elbosco blog

el bosco updates

2007-05-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

The newest el bosco posts are on a page titled el bosco updates so that this page can continue explaining the Nahuatl chronology year by year.

(62) chronology: 1520

2006-12-04T01:37:00.000-08:00

The simplest way to remember that the knife and two ears represent the year 1520 is to observe the way, from a distance, they seem to loom over and threaten the Tree-man. They are a mnemonic both for the glyph 2-Tecpatl and for the year 1520, that is the year before the fall of Tenochtitlán.

The chronology looks back from the standpoint of sometime in the year 1528, and sees the 1527 Sack of Rome as a repeat of the 1521 fall of Tenochtitlán. The year 1520 and its difficult-to-remember name in the indigenous chronology are represented in the triptych as “the year before” the milestone. It was a year when (in retrospect) Cortés posed a threat to Tenochtitlan, but more importantly from a European perspective it was a year when Martin Luther already posed a threat to Rome.

In other words, to remember that the year before 1521 was represented in an indigenous codex by a knife and two dots, all one had to do was remember the bizarre image of a knife and ears looming over a hellish scene. The explanation of what the knife had to do with Martin Luther is obscure, as if to take into account that Luther was an obscure person. The initial on the knife is easier to remember than to decipher.

(61) chronology: 1520

2006-11-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

The combination of ears and knife might also have been fairly easy to read as a European hieroglyph for speech, similar to the artist R.B. Kitaj’s cover design for John R. Searle, Speech Acts. On the cover of an anthology of letters from Subcomandante Marcos, Desde las montañas del sureste mexicano, negative connotations have disappeared altogether.

(60) chronology: 1520

2006-11-20T18:25:00.000-08:00

The mnemonic/translation for 2-Flint/ome tecpatl in The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias is a European style knife. It might have been confusing for Spanish speakers that the word tecpatl can mean flint (pedernal), a knife (cuchillo), or a day or year, but not extremely confusing since there are flint knives in the Bible. The problem seems to be that whereas in a European language “flint knife” only calls to mind a vague image since knives are no longer made of flint, a tecpatl or a picture of one sometimes had a face with eyes and teeth, and looked like a fish when turned sideways. A translation into Nahuatl would have had to go from a fairly neutral word to one loaded with unknown connotations. The image in The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias translating the glyph tecpatl to a picture of a knife is relatively simple.
On the other hand in the twentieth century the anthropologist Clyde Kluckhorn found the idea of using the same Navajo word for an old arrowhead, a new knife, and metal complicated enough to warrant a diagram with both words and pictures. (The page shown here is from the 1974 paperback edition of The Navaho.)

(59) counting and measuring time

2006-11-20T14:25:00.000-08:00

The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias differs from many vanitas images in the sense that it does not include much in the way of images of time measuring, for instance clocks and hourglasses, although it does include images of pain that would increase over time, fruit that could go bad, boats that could capsize, etc. The emphasis is on counting time, with two daytime scenes and one night scene. The obvious link is to Genesis where time is marked by days (defined as evening and morning, Appellavitque lucem Diem, et tenebras Noctem: factumque est vespere et mane, dies unus). There is also musical notation in the right panel, which also seems to relate to counting time. There is a complex series of images relating to the Jewish calendar, which involves counting days and full moons, and there is a series of images marking years in an eccentric version of Nahuatl picture writing. The explanations will be long and complicated both for the Jewish calendar and the Nahuatl annals, both of which seem to be memory systems devised for learning and recalling, but it seems worth noting at the start that the point seems to have been to emphasize and facilitate translating one into the other. Measuring time in terms of hours or even relative age (as in the steadily decaying books in the painting by Jan Lievens) could come later.

There are also publication dates, of which the most striking is the 1492 publication of Nebrija’s Gramática de la lengua castellana, represented by a hieroglyph that Nebrija described in the text. These are helpful for establishing the date of the triptych, although in some instances the artist might have known about a book that was not yet published, and it is also interesting that printed title pages that include years of publication are not very dissimilar to Nahuatl annals. A title page often includes some sort of picture, and a year in Roman or Arabic numerals, and title pages might have seemed less peculiarly European than the rest of the book.

(58) Pearls Before Swine and Metallica

2006-11-20T00:16:00.000-08:00

Art historians have not focused much on war, or on war and health, or religion and health, ceding the larger view of things to singer-songwriters and rock stars. In Tom Rapp’s first Pearls Before Swine album, One Nation Underground (1967), the image on the album cover seems to have to do with antiwar themes that were expressed much more blandly in the lyrics (“I shall have peace as leafy trees are peaceful”). But like The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias, the lyrics also contain a code,

Chorus:
Dit Dit Dah Dit
Dit Dit Dah
Dah Dit Dah Dit
Dah Dit Dah

It was notorious at the time since

'…It got Murray the K in trouble.’
The New York deejay played ‘(Oh Dear) Miss Morse’ on AM radio. It turned out that very few people knew Morse code, but among them was every Boy Scout in America. (Washington Post)

The video of Metallica’s “Until It Sleeps” (1996; originally on the 1996 album Load, and also on a compilation DVD to be released in December, 2006) includes images adapted from The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias, and since the band is well known there is an explanation that goes beyond the lyrics by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich to say that the song has to do with Hetfield’s father dying of cancer and refusing medical treatment because of his religious beliefs.

