Death of the Miser
Encyclopedia
Death and the Miser is a Hieronymus Bosch painting. It is currently in the National Gallery of Art
in Washington, D.C.
The painting is the inside of the right panel of a divided triptych. The other existing portions of the triptych are The Ship of Fools
and Allegory of Gluttony and Lust
.
Death and the Miser belongs to the tradition of the memento mori
, which works to warn the beholder of the inevitability of death. The painting also shows the influence of popular 15th-century handbooks on the art of dying (the Ars moriendi
), designed to remind Christians that they must choose between sinful pleasures and the way of Christ. As Death looms on his threshold, the miser, unable to resist worldly temptations even in his last minutes of life, reaches for the bag of gold offered to him by a demon while an angel points to a crucifix, inviting the man to turn to Christ.
We can see a reference to the broad way and the narrow way : A crucifix is set on the only (small) window of the room. A thin ray of light is breaking through. The bottom of the large room is darkened and a demon holding an ember is lurking over the dying man, waiting for his hour. The darkness seems ready to engulf the entire scene. Anger is represented by a curtain of the bed folded like a fist. Because of it, the dying man can't see both the face of Death (dressed in such a way that it can be an allegory for a prostitute) ready to impale his groin (indicating that the dying man suffers from venereal disease, which itself may be further conflated with a love of earthly pleasures) and the last ray of light that could have driven his attention to the only window. The outcome, whether or not the miser will embrace the salvation offered by Christ in the moments before his death, or ultimately cling to the emptiness of worldly riches, is uncertain.
In the foreground, Bosch possibly depicts the miser as he was previously, in full health, storing gold in his money chest while clutching his rosary. Symbols of worldly power such as a helmet, sword, and shield allude to earthly follies - and hint at the station held by this man during his life, though his final struggle is one he must undergo naked, without arms or armor. The depiction of such still-life objects to symbolize earthly vanity, transience, or decay would become a genre in itself among 17th-century Flemish artists.
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
The painting is the inside of the right panel of a divided triptych. The other existing portions of the triptych are The Ship of Fools
Ship of Fools (painting)
Ship of Fools is a painting by Hieronymus Bosch which may be intended to exemplify the human condition. The painting is dense in symbolism and is indebted to, if not actually satirical of Albrecht Dürer's frontispiece of Sebastian Brant's book of the same name.The painting as we see it today is a...
and Allegory of Gluttony and Lust
Allegory of Gluttony and Lust
Allegory of Gluttony and Lust is a Hieronymus Bosch painting made sometime between 1490 and 1500. It is currently in the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut....
.
Death and the Miser belongs to the tradition of the memento mori
Memento mori
Memento mori is a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember you must die" or "Remember you will die". It names a genre of artistic work which varies widely, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality...
, which works to warn the beholder of the inevitability of death. The painting also shows the influence of popular 15th-century handbooks on the art of dying (the Ars moriendi
Ars moriendi
The Ars moriendi are two related Latin texts dating from about 1415 and 1450 which offer advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death, explaining how to "die well" according to Christian precepts of the late Middle Ages...
), designed to remind Christians that they must choose between sinful pleasures and the way of Christ. As Death looms on his threshold, the miser, unable to resist worldly temptations even in his last minutes of life, reaches for the bag of gold offered to him by a demon while an angel points to a crucifix, inviting the man to turn to Christ.
We can see a reference to the broad way and the narrow way : A crucifix is set on the only (small) window of the room. A thin ray of light is breaking through. The bottom of the large room is darkened and a demon holding an ember is lurking over the dying man, waiting for his hour. The darkness seems ready to engulf the entire scene. Anger is represented by a curtain of the bed folded like a fist. Because of it, the dying man can't see both the face of Death (dressed in such a way that it can be an allegory for a prostitute) ready to impale his groin (indicating that the dying man suffers from venereal disease, which itself may be further conflated with a love of earthly pleasures) and the last ray of light that could have driven his attention to the only window. The outcome, whether or not the miser will embrace the salvation offered by Christ in the moments before his death, or ultimately cling to the emptiness of worldly riches, is uncertain.
In the foreground, Bosch possibly depicts the miser as he was previously, in full health, storing gold in his money chest while clutching his rosary. Symbols of worldly power such as a helmet, sword, and shield allude to earthly follies - and hint at the station held by this man during his life, though his final struggle is one he must undergo naked, without arms or armor. The depiction of such still-life objects to symbolize earthly vanity, transience, or decay would become a genre in itself among 17th-century Flemish artists.