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The picture shows a detail of the central panel, representing the Orange Grove (after Fraenger).
Scholars of Dutch literature identified many of the forms in the central panel - fruit, animals, the exotic mineral structures in the background - as erotic symbols inspired by the popular songs, sayings and slang expressions of Bosch's time. For example: many of the fruits nibbled and held by the lovers in the garden serve as metaphors of the sexual organs. The group of youths and maidens picking fruit in the right middleground also possesses erotic connotations: "to pluck fruit" (or flowers) was a euphemism for the sexual act.
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