(57) vanitas

2006-11-15T21:15:00.000-08:00

Here is where the question of the “viewer” seems to have to be considered, since to any reasonable person it seems cold and harsh for “vanitas vanitatum dixit Ecclesiastes vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas (vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes: vanity of vanities, and all is vanity)” to be the major theme of a history painting representing the conquest of Mexico. It seems likely that this is the reason that there is no surviving Dutch commentary on the tapestries based on The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias that were completed in the Netherlands in the 1560s for two successive governors. The tapestries were in the style of a Dutch artist and seemed to prioritize sunbathing and fruit eating over thinking about events in Mexico or the 1527 sack of Rome, with the implication that northern artists and perhaps by extension the rest of the population took a frivolous view of things.

Although there is as far as I know no record of Juana la Loca having received the original triptych, the bizarre iconography would have made some sense in terms of her circumstances when she was living at Tordesillas, since she was criticized for neglecting her health to the point of refusing to eat, but was also observed on occasion to be lucid and rational, and she had been reputed to be well educated and intelligent as a girl. It would have been reasonable to focus on health first, then news of the world.

A famous biombo represents similar ideas in a different way, where the rebuilt city on one side of the screen obviously comes after the war shown on the other side.

(56) vanitas and books

2006-11-03T01:57:00.000-08:00

The art history library at UC Berkeley is like a vanitas still life, with a clock visible through the window next to graduate students' shelves for books relating to projects they are trying to complete. The campanile is used for storing fossils from the La Brea tar pits, and when there is a special lecture there are wine, bread, bottled water, and grapes or strawberries, and there are people with and without gray hair, and the uncomfortable chairs seen in the picture at the left. During a lecture, with the lights out in order to show slides, it is impossible to read the books, and the wine is usually not opened until after the lecture.
The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias predates the typical vanitas paintings of the seventeenth century, which makes it more difficult to see as an illustration of the book of Ecclesiastes, but it is really simpler. The center panel has to do with enjoying life in the present since it is soon followed by death, shown in the right panel. In the seventeenth century paintings the idea that "Of making many books there is no end: and much study is an affliction of the flesh" (Ecclesiastes 12:12) is expressed by painted books where the pages can never be turned, and in The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias there is practically no end to the books illustrated and the time it would take to explain all the allusions to books. The triptych's organization is reminiscent of hypertext as seen in libraries, systems for memory, concordances, and commentaries. The obscurity of the references to books serves a purpose, which is to remind the viewer that it would be better to do something like go outdoors and eat strawberries.
At the same time, the books illustrated in The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias have become obscure for various reasons, including the destruction of books in New Spain. The artist was so successful at conveying the idea of "nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:10) that the triptych has been regarded as the work of Hieronymus Bosch, who died before Europeans arrived on the mainland, which means that the attempt to convey that studying Nahuatl books was wearisome has not even been noticed. The detail is interesting since it seems to shed some light on the interactions between Europeans and Indians, as seen from the artist's perspective.
(see here later for a note on how the foregoing comments follow José de Sigüenza's chapter on the paintings in the Escorial)

2006-11-02T15:17:00.000-08:00

Apelles

2006-10-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

from Pliny, Historia Naturalis, book 35
(an older English translation is online on the Perseus website)

(55) ways of recording dates

2006-10-03T00:05:00.000-07:00

Ramirez read the row of circles at the bottom of the drawing as a way of marking the year 1537, i.e. in the fourth year before 1540. But an easier way to make sense of the date seems to be to relate it to Bartholome de las Casas, even though his Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias was not published until 1552.

The Indies were discovered in the year one thousand four hundred and ninety-two. In the following year a great many Spaniards went there with the intention of settling the land. Thus, forty-nine years have passed since the first settlers penetrated the land, the first so claimed being the large and most happy isle called Hispaniola, which is six hundred leagues in circumference. Around it in all directions are many other islands, some very big, others very small, and all of them were, as we saw with our own eyes, densely populated with native peoples called Indians. This large island was perhaps the most densely populated place in the world. There must be close to two hundred leagues of land on this island, and the seacoast has been explored for more than ten thousand leagues, and each day more of it is being explored. And all the land so far discovered is a beehive of people; it is as though God had crowded into these lands the great majority of mankind.

It takes some mental arithmetic to realize that the book was written in 1542 and published ten years later, and since Las Casas was a priest it seems to make sense to understand the 49 years as an allusion to Biblical time, specifically the Jubilee of Leviticus 25.
If the artist who made the drawing of the events in Coyoacan was also counting forward from 1492 the "four years before forty years" implied by the row of circles with a cross marking a point four units before the end of the row might imply something similar to the way Las Casas reckoned the date of the Brevissima Relacion. It is almost as long as the 40 years the Children of Israel spent wandering in the desert. The "four years before forty years" may be a combination of a Biblical unit of time and an American preference for exact dates. Counting forward from 1492 and adding 36 completed years would be equivalent to 1528, before Cortés returned to Spain.
Even though the drawing obviously represents specific events, and whether or not the 40 circles have to do with counting forward from 1492, they seem to be a way of emphasizing, as Las Casas did, that similar incidents took place over a very long period of time. There is something similar in The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias where an incident of a person being attacked by dogs is located near a date sign that in the context of a series of dates make the most sense as 4-Rabbit, then again as 8-Rabbit. (Looking at photographs taken before the triptych was restored, the sides of the cube were apparently once two 4's and a 2, as though someone were cheating at a dice game.) Similar incidents might just as well have taken place in 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10-Rabbit (or any year, taking into account all six surfaces) and the seeming imprecision emphasizes that as Las Casas kept saying, such incidents were ongoing.

