SOCIAL STATUS AND SIN: READING BOSCH’S PRADO AND FOUR LAST THINGS PAINTING

Laura D. Gelfand The University of Akron

Abstract: Bosch’s painting, erroneously called the “tabletop” of the Seven Deadly Sins, seems instead to have served as a meditative device for a devout layman, or perhaps laywoman. Like most of Bosch’s work, this painting may be read on a number of different levels simultaneously. The great circle in its entirety may represent an eye and/or a mirror, such as the Mirror of Human Salvation, and it is also related to the wheel of Fate. The gures who illustrate the sins show that these vices are committed by members of every level of society, from the aristocracy to the lowest of disenfranchised wanderers. Some of the images include subtexts related to proverbs or warnings about societal breakdown. I will address the levels of meaning and focus speci cally on the social status of the gures depicted in the scenes of the vices, connecting these gures to contemporary ideas about class and behavior.

Upon encountering ’s painting, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things, in the Prado in Madrid,1 we are placed in the remarkable position of looking at a painting that, somewhat confron- tationally, looks back at us, with a great unblinking eye ( g. 1).2 This unique representation of the Seven Deadly Sins, probably painted around 1490, features a large central circle with four smaller circles in the corners showing scenes of the Four Last Things: the initial judg- ment following death, also called the ; the Last Judgment; Heaven; and Hell.3 The central circle resembles an eye that

1 The oil on panel painting measures 47  59 inches. The most recent technological studies were published by Roger Van Schoute and M. C. Garrido, “Les péches capi- taux de Jérôme Bosch au Musée du Prado à Madrid. Étude technologique. Premièrs considérations,” in Le dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, Colloque VI. 12–14 septembre 1985. Infrarouge et autres techniques d’examen, ed. Helene Verougstraete-Marcq and Roger Van Schoute (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1987), 103–6. 2 My thanks go to James Elkins whose book, The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing (San Diego, 1997), supplied the idea for this introduction. 3 The identi cation of the scene in the upper left hand corner as the Particular Judgment was made by Walter Gibson. Ideas related to this are explored in his article

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Figure 1: Hieronymus Bosch, Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins, Madrid, Prado. Photo: Museo Nacional del Prado.

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