The Hieronymus Bosch art book: one triptych, thirty-five pictures
A look inside Fable Editions' Bosch volume, which opens the Garden of Earthly Delights whole, maps it, then gives 35 of its details a page each.
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: Heaven, Hell and Everything Between. A 29.4 cm square hardcover of 100 pages.
Most art books give The Garden of Earthly Delights one spread and move on. It is the wrong size for that. Open, the triptych at the Prado is almost four metres wide, and every part of it is crowded with figures, animals, fruit and machines that make no sense until you get close. Surrealium has spent years printing it one detail at a time, each cut so it stands as a picture of its own. The Bosch volume of Fable Editions is built on that idea. It shows the whole Garden first. Then each of its three panels comes back as a map, with every detail numbered where it sits. Then each detail gets a full page, with a small copy of the whole triptych beside it and its place lit, so you always know where you are in the painting. Thirty-five pictures come out of one painting. Here are the pages of the preview, in the order they appear in the book.
Prints of the pages in the book
Every detail in the Bosch book is also a Surrealium print in Masterworks; here are eight of them, from all three panels of the Garden.
The Tower of Birds
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The pale tower of birds from the left wing, detail 1 in the book and a print that hangs on its own.
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God Presents Eve
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Christ presenting Eve to Adam, the scene at the foot of the left wing, detail 5 in the book.
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The Fountain of Life
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The pink fountain at the centre of Eden, one of Fable’s own close-ups from the museum’s photograph.
From $39
The Lovers in the Bubble
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The two lovers in their glass sphere, a few centimetres on the panel and a whole page in the book.
From $39
The Strawberry Butterfly
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Figures under the winged strawberry, from low in the centre panel, detail 22 in the book.
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The Owl
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The great owl staring out of the garden of pleasures, one of the details the centre map numbers.
From $39
The Knife
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The great blade of Bosch’s hell, detail 30 in the book, set as a picture of its own.
From $39
The Prince of Hell
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The bird-headed prince of hell on his throne, one of Fable’s own close-ups from the right wing.
From $39
1. The whole Garden, open
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: the Garden of Earthly Delights, whole.
The book opens Part I on the triptych as it hangs in Madrid: paradise on the left wing, the garden of pleasures in the centre and hell on the right, laid across the page whole, with nothing cut away.
Everything that follows is a part of this one picture.
See every print marked on the triptych
2. The map of the left wing
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: the left wing, the Garden of Eden, as a map.
The Garden of Eden comes back on its own page with thin outlines and numbers on it. Each number is a detail on the pages that follow, so the wing becomes the contents page for its own section.
3. The Tower of Birds
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: detail 1, the Tower of Birds.
A pale tower rises from the grass of paradise while birds stream in and out of it. Beneath the detail, the small triptych shows its spot lit in the upper left wing.
4. The Fountain of Life
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: detail 3, the Fountain of Life.
The pink fountain stands in the pond at the centre of Eden. This page is one of Fable's own close-ups, cut from the museum's photograph.
See the Fountain of Life print
5. The Curious Cliff
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: detail 4, the Curious Cliff.
A strange outcrop of rock at the water's edge, with a swan on the water below it. It is a corner of the left wing that most people walk past.
6. God Presents Eve
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: detail 5, God Presents Eve.
Christ takes Eve by the hand and presents her to Adam, who sits up on the grass. The lit square on the small triptych sits at the foot of the left wing.
See the God Presents Eve print
7. The map of the centre panel
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: the centre panel as a map.
The garden of pleasures holds the most details in the book, so its map is the busiest page. The numbers run from the towers at the top down through the riders and the fruit to the lovers at the bottom.
8. The Lovers in the Bubble
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: detail 19, the Lovers in the Bubble.
Two lovers sit inside a glass sphere that grows from a seed pod. On the whole painting it is a few centimetres across; here it fills the page.
See the Lovers in the Bubble print
9. The Strawberry Butterfly
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: detail 22, the Strawberry Butterfly.
Figures crowd under a giant strawberry with wings. The small triptych shows how low in the centre panel it sits.
See the Strawberry Butterfly print
10. The Forbidden Kiss
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: detail 24, the Forbidden Kiss.
Two faces meet in a kiss, so close that the cracks in the old paint show across them.
11. The map of hell
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: the right wing, hell, as a map.
The right wing turns dark, and its map does the same job as the others: every number is a page to come.
See the Infernal Symphony print
12. Frog Guard
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: detail 29, Frog Guard.
A scene from the darkness of hell, almost lost on the whole panel and easy to read on its own page.
13. The Knife
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: detail 30, the Knife.
The great blade of Bosch's hell, one of the strangest machines in the painting, set on a page of its own.
14. The Orchestration of Torment
Fable Editions, Hieronymus Bosch: detail 33, the Orchestration of Torment.
The musical hell: a harp, a lute and other instruments turned into instruments of punishment. It is the last of the details in the preview.
See the Orchestration of Torment print
The rest of the book is still being laid out the same way: the Haywain and the Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony, mapped and taken apart detail by detail, then the single panels, and prints made after Bosch's designs. Each copy opens with its own dedication. Every detail in these pages is also a print in Masterworks, so the picture you stop at in the book can hang on your wall.