(54) Potential misreadings

2006-09-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

Even in recent paintings, the possibility exists that viewers might misconstrue pictures of innocents in hellish situations as hell scenes. In the exhibition catalogue for Cheech Marin's Chicano Visions, p. 117, Frank Romero's 1996 painting The Arrest of the Paleteros is carefully explained:

Paleteros, or ice cream men, were the most innocent and representative of transplanted Mexican culture in Los Angeles. The fact that they were frequently arrested for not having vendor permits attests to the kind of ludicrous racial prejudice that exists besides the other truly serious dangers of Echo Park.

The detail shown here is from the museum website.

(53) legal implications

2006-09-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

A consequence of the way the years are mapped onto the triptych format, so that bad years go in the hell scene, is that when the years include crimes that have victims, the victims are in the hell scene too. The picture of a person attacked by dogs resembles a medieval artist's way of showing torments after death, but it is also a condemnation of the practice of, according to reports, literally feeding people to dogs as a means of intimidation.
Such an event was reported to have taken place in Cholula in 1519. The document shown just below ~~is from~~ has been published together with documents from a 1529 trial. (See here for translations of the captions.)

(52) organization of the triptych

2006-09-01T01:23:00.000-07:00

The organization of The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias combines elements from different cultures into a hybrid memory system. The year signs are loci for remembering events that took place over the course of ten years. Perhaps since it is not easy to remember ten of anything (psychologists expect people to be able to remember more or less seven digits), or perhaps to make sure to remember good and bad, the years are placed in different locations on a conventional looking triptych. Cortés landed in New Spain in a good year, and the year after that was a bad year. The triptych format not only organizes memories of years but also serves as a model of a Biblical tabernacle.

(51) la noche triste, 1520

2006-08-29T00:51:00.000-07:00

The main differences between the image of Cortés's nighttime retreat from Tenochtitlán in 1520 (la noche triste) on The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias and on a later biombo are that the biombo includes more identifiable scenes and that it has a key indicating that la noche triste is marked with the letter H (near the bottom of the third panel from the right).

The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias version is also obviously a hell scene (setting aside for the moment the question of whether there were similar battle scenes in hell before the imitation-Bosch paintings) but that may be primarily because the knife has to do with Martin Luther.

(50) a Leonardo parody

2006-08-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

The gigantic ears and knife are only one of several parodies of Leonardo da Vinci's numerous designs for real and preposterous war machines (see the notes for another Leonardo parody). An interesting difference is that none of the ones in The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias has wheels. They may be a comment on the Indians not having the equivalent of European war machines, especially since the only easy-to-recognize American artifact in the triptych is a feathered disc which might have reminded people of European armor but whose main military purpose would have been to look impressive.

The right-side-up and upside-down people transporting one of the "war machines" may be demonstrating what wheels might have looked like from an Indian perspective, or according to an Indian joker. The image of people going around and around on a wheel of fortune is European.

Wheels are shown as dangerous things in the Haywain triptychs.

(49) a real murder mystery

2006-08-23T14:54:00.000-07:00

This blog has been on a long digression between 1519 (ce acatl, marked by the pink castle; see 32 and 33 in the May archive and 1 in April) and 1520 (ome tecpatl, marked by the ears and knife) in order to establish a context for the peculiar way in which New World dates were "translated" into images that look like inventions of Hieronymus Bosch. Apart from the glyph and the enigmatic monogram on the knife, in The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias the year 1520 is marked mainly by darkness, violence, and confusion.
Controversy over what happened in that year and how to interpret the events still exists. It was announced today that some skeletal remains have been examined and that they show invaders were killed and eaten. Archaeologists have put a positive spin on the story, saying the evidence shows there was "resistance to the conquest… It shows it wasn't all submission. There was a fight." The story will probably also be taken to indicate that people thought the problem of the European invasion could be solved by eating conquistadores and their friends.

Boiled bones show Aztecs butchered, ate invaders

Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:20 PM BST

By Catherine Bremer
CALPULALPAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Skeletons found at an unearthed site in Mexico show Aztecs captured, ritually sacrificed and partially ate several hundred people traveling with invading Spanish forces in 1520.
Skulls and bones from the Tecuaque archaeological site near Mexico City show about 550 victims had their hearts ripped out by Aztec priests in ritual offerings, and were dismembered or had their bones boiled or scraped clean, experts say.
The findings support accounts of Aztecs capturing and killing a caravan of Spanish conquistadors and local men, women and children traveling with them in revenge for the murder of Cacamatzin, king of the Aztec empire's No. 2 city of Texcoco.

Experts say the discovery proves some Aztecs did resist the conquistadors, led by explorer Hernan Cortes, before the Spaniards attacked the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City.
History books say many indigenous Mexicans welcomed the white-skinned horsemen in the belief they were returning gods but turned against the Spaniards once they tried to take over the Aztec seat of power in a conflict that ended in 1521.
"This is the first place that has so much evidence there was resistance to the conquest," said archaeologist Enrique Martinez, director of the dig at Calpulalpan in Tlaxcala state, near Texcoco.
"It shows it wasn't all submission. There was a fight."
The caravan was apparently captured because it was made up mostly of the mulatto, mestizo, Maya Indian and Caribbean men and women given to the Spanish as carriers and cooks when they landed in Mexico in 1519, and so was moving slowly. Continued...

