For Closer Look: Bosch’s Garden of Early Delights: Look ahead to Chapter 17 at the painting of The Meat Stall by Peter Aertsen (Figure 17.15) painted some 40 years after Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. What do the two paintings have in common?

What will be an ideal response?

Both Garden of Earthly Delights and The Meat Stall appear to be displays of happiness and wealth. Garden of Earthly Delights depicts hundreds of naked young men and women frolicking in a garden full of giant berries and other fruits and lovers variously shown in transparent columns or globes of glass. Similarly, Meat Stall appears to be a celebration of abundance and prosperity. As one looks more closely, however, each painting reflects a more conservative religious view. In Bosch’s work, the pleasure of life develops into the tortures of hell, and in Aertsen’s painting the excess of the meaty feast is contrasted to the poverty and charity seen in the background of the painting.