(8) alchemy

At least one of Bruegel's "explanations" is misleading. His print of The Alchemist appears to be based on the Dresden Codex, which was also apparently a source for The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias. Another image on the same page appears to have been a model for the painting of The Pedlar (by an unidentified artist), which Bruegel turned into The Beekeepers. But if anyone thought the person in the Dresden Codex picture really was an alchemist, they were incorrect since the person is burning copal incense for a ceremony.

(7) triptych format and center panel

The simplest way to describe the center panel is to say that it represents the general idea of a special day in a religious calendar, specifically the Sabbath and also including images of a series of events in the Jewish calendar. The triptych format illustrates Christian and Jewish concepts of time, including beginning, end, and the seven-day week, which were news to Americans. The festivals are recognizable even though people are not all behaving as they should. This is another theme that Bruegel represented more clearly, in a print that shows one festival and a range of good and bad behavior.

(6) Juana as Mary Magdalen

El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights portrays two women as Mary Magdalen, probably Juana la Loca and Margaret of Austria. Juana’s sister Catherine of Aragon had already been painted as the Magdalen with the more conventional attributes of glamorous clothes and an ointment jar to identify her. The hair that entirely covers both women is likely based on the Nuremberg Chronicle, which was also a source for the outside panels. The print titled Magdalena Poenitens is one of several pictures by Bruegel that includes a more easy-to-decipher version of something from El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights.

(5) another source for the outside panels

The idea that a person with a white beard was not necessarily the Creator would have been familiar to anyone old enough, or young enough, to have read the Margarita Philosophica by Gregor Reisch, first published in 1503. In European art it is normally obvious who is who, but in the American codexes imitated in the inside panels, it is not always obvious whether a picture represents a supernatural being or an impersonator.

(4) bosch imitations

Some Bosch imitations are anti-Protestant, including the Haywain tapestry, and others are anti-Catholic, including the painting of the Conjurer. The purpose of a "fake" Bosch style was sometimes to make heretical paintings look old-fashioned and inoffensive, and not necessarily to make them seem old and valuable. The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias is one of the anti-Protestant pictures. (For another painting of the posthumous miracles of St. Francis click here.)

(3) dendrochronology

Dendrochronology cannot establish the age of a painting because paintings do not grow on trees.

(2) the two people in the cave

Juana I de Castilla is in almost hidden by half of a Roman numeral V because her son is not only Carlos I but also Carolus V/Charles V. On the other hand the castles standing for Castilla are much grander than the three-headed eagle that approximates a Habsburg double-headed one.

(1) the outside panels

It is generally agreed that the outside panels of The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias are based on the frontispiece of the Nuremberg Chronicle, but there are several differences. One is that the orb is divided in half, and contains what looks like a picture of an island. It appears to be about the size of São Tomé, off the coast of Africa, which was once thought to be round and to be bisected by the Equator. Mercator and Hondius maps continued to resemble the outside panels of The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias in the seventeenth century. The divided orb can also be interpreted as an illustration of the division of the earth in two parts by the Treaty of Tordesillas. Another difference is that instead of God on a throne, holding an orb, the outside panels show a king on a bench, holding a book, presumably King David as the author of the book of Psalms (although not necessarily: see above). Also, instead of illustrating a tabernacle like the ones that were built after the crossing of the sea on dry land, represented in the book illustration by some small angels tying branches together, the whole image divides in half, as if a picture of the ocean were opened up like a door.