An article based on another interview with the same archaeologist was published in La Jornada on August 2.

(48) The Concrete Blonde

2006-08-20T18:22:00.000-07:00

"Bosch looked up from the paper into the grimy but familiar face of the homeless man who had staked out the front of the courthouse as his turf. Bosch had seen him out here every day during the week of jury selection, making his change-and-cigarette rounds. The man wore a threadbare tweed jacket over two sweaters and corduroy pants. He carried a plastic bag of belongings and a Big Gulp cup to shake in front of people when he asked for change. He also always carried with him a yellow legal pad with scribbling all over it." Michael Connelly, The Concrete Blonde, p. 9. (Thank you to "Caro" on the general discussion message board at www.michaelconnelly.com, who remembered the book.)

(47) the Rhetorica ad Herennium

2006-08-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

At first glance, and also from reading surveys of the medieval commentary on it, the Rhetorica ad Herennium memory system seems excessively difficult. To start with, one seems to have to be able to visualize a long colonnade, with every fifth or even every tenth space marked in some distinctive way. In the Palace of Charles V in Granada, the doors and niches behind the columns might help a little as reference points for counting off every fifth intercolumniation (space between columns), although not much. It does not seem as though having such a space nearby would help remember things.

But there may have been an easier way. In one of the Harry Bosch detective novels, there is a memorable scene where Harry Bosch and an unidentified person share a cigarette on the steps of a courthouse in Los Angeles.
(see the notes page for medieval commentaries and Harry Bosch novels)

(46) the Rhetorica ad Herennium

2006-07-09T22:08:00.001-07:00

For The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias the most important memory system is probably the Rhetorica ad Herennium, traditionally attributed to Cicero but already regarded as anonymous in the late fifteenth century. There were various editions in the sixteenth century, sometimes attributed to Cicero and sometimes not. The Loeb Classics edition is part of a set of the works of Cicero, but clearly identified in the introduction as anonymous.
The Rhetorica ad Herennium memory system is for memorizing the details of legal cases, by memorizing a set of imaginary places and then mentally placing imaginary bizarre scenes in the imaginary places. It might not have been as difficult as it sounds, since reading modern detective stories or following criminal trials often involves visualizing architectural spaces and events that take place in them.
The Rhetorica ad Herennium only provides one example of a memory image, and it is an interesting one. “We” are defending a client who has been accused of murder and the memory image does not depict for instance our client drinking with friends several miles away from the alleged murder scene, but instead shows him standing next to an invalid’s bed holding a cup in his hand. In the memory image, the client might be guilty, and “we” seem to be planning to argue “It’s not as bad as it looks.” The memory “picture” does not show what happened, or even what “we” think might have happened.

(45) Nahuatl dates and playing cards

2006-06-27T02:52:00.000-07:00

In El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights, the playing cards in the right panel might be a mnemonic for remembering Murner’s system. They also are part of a tavern scene, which is part of an explanation of the word tabernacle, and it was probably important that the ace of hearts was trampled in the dust. For the moment the most important thing is that an ordinary European deck of cards made a good ready-made model of the way a cycle of 52 years was recorded in Nahuatl picture writing. The sequence 1-Reed, 2-Flint, 3-House, 4-Rabbit could continue for 52 years without repetition following the same pattern as ace of hearts, two of diamonds, three of clubs, four of hearts, and so forth.
But the cards are also part of a crime scene, and along with the tally marks on the overturned table and the spilled wine they might be evidence of how a disturbance started. There might be disagreement over whether the fighting started after someone cheated at cards, or after too much drinking.

(44) Murner's memory system

2006-06-27T02:14:00.000-07:00

In Murner’s system a picture could stand for a word without there being a logical connection between word and image, or much of a logical connection. Familiarity with such codes could have made it easier for Europeans to accept calendars where years were marked with a reed, flint, house, or rabbit.

(43) Murner's memory system

2006-06-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

More than anything else, some of the bizarre images in the hell scene resemble illustrations in textbooks. The Logica Memorativa contained instructions on how to cut out the illustrations and use them as flash cards for remembering the text. The half dog has to do with disjunct definitions of four types (a, b, c, and d).
In El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights and probably also in the Logica Memorativa, it is also a joke about Plato’s definition of man as a featherless biped. Murner was a Franciscan, and it seems reasonably likely the dogs were also a joke about the Dominicans (domini canes).

(42) Murner's memory system

2006-06-17T00:45:00.000-07:00

The presence of recognizable memory system images does not necessarily make paintings easier to read.

(41) Murner's memory system

2006-06-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

There were also memory systems consisting of packs of cards and instructions for using them. The cards shown here are from Thomas Murner’s Logica Memorativa.

