cruel society where diseases and wars constantly broke, and in the point of time when the Last Judgment is about to come, the sexual joy of Garden of Earthly Delights seems odd and inappropriate. Erwin Panofsky points out that Dutch painters are inclined to design’concealed symbols’in their works, and one of Hieronymus Bosch’s characters is to express his thoughts with uncommon details. Thus, the real purpose of Garden of Earthly Delights is concealed in the odd sex. Taking the sex images as the entry point, the dissertation tries to, by analyzing layers of the sex images and digging their implicit chemical fables, reveal the behind-image sex redemption concept that is against traditional sexual ethics and how Hieronymus Bosch successfully build connections between sex and self redemption by applying the structures and symbols of sex images.