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Bosch's 'Hell Bird' Garden of Earthly Delights (1 Viewer)

Alexander Stöhr said:
Beeing an well-known painting in artists circles, I assumed that some people have asked the question about ID of the birds before:

The birds in The Garden of Earthly Delights |

We invite you to birdwatch in The Garden of Earthly Delights, the masterpiece of Hieronymus Bosch
birding140.com birding140.com
Please note, that Bosch used many species that represent attributes/characters understood by people of that time (I am no expert in this, so if this of deeper interest, others should jump in)

Tom, it was painted betwenn 1490 and 1500.
Click to expand...

I mostly agree with the IDs given in the link. I note they didn't attempt to ID the presumed Jay in the top-left corner. Complicating things is that there is an easily identifiable eurasian Jay elsewhere in the painting. There's also a well-rendered Tit (great? blue? Not my specialty). Bosch either was very familiar with some birds or had access to stuffed birds as models. When he's accurate, he's quite accurate. So I have to quibble with the "female mallard" identified by birding140.com in this section of the painting. It's a male in eclipse plumage.

I too am intrigued by the birds in the lower right of Simoncarr's screen capture. They seem detailed and lifelike, but I don't recognize them. One might be an ibis - maybe an African Sacred Ibis conflated with something else? It's clear that Bosch did not limit himself to European fauna: the painting includes camels, and some long-tailed green birds that must be parrots.
 
If you look at the left panel, some birds are realistic (e.g. the Hooded Crow), some are just made up by Jeroen Bosch (whose fantasy seems to have been endlessly disturbing).

I think the small bird on the egg on the left panel (the "shrike") could well be a wren. There are lots of birds coming to visit it, which could mean it's the king of birds, which the Dutch and German names (which seem to go back to the 15th century) allude to (Winterkoning, Zaunkönig).
 
The “ibis” also reminds me of some of the paintings of Mauritius Red Rail; not suggesting that as an identity of the Bosch bird, but wondering if Bosch’s painting might have influenced later painters of the rail?
 
I agree that Bosch was surprisingly accurate with many of the birds, so wouldn't be very quick to dismiss the ones not yet identified. Perhaps he had access to African and Indian bird skins too...he does after all depict elephants and something like a giraffe.

Either way, a remarkable if disturbing work for such an early date.
 
Simoncarr said:
Hi all: I'm writing a monograph on the above painting. In the right panel (Hell) there is a predator bird sitting on his - let's call it a throne. He is devouring a horizontal man. Any idea what that bird is? Or what it is most like?

commons.wikimedia.org

File:Bosch, Hieronymus - The Garden of Earthly Delights, right panel - Detail Bird-headed monster or The Prince of Hell - close-up head (lower right).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org commons.wikimedia.org

Your expert opinion will be highly valued.

Many thx!
Click to expand...
A pretty decent depiction of an Oilbird to me which is also known as the Devil bird.
 
The bird in the upper left corner of the multi-bird picture looks to me very like a female Hooded Merganser. I realize it seems unlikely that Bosch could have seen one, but perhaps its not impossible he saw a stuffed speicmen of a vagrant that someone killed and kept as a curiosity.
 
Andy Adcock said:
Well he had up to 18 years to get his hands on a specimen, you don't think it looks like an Oilbird clearly?
Click to expand...

I think it looks very like an oilbird Andy. I also think the chances of Bosch encountering one, dead or alive, are very slim indeed.
But we'll never know.

btw if anyone is at all interested someone took the time to transcribe* the music painted on the person's backside and it's on YouTube. It's actually very beautiful.


*That's probably not the right word. Interpret maybe.
 
Post #5:

Art critics say this is a shrike but I though the beak was too long for that . . . ?
Click to expand...

I think almost all of what seems to be the 'bill' is something else, and that this is a swallow (or a swift).
 
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