(40) hell scenes, codes, and memory

2006-06-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

It is normal to find mnemonic images in hell scenes, whose purpose was to remind people of the consequences of things. The one in the corner of the Tabletop in the Museo del Prado includes the seven Vices, illustrated and labeled for easy memorization.
The collection of birds in The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias looks as though it might come from a book of mnemonic images, although it has not been read as a coded message and might only be a mnemonic for remembering that such codes exist. In the mnemonic illustrated here, which could also be used as a code, A is anser (goose), b is bubo (owl), c is corvus (crow), d is draco (dragon), etc. This code is virtually identical to the radio code used by Navajo code talkers in World War II, where English words were alphabetized and then translated into Navajo. Such codes are difficult to decipher even if they are all in a European language.

(39) Nahuatl picture writing and memory

2006-06-13T16:23:00.000-07:00

Like present day websites, European “artificial memory” mnemonic systems utilized both extremely orderly alphanumeric and geometrical systems, and bizarre or incongruous images. Either too much alphanumeric and geometrical organization or too many bizarre images could make a memory image difficult to navigate. They were usually used for memorizing concepts in theology, rhetoric, logic, or grammar, and the idea of compiling time lines including events recorded separately in different parts of the world had been around since Roman times. Censorship prevented publication of Nahuatl picture writing in European books in the sixteenth century, but in manuscripts from the colonial period, with only slight changes in format the hieroglyphs were similar to European “artificial memory” illustrations and often easier to read. Indians had more experience with systems combining numbers and pictures and an educational system based on teaching them.
The page at the right is from the Codex en Cruz, and begins with the same ten years (1519-28) as The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias. The page at the left is from Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (1966).

(38) chronology: 1520

2006-05-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

The main reason El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights has remained mostly undeciphered since the late nineteenth century is probably that its iconography is both European and Mexican. Its chronology includes events that are well known on different sides of the Atlantic, and not always remembered as having been simultaneous. But Martin Luther was warned by the Pope to recant or face excommunication on June 15, 1520, and in Mexico the “Noche Triste” took place two weeks later. It is logical to find the glyph for 1520 in a dark hell scene.

(37) El Jardín de las Delicias, with labels

2006-05-12T03:44:00.000-07:00

The chronology in El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights can be followed by solving a long series of riddles. The idea seems to be that making the effort to decipher a complicated story, or listening to a long explanation, makes it easier to remember events and the hieroglyphics that correspond to the years.

(36) biombo representing the same events

2006-05-12T03:34:00.000-07:00

On a biombo or painted screen representing the conquest of Mexico, the sequence of events is difficult to follow. The biombo includes a list with letters of the alphabet matching events to captions.

(35) a meandering time line

2006-05-12T03:20:00.000-07:00

When European artists represented a long sequence of events, they often made it difficult to follow the narrative from one scene to the next.

(34) chronology: 1519

2006-05-12T02:40:00.000-07:00

The pink castle resembles the cathedral in 's-Hertogenbosch, where Hieronymus Bosch lived, shown here in a photograph first published by Charles de Tolnay. But it also represents a Spanish language rebus. It is a tor de sillas, a tower with places to sit. When Cortés went to what is now Mexico, it had already been determined by the Treaty of Tordesillas that what is now Mexico was in the part of the world that would belong to Spain. The town of Tordesillas was also where Juana I, the queen of Spain, lived. This is probably why the tor de sillas is much larger and more prominent than the mermaid and merman representing the initials CV.

(33) chronology: 1519

2006-05-12T02:31:00.000-07:00

Also in 1519, Magellan was leaving to circumnavigate the world. An allegory of Magellan's voyage in a drawing by Stradanus that was made into a print by Theodor de Bry late in the sixteenth century was partly copied from El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights. Stradanus and De Bry added some fire at the left and a Patagonian giant at the right as a way to represent the Straits of Magellan, and seem to have assumed that readers would understand the images copied from the triptych.

(32) chronology: 1519

2006-05-12T02:07:00.000-07:00

The codexes from Mexico were new to Europeans, but less mysterious than Egyptian hieroglyphics because there were people who could explain them, even though when Hernan Cortés first arrived on the mainland in 1519 translation was a two-step process. Malinche would translate Nahuatl into Maya, and Gerónimo de Aguilar would translate Maya to Spanish.
El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights was painted about ten years later. It includes a chronology that covers Cortés's time in what is now Mexico from 1519 to 1528, and instead of copies of hieroglyphics it contains Hieronymus Bosch-like images that help to make it easy to remember how to read the hieroglyphics.
The first one, ce acatl (1-Reed, 1519) is semi-copied from a Mixtec version, and resembles a capital A. It is made to be easy for a humanist to remember since it illustrates a famous passage from Vitruvius about fresco paintings with people perched on reeds and stalks:

We now have fresco paintings of monstrosities, rather than truthful representations of definite things. For instance, reeds are put in the place of columns, fluted appendages with curly leaves and volutes, instead of pediments, candelabra supporting representations of shrines, and on top of their pediments numerous tender stalks and volutes growing up from the roots and having human figures senselessly seated upon them; sometimes stalks having only half-length figures, some with human heads, others with the heads of animals.

Charles V became Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, and a mermaid and merman represent the initials CV. An armada of mermen are carrying a fish that looks like a C, but it is not clear whether it stands for Carlos/Carolus or for Cortés.

(31) El Jardín de las Delicias

2006-05-12T01:52:00.000-07:00

El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights is in a completely different style than the triptych of St. Anthony in Lisbon. It may be that the main reason the two triptychs are generally regarded as works by the same artist (Hieronymus Bosch) is that they have never been in the same museum at the same time. (A much larger version of this photograph can be seen at boschuniverse.com, "best visited work of Bosch on this website.")

