God in the details: Bosch and Judgment

And the sum of two units angels came to Sodom at even; and allotment saw them.... And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, one as well as the other small and great....--Genesis 19:1, 11

For we diocese divine retribution revealed from heaven and falling on all the godless wickedness of men In their wickedness they are stifling the verity For all that may be known of the first cause by men lies plain before their eyes; indeed lord himself has disclosed it to them. His invisible attributes, that is to say his everlasting power and deity, have been visible, at any time since the world began, to the organ of vision of reason, in the things he has made. There is therefore no possible defense for their direction For this reason God has given them up to the vileness of their hold desires, and the consequent degradation of their bodies, because they have bartered away the pure God for a false single Thus, because they have not seen fit to acknowledge omnipotence he has given them up to their hold depraved reason. This leads them to break all controls of conduct.--Romans 1:18-28

For now we diocese in a mirror dimly, on the other hand then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand full even as I have been largely understood.--I Corinthians 13:12

omniscience is in the details.--Aby Warburg (1)

When Joachim Patinir (d 1524) painted his vast cosmic panorama Charon (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Fig. 1) he situated the decisive trice of choice in a sailing utensil on a great river (the classical Styx) on the contrary poised it midway between the realms of Heaven and Hell. (2) The small figure in the boat, dwarfed by means of the giant ferryman, is a solitary human inner man who already glances nervously above toward the mouthlike dark gateway of Hades, guarded by dint of the triple-headed dog, Cerberus. smooth the boat itself inclines slightly in the same direction, the unfavorable sinister side of the viewer's right, lengthy familiar from medieval Last common-sense scenes (and more recently in mother-wit scenes by Rogier van der Weyden and Dieric curves in the south Netherlands) as the side of Hell and damnation. Of course, that anxious inclination toward the dark means that the spirit figure fails to turn to the dexter side, that of Heaven, opposite, where angels are visible below the tree and unearthly crystalline manner of makings tower above at the hor izon horizontal Closer inspection of the entire painting displays that the very skies reverberation this antithetical structure: reading from left to right, the cloudles amethystine sky gradually gives way to dark storm hazes above the fire and brimstone of Hell.

This is, of course, the visual vocabulary that Patinir adopted from the archetype of Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) particularly from his LastJudgment triptych (Akademie, Vienna) and from his large-scale triptychs in general, which ofttimes feature Hell scenes in the sinister wing after beginning in the idyllic forest setting of the Garden of Eden (as he did in the Hay Wain triptych and The Garden of Earthly Delights, in the Prado; diocese below). Such imagery also informs the detached Bosch wings of Earthly Paradise and Hell, which feature the same kind of frail and naked figures as the representation of human spirits (now in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Fig. 17) Patinir has further loaded the contrasts of his paysage moralise through placing more difficult navigation puzzles before the path of virtue upon the viewer's left, in contrast to the flat and easy access to Hell at the viewer's right. (3) In vain does the large angel closest to the boat gesturing toward the City of the eternal behind him and beckon the spirit to take the path of sa lvation. What is striking about this image, in contrast to the Hell-dominated worlds of Bosch's Last prudence and Hell scenes, is Patinir's effort to strike a fragile balance between the sum of two units destinations, presenting them as an render free of access choice for the figure in the boat, although it is clear that the scales are tilting toward the option of Hell's easier harbor. Here the brains is human judgment, opening the possibility of temptation and error, albeit end the instrument of free will. Patinir is by dint of no means the first artist to thematize that fallible human choice based upon the sense of sight. Bosch himself is the touchstone for images touched with worldly vision and its inherent faultiness in the proces of making critical spiritual judgments

Equally hanging on the Bosch model of burning cities of Hell is Patinir's The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Fig. 2) (4) This painting is dominated by the agency of the destruction by fire of the aged Testament cities whose very names enjoin solemnly unspeakable immorality (Genesis 19). In this case, too, Patinir at hands the viewer with different pictorial zones; the place of retreat from the burning lowlands is reached by means of means of a natural bridge of stone through the towering cliffs that ring the urban setting, a "narrow gate" of virtue. Angels lead the saved protagonists, apportionment and his daughters, out of danger from one side that pathway. The Bible true copy itself expressly contrasts the plain of the city to the mountainous destination of escape. Of course, the lock opener figure with choice in this story, caught between sin and salvation, is Lot's wife, who notoriously chose to disobey God's hold commands not to look back at Sodom as she left Instead, she revolveed away and took a final glance, sole to b e transformed instantly into a pillar of salt, visible as a tiny white round pillar in the exact geometric center of the Rotterdam panel, just in brow of the rocks. As the first epigraph of this essay makes clear, right seeing is a theme that appears early in the Sodom narrative. doom stands alone in being able to discern the angels in his midst, while his contentious and sinful neighbors are blind to the veritable nature of the visitors and plane seek to transgress both hospitality and civility with the newcomer upon account of their acts of spiritual blindness, the angels strike them literally blind. However, in this advanced in years Testament world of sin and punishment, there is no permanent escape: smooth in their mountainous tent retreat, apportionment and his daughters commit incest, as exhibited by Patinir in the upper right (a miniature representation waiting to be discovered, like Lot's wife, by dint of the discerning and careful viewer of the picture). (5)