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Audio Stop 542

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A naked man with ghostly white skin sits upright in a canopied bed set in a narrow room in this tall, vertical painting. Wearing a black cap, he looks to our left in profile toward a skeleton who comes through a door along the left edge of the composition. The man gestures at the skeleton with one hand and, with the other, toward a bag of money held up by a small demon next to the bed to our left. The skeleton wears a white shroud and holds an arrow. A winged angel kneels next to the man in the bed, one hand on the man’s shoulder and the other lifted to gesture at a crucifix hanging in the window over the door. A small devil on the canopy above looks down onto the bed. At the foot of the bed, a man wearing a green robe and headdress drops coins into a sack held by another demon. Three more demons crawl about and hide under the chest. Pieces of armor and weapons lie on the ground to the right in front of a stone ledge in the foreground. Two pieces of clothing drape over the ledge to our left.

Hieronymus Bosch

Death and the Miser, c. 1485/1490

West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 41

This panel by Hieronymus Bosch shows us the last moments in the life of a miser, just before his eternal fate is decided. A little monster peeping out from under the bed-curtains tempts the miser with a bag of gold, while an angel kneeling at the right encourages him to acknowledge the crucifix in the window. Death, holding an arrow, enters at the left. Oppositions of good and evil occur throughout the painting. A lantern containing the fire of hell, carried by the demon atop the bed canopy, balances the cross emitting a single ray of divine light.

Read full audio transcript

NARRATOR:
This 500-year old wood panel, known as Death and the Miser, is one of only a handful of paintings by Hieronymus Bosch in the United States. Drawing on a tradition known as Ars Moriendi, or the Art of Dying, it depicts the dramatic last moments of a miser who has one last chance to save himself from Hell.

Curator John Hand.

JOHN HAND:
“As you can see, the miser is in bed; and Death is coming through the door at the left and our miser has to make a decision whether to look up, recognize the crucifix in the upper left hand window; the angel is imploring him to receive salvation, renounce sin; and on the other hand, there is a wonderful little demon who has popped through the bed curtain and is handing the miser a sack and we can assume there’s lots of money in that sack. And so the miser has to make a choice.”

“The miser does not look up or down he’s transfixed by the figure of Death. There are, however, other indications as to how the scene will turn out. Looking at the foot of the bed, you can see that there’s a figure dressed in green. And what he’s doing with one hand is to put money into a chest where there’s a little rat-faced demon. And in the other hand he’s fingering a rosary. And what he’s trying to do is to serve God and Mammon at the same time.”

“The elements in the foreground are harder to interpret. As you can see, there is a little demon leaning in a melancholy pose against a cloak and a jacket and there is some armor in the foreground you have to realize you’re looking at the exterior left wing of an altarpiece and the exterior right wing likely would have continued the subject in the foreground, and so without the missing elements, we don’t know exactly how to interpret the painting. However, what I think we can say with some certainty is that our miser is not going to Heaven.”

"In fact, the little winged demon appears often in Bosch's works, almost like a signature. Don't miss the hairy demon above the bed, looking down eagerly and carrying a small sample of the fires of hell."

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