(30) St. Anthony in Egypt

2006-05-12T01:39:00.000-07:00

The Hieronymus Bosch paintings that were most often copied and imitated were pictures of St. Anthony in Egypt, but art historians have not focused on how they might relate to what Bosch understood about hieroglyphics. Bosch was said to have been nicknamed Grillo since he imitated an Egyptian artist. The triptych of St. Anthony in Lisbon, shown here, has been examined for rebuses representing Dutch words (by Dirck Bax) and for images pertaining to alchemy (by Laurinda Dixon).

(29) comparing hieroglyphics

2006-05-12T01:24:00.000-07:00

Not much is known about what Europeans already understood about Egyptian hieroglyphics when they saw the Codex Vindobonensis and Codex Nuttall, but it seems reasonable to suppose that they would have looked for resemblances.

(28) glosses in the Nuttall Codex

2006-05-03T19:07:00.000-07:00

It appears as though the person or persons who wrote notes in Spanish in the Codex Nuttall likely did so before the codex was taken to Spain, assuming that if it were already in a royal collection they would have written more neatly. Unlike the artist who painted El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights, they have the year signs in the wrong order (they should be acatl, tecpatl, tochtli, calli). The glyph for ce acatl in the triptych might have come from one in the Codex Nuttall, or in the Codex Vindobonensis as shown in the previous post, or from another document. Only the first glyph in the chronology comes from a Mixtec source, and the rest are Nahuatl although they do not look much like Nahuatl glyphs.
These details are taken from a facsimile published by Dover Publications.

(27) vanitas

2006-05-03T14:27:00.000-07:00

The key to decoding El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights is not identical with its subject. The key is a Nahuatl language chronology that establishes the date of the triptych, and the subject is vanitas (as in Ecclesiastes 1:2, vanitas vanitatum dixit Ecclesiastes vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas), shown here in a seventeenth century painting. The example shown here is from the Charles Roelofsz collection. The key is more unfamiliar than art historians have expected, and the vanitas theme seems to have been almost too familiar to see. José de Siguenza hinted at it when he said the subject of the triptych was madroños.
This is not to say that the triptych was devised as a riddle with its date as the answer. When it was first painted it was probably obvious that it was new, and the people who first saw it may have seen Nahuatl chronologies, the Dresden Codex, and other things from the New World. Other keys to the vanitas subject include the star maps illustrated below, alchemical images, and the triptych format, which art historians have tended to regard incorrectly as mutually exclusive.

(26) Peter Martyr and the Dresden Codex

2006-04-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

Once it begins to be deciphered, El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights starts to match a description by Peter Martyr (Pietro Martiro d' Anghiera) in De Nuper sub D. Carolo repertis insulis (1521), pp. 33-34, which Michael Coe has proposed represents the Dresden Codex. I have re-translated since some translations omit the stars (stellis):

The characters are very dissimilar to ours, dice, hooks, snares or nooses, outlines, stars, and similar forms, written in lines in our fashion: almost to rival the forms of the Egyptians: between the lines they depict men, and types of animals, particularly the king and also prominent people: for that matter it can be believed that greater accomplishments are recorded there for their own king, as it is in our time. We often see them insert figuras [illustrations?] in general histories, and also mythical codices, concerning the same matters, and the story is that this is for the alliciendos to gratify the wishes of authors who want them, also the way the outer panels are pleasingly put together looks no different when they are closed than ours: also law, and sacrifices, and ceremonial rites, astronomical notations, and certain computations, and cycles and times for sowing, are entrusted to books.
…Sunt characteres a nostris ualde dissimiles, taxillis, hamis, laqueis, limis, stellisque ac formis eiusmodi, lineatim exarati nostro more: Aegypti as fere formas aemulantur: Interlineatim hominú, animeliumque species, regum praecipue ac procerú dipingunt: quaere credendum est gesta esse ibi maiorum cuiusque regis conscripta, quaeadmodum nostra sit tempe state. Vedemus saepenumero eos generalibus historijs, fabulosis etiam codicibus, ipsius rei, quae narratur, ad alliciendos emere cupientium animos authorum, figuras interserere, artequoque grata superiores tabulas cópingút, nil differe a nostris clausi videntur: legú quoque, & sacrificiorú, ceremoniarúque ritus, astronomicalque annotationes, & cóputationes quaesdá, seminandique rónes & toa, libris cómendát…

See Michael D. Coe, “The Royal Fifth: Earliest Notices of Maya Writing,” Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 28 (1989):1-10.

(25) constellation Perseus

2006-04-30T20:55:00.000-07:00

Perseus is very small compared to Auriga, but recognizable both because Perseus is usually shown as a man in armor, and because of the two-armed shape suggested by the pattern of stars. The dogs attacking the knight are not from the same myth, and seem to be a continuation of the stereotype of what Europeans looked like to people in the New World, which started with the image of Auriga as a charioteer (below), showing the European as a man in armor. The scene represents a reversal of events described by Bartholome de las Casas, where the invaders brought dogs to attack people.
Connections between El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights and the writings of Bartolome de las Casas have been described by Francisco Rodríguez in a dissertation, La Brevíssima Relación del Padre Las Casas, Texto y Subtextos (University of California, Davis, 1995; available from University Microfilms).

