BOSCH, Hieronymus
(b. ca. 1450, 's-Hertogenbosch, d. 1516, 's-Hertogenbosch)

Allegory of Gluttony and Lust

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Oil on panel, 36 x 32 cm
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven

The intimate association between Gluttony and Lust in the medieval moral system was expressed by Bosch in this fragment of a painting at Yale University. Gluttony is personified by the swimmers at the upper left who have gathered around a large wine barrel straddled by a pot-bellied peasant. Another man swims closer to shore, his vision obscured by the meat pie balanced on his head. This scene is followed, on the right, by a pair of lovers in a tent, another motif reminiscent of the Lust scene in the Prado "Tabletop". That they should be engaged in drinking wine is entirely appropriate: "Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus" (Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes); this tag from Terence was well known to the Middle Ages, and that Gluttony and Drunkenness lead to Lust was a lesson that the moralizers never tired of driving home to their audiences.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.