Hieronymus Bosch’s Medieval Painting, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” Comes to Life in a Gigantic, Modern Animation

For the 500-year anniver­sary of Hierony­mus Bosch’s death, the MOTI Muse­um in Hol­land com­mis­sioned a mod­ern re-inter­pre­ta­tion of the Dutch painter’s famous medieval paint­ing, “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” (cir­ca 1490). If you’re not famil­iar with Bosch’s enig­mat­ic cre­ation, explore these two items before you do any­thing else:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

New App Lets You Explore Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Then check out the video above, which gives you a glimpse of the gigan­tic video instal­la­tion that’s on dis­play at the MOTI through Decem­ber 31st.

Here’s how the Dutch ani­ma­tors behind this project explain what’s unfold­ing before your eyes:

[We] cleared the orig­i­nal land­scape of the mid­dle pan­el of Bosch’s paint­ing and recon­struct­ed it into a hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry 4K ani­ma­tion. The crea­tures that pop­u­late this indoor play­ground embody the excess­es and desires of 21st cen­tu­ry West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. Con­sumerism, self­ish­ness, escapism, the lure of eroti­cism, van­i­ty and deca­dence. All char­ac­ters are metaphors for our soci­ety where lon­ers swarm their dig­i­tal dream world. They are sym­bol­ic reflec­tions of egos and an imag­i­na­tion of peo­ple as they see them­selves — unlike Bosch’s ver­sion, where all indi­vid­u­als more or less look the same. From a horny Hel­lo Kit­ty to a coke hunt­ing penis snake. From an incar­nate spy­bot to head­less fried chick­ens. These char­ac­ters, once pre­cise­ly paint­ed dream fig­ures, are now dig­i­tal­ly cre­at­ed 3D mod­els. All of them have been giv­en their own ani­ma­tion loop to wan­der through the land­scape. By plac­ing them alto­geth­er in this syn­thet­ic fres­co, the pic­ture is nev­er the same. What the ani­ma­tion and Bosch’s trip­tych have in com­mon is that you’ll hard­ly be able to take it all in, you can watch it for hours.

If you hap­pen to find your­self in Hol­land, you can expe­ri­ence the instal­la­tion first­hand (again before 12/31). Find direc­tions to the MOTI here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 273,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

Down­load All 36 of Jan Vermeer’s Beau­ti­ful­ly Rare Paint­ings (Most in Stun­ning High Res­o­lu­tion)

Take a Mul­ti­me­dia Tour of the But­tock Song in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Dis­cov­er 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Khan Acad­e­my & Google Art Project

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Down­load 464 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art