(24) constellation Lynx

2006-04-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

The constellation Lynx was formerly described in vague terms as a group of stars circling the pole, and might be represented by the circle of riders in the center panel. The line of trees and vegetation just below the circle of riders corresponds to the line formed by the modern constellation.

(23) constellation Gemini

2006-04-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

Gemini (the Twins) can be identified without knowing exactly what the twins in the center panel represent. The group also resembles Leonardo's painting (now known from the copy by Melzi illustrated here), which shows the whole family: Leda, the swan, Castor and Pollux (the Gemini twins), and a second set of twins, Helen and Clytemnestra. The blue columbine flowers in front of the twins in El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights are an echo of the ones at Leda's feet in the Melzi painting, too small to see here.

(22) constellation Cancer

2006-04-30T19:41:00.000-07:00

The first writer to identify the pink fountain in the left panel as the constellation Cancer was Anna Boczkowska, although Paul Lafond (1914) had described the scene as containing "…au milieu d'un lac, une petite île d'ou émerge une végetation étrange et colossale aux branchages en forme de princes de homard…" and O. Benesch (1957) wrote that "…the Fountain of Life … takes the forms of gigantic crab petrified in coral." Boczkowska thought that the main subject of the triptych was a conjunction of the sun and moon in the sign of Cancer in 1504.

(21) map of stars in El Jardín de las Delicias

2006-04-30T19:34:00.000-07:00

The constellations represented in El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights correspond to a portion of the sky from Cancer to Taurus, and north to Lynx and possibly Ursa Major.

(20) Auriga and the Dresden Codex

2006-04-28T16:05:00.000-07:00

There seem to be two possible explanations. One is that a picture of Auriga like the one illustrated here could be a comical image of what Europeans looked like to Maya and other New World observers. Their use of domesticated animals including horses, goats, and the gratuitous oxen that the illustrator of the 1482 edition included in the picture must have seemed extremely peculiar, and vehicles with four wheels even more so. (The reason for including the oxen might have been that a star that was once listed as part of Auriga was later transferred to the constellation Taurus.)

A second explanation might be that a Maya person had talked about stars and events in the constellation Auriga relating to prognostications concerning the year 2012. A technical explanation has this to say about the "kid" stars on the charioteer's left hand:

Epsilon-Aurigae, or Almaaz, is the Kid star closest to Capella. Distance: 4600 LY. Usual magnitude: 3.0. It is an eclipsing binary, with an unseen companion that comes in front of Almaaz every 27 years. For one year Almaaz fades to 3.8 magnitude before recovering. Watch for the next fade in 2009, reaching its faintest between 2011 and 2012! (from a University of Oklahoma online exhibition which also includes images from the 1482 edition of Hyginus and many other images).

But like any speculation concerning the year 2012, the hypothesis that the artist might have heard about the "kid" stars has to be regarded with caution.

(19) Aquarius and the Dresden Codex

2006-04-28T15:56:00.000-07:00

But if the right panel El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights is partly based on the Dresden Codex, why does it include a large picture of the constellation Auriga, and not Aquarius? There are only two tiny images that might allude to Aquarius, a woman filling a jug and a man carrying a jug.

(18) Auriga according to Hyginus

2006-04-28T15:18:00.000-07:00

The image of Auriga, the Charioteer, seems to be loosely based on the Poetic Astronomy of Hyginus, where the constellation is described as follows, as a picture of a person with arms but no legs:

3.12 The figure has one star on the head; one on each shoulder (the one on the left shoulder, called Capra [Capella] is brighter); one on each elbow, one on the right hand; two on the left (left) hand which are called Kids, located near the western stars. The total is eight.

(illustration and text from Theony Condos, Star Myths of the Greeks and Romans: A Sourcebook; Grand Rapids, MI, Phanes Press, 1997, pp. 49 and 52)

(17) Auriga in El Jardín de las Delicias

2006-04-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

An image of the constellation Auriga in El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights is like the one in Bruegel's drawing of The Beekeepers, but much less precise. It more or less resembles the constellation as it appears in the sky and on a modern star map (that is, not reversed left to right). Like the image of Orion in The Pedlar, the image of Auriga can be identified with some certainty because the painting includes other surrounding constellations, which will be shown above in a larger map.

(16) St. Jerome, Venice

2006-04-28T03:53:00.000-07:00

In a painting of St. Jerome in Venice, the lion looks even more like the sign for Leo and less like a real lion.

(15) Saint Jerome and astrologers' glyphs

2006-04-28T03:46:00.000-07:00

But the glyph for Libra looks more like a hat than a balance. The painting seems to be not so much an illustration of the constellations as it is an illustration of how to recognize the signs astrologers use to represent Leo and Libra in a horoscope.
If the painting of St. Jerome in Ghent is really by Hieronymus Bosch, as all the modern literature on Bosch agrees, then it demonstrates that Bosch was incorporating astrological signs in a realistic looking picture almost in the same way that later artists included New World hieroglyphs in European-style paintings. The problem is that it is difficult to be sure whether a "Bosch" painting is really the work of Hieronymus Bosch or whether it is an imitation, even when dendrochronological analysis can prove that the wood on which it is painted is old.

(14) cardinal's hat

2006-04-28T03:42:00.000-07:00

Saint Jerome's cardinal's hat can be read as an image of Libra (the Scales) because of its elaborate tassels, which make it look somewhat like a balance.

