Video 9. The Swindling Swine and the Suffering Soul

There's only one person in Hell who is really tormented – and it's grief she is suffering from, not sin.

There are several anecdotes in the triptych – some short stories, many jokes. But there are also two complex narratives, each with a surprising pay-off to conclude. Like so many of the extra delights, they are hiding in plain sight, unnoticed or unremarked by critics, scholars and commentators.

The vignette of the seductive swine in the lower right hand corner of the Hell panel is well known, but the story it prefaces – that’s all new.

It’s been suggested that the text of the video is included below, so let’s see how that works. It’s not a complete transcription, some of the text got lost in the excitement. But this is what there is . . .

Today in the Garden of Earthly Delights – we're going to look at a famous scene starring a Holy Hog. And we're going to uncover a narrative in it. with several unsuspected layers of extra delights – it's largely a comic narrative but it ends in a way I can’t quite categorise.

At the outset – we see Sister Swine vamping the sinner at her side - and she's really throwing herself into it. She’s squeezing her eyes shut with passion, - nuzzling and nibbling her victim's ear and very possibly whispering into it:

‘Sign it! Go on, sign the paper! It’s good for you, it’s good for me, we’re all winners if you only sign the paper!’

Her little hind-trotters are, chastely placed together. The man is resisting, turning his face away. There is a parchment on his leg, with red seals. It’s a legal document of some sort.

But sad to say, the Sister’s affections are insincere. In close-up, her passionate eye isn’t shut at all; she is squinting at him with cold cunning. So, what do we think is going on?

There are several plausible interpretations. She’s certainly wheedling. And almost for sure, trying to wheedle him into signing the document. Is she trying to get him to sell his soul? Or maybe she's getting him to buy indulgences to limit his time in hell? Or to sign over his earthly property to the Church?

All are possibilities suggested by Bosch scholars. Margaret Sullivan, for instance, tells us:

The pig and the document, are a visually precise allusion to a famous Menippean satire, The Will of a Pig. the phrase was generally recognized as the title of an ancient satire and was associated with the cupidity of the clergy.

But don't stop there. That’s just the start of it. Bosch has spun a complex narrative out of this Menippean beginning. Look at the Notary, behind the swindling swine. He has an unexplained expression. He is shocked. In the old phrase he has found something literally ‘jaw-dropping’. And why?

He is looking across the scene at the overturned gambling table where, in the ordinary way of Hell, a rat demon is gripping a man by the throat and pushing a sword into his chest.

The other unremarked feature in all of this is the face of the gambler. It has a long nose. A pointed chin. And a forelock a bit like a quiff.

If we compare it with the man being nuzzled by Sister Holy Hog, they are uncannily similar.

But they're not quite the same man. The nose on the left has a little lift towards the end; and the chin on the right, that comes to more of a point. So, they are different people.

But, their similarity may explain the shock on the face of the Notary. It’s possible to think the gambler with the sword in his chest is the man that Sister Swine was actually after. He had money. He gambled with it. He lost everything.

So, she is wasting her time because - she’s nuzzling the wrong man! They have mistaken their victim. The moment of realisation is writ large in the Notary’s expression.

Okay, can I put in a dissenting opinion? Because I want to ask - what about the woman reaching down, trying to stop the sword hand of the demon? - In what way is she, comic?

She is said to be a prostitute. The candle she is carrying is reported to be the sign of a medieval sex worker.

Yeah, I've heard that. You know, male art critics are very quick to label women in the triptick. These women over here for instance – they're supposed to be prostitutes too – even though they don't look anything like that. And this dignified looking woman up here? Prostitute! What makes anyone want to think she is a prostitute?

Scholars say the headgear is a sign of the prostitute.

I don’t buy that. It's standard headwear for medieval nobility. But let's not argue about it. Even if it is the case that this poor woman is a sex worker, it is the least interesting thing about her. She is suffering, she is in the throes of the most profound grief. Look she is trying to stay the sword hand of the demon who is executing the young man.

I want to retrieve her reputation. - In my eyes, she was in some sort of relationship with the man, who is being executed in front of her, and she can't bear it. It is unbearable for her. This is a deeply felt portrayal of the profoundest human grief. The most sympathetic portrait of womanly suffering. More even than any pietà.

It's a good point, well made. All I can say is that, in this narrative of Sister Swine, the comic and the tragic seem to co-exist, in a strangely modern way. But as you say: Let’s not argue about it. Because there are a number of incidental delights to be aware of. So, we’re going to leave you with them.

Item one. The satanic little helper, one of Bosch’s hybrid creatures, with a bird beak, peering through his visor. And his ink pot and quill holder. He has the legs of a baby with an incongruous arrow in one of them. Note the claws he has for feet. And from that fabulously spiked arc of a hellish bramble, he’s dangling a severed foot with a square bone sticking out. Scholars interpret these things in various ways but let us relish the creative energy that Bosch has invested here. Moving along, we should note that the Notary has a red, drinker’s nose. He also has a toad on his shoulder. Over on the other side of the scene – on the rat demon’s back – a severed hand mirrors the blessing hand of Christ in the Eden panel. I agree, that's not exactly comic.

Interestingly, the die is correctly numbered, unlike the die on the grieving woman's head. There’s some very lush detailing in the demon's footwear, attaching him to his curious clogs. He has an inexplicable wooden spoon sunk into his leg just above the heel. And he is dressed in a very stylishly embroidered, black and silver, ensemble. Bosch’s gift for decoration and graphic design deserves attention of its own.

And there we are – the extra delights to be found in the narrative of Sister Swine.

So, here we leave you, in the hope of seeing you for the next episode – for an explication of an even more complex and extended narrative, in the other two panels – beginning with this tragic little fellow and ending with the other gloriously comic hog in the triptych. What a mother she is. Thanks for watching.