(13) Apianus map

2006-04-28T03:36:00.000-07:00

On a map by Petrus Apianus from 1540, Leo, Virgo, and Libra are in the same direction as in the painting.

(12) Farnese Atlas globe

2006-04-28T03:28:00.000-07:00

The constellations in the painting of St. Jerome are shown backwards, the way they appear on star globes and on old maps. An engraving of the Farnese Atlas illustrates the way a small group of stars looks large on a globe.

(11) Saint Jerome, constellations

2006-04-28T03:18:00.000-07:00

A painting of St. Jerome in Ghent, usually attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, can be read as a star map. The lion is Leo, St. Jerome is Virgo, his cardinal's hat is Libra, and below the three zodiac constellations a floating spherical object is the constellation Crater, a small bird is Corvo, and the water is Hydra.

(10) hidden images in the Prado St. Anthony

2006-04-22T02:42:00.000-07:00

There are similar "hidden images" in the painting of Saint Anthony in the Museo del Prado.

(9) Orion near the horizon

2006-04-20T00:05:00.000-07:00

The idea of showing Orion's belt as a separate object might also come from the experience of seeing the three stars rising. In northern latitudes, they can be mistaken for a radio tower.
When the three stars are just above the horizon, the bright star Sirius is a hidden image that will appear a certain time later. (In The Beekeepers, Sirius is invisible since it is to the left of the edge of the drawing.)

(8) Orion and the Dresden Codex

2006-04-19T23:52:00.000-07:00

POSTCARD showing a woodcut illustration of Orion from an edition of Hyginus, and the detail from the Dresden Codex. The idea of putting the stars in Orion's belt on something a person is carrying might have come from the European illustration, or from the Dresden Codex, or both.

(7) The Pedlar, map of Ursa Major

2006-04-19T22:12:00.000-07:00

Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) is a hidden image. This map shows the way only part of Ursa Major is visible in the painting. It is marked by the line of the roof of the building, and an imaginary line from the corner of the roof to a small bird in the tree just over the peddler's head. The long pole leaning against the side of the building is exactly the length of the "missing" imaginary line from the corner of the buildng to the small bird.

(6) The Pedlar, map of Orion

2006-04-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

The map of Orion in The Pedlar only shows a few stars in a precise way, including the three stars of Orion's belt and the bright star Sirius, which is part of Canis Major. (Ursa Major will be shown in the next post. ) An easy way to find Sirius is to find Orion, and imagine a line drawn through the three belt stars to the brightest star in the area. The rest of the constellation is only an approximation, unlike The Beekeepers which matches a modern star map closely. But in The Pedlar, unlike The Beekeepers, it is easy to identify some surrounding constellations. Canis Major is not shown, but Canis Minor is represented by a small dog. Two people in the doorway of the inn represent Gemini (the Twins), and a bull or cow represents Taurus. The road the peddler is following stands for the Milky Way. The purpose of the picture might be to help remember the names of some of the constellations, including some of their Arabic names (see Gilchrist, Susan Fargo, "The Good Thief imagined as a peddler," in Source 17:2, 1998, pp. 4-14).
The interesting thing about the way the painting represents the imaginary line from Orion's belt to Sirius as a wooden staff is that the idea might come from the Dresden Codex. In the Dresden Codex a person or supernatural is carrying a staff with three openings or dots, and also (like the peddler) has a round object in the other hand and a spotted cat on his back. It appears as though the artist who painted The Pedlar, if he or she was copying the Dresden Codex, thought the staff with three marks represented the three stars in Orion's belt.

(5) about this blog

2006-04-19T01:36:00.000-07:00

This blog is for the purpose of explaining a long, complicated interpretation of The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias (Museo del Prado), which will require an unusual number of illustrations because the triptych in the Prado is based partly on New World and partly on European models. Postings will include postcards with short explanations, some pictures with longer explanations, and chapters from an article in progress.
POSTCARDS are 4x6 photo composites that I sometimes print on card stock and send in the mail, and sometimes tape together to make a fanfold book that can be mailed as a single fat postcard. The composites and all text on this website (except comments) are copyright 2006 Susan Gilchrist.

(4) The Beekeepers, map of Orion

2006-04-19T01:27:00.000-07:00

POSTCARD composite showing a hidden star map in Pieter Bruegel's drawing of The Beekeepers. This drawing is an imitation of The Pedlar, with a star map that is much more difficult to find and also much more precise. The scale and precision of the map on which the drawing was apparently based suggest that it was made with the aid of a flat mirror, most likely a highly polished copper plate since the drawing was suitable for engraving. (click on the image for a larger picture)

(3) Dresden Codex and The Pedlar

2006-04-19T01:20:00.000-07:00

Detail from the Dresden Codex and The Pedlar, Rotterdam. The Pedlar is usually attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, but if it is based on the picture in the Dresden Codex, it must be later and it must be the work of a different artist. (click on the image for a larger picture)

(2) Dresden Codex and El Jardín de las Delicias

2006-04-15T15:35:00.000-07:00

POSTCARD comparing The Garden of Earthly Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias, the Dresden Codex, and a Maya vase
(click on the image for a larger picture)

(1) key to the chronology

2006-04-15T15:04:00.000-07:00

POSTCARD key to the Mixtec/Nahuatl chronology in The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias (click on the image for a larger picture)