Bosch’s hell catches the eye more than heaven in the “Garden of Earthly Delights”

What do we see when we see a painting Javier Solana, President of the Board of Directors of the Prado Museum, asked himself this Monday: we are not all looking at the same thing or at the same place and, specifically, in front garden of pleasures El Bosca, the visitor sees more hell than heaven. This is shown by a scientific study in which Prado collaborates with the Biomedical Neuroengineering Group of the Miguel Hernández University (UHM) in Alicante. The technology used recorded the position of the subjects in the room, measured the time each one looked at the painting — one of the most visited — and which part of the work they paid the most attention to. Bosch painted this triptych in 1500, which he envisioned as a conversation piece, since at the first destination its owners invited the elite of the time to discuss it.

The research was conducted in January, and 52 people of different nationalities participated, aged 10 to 70, 60 percent women and 40 percent men. “It is not a very large sample, but it is representative for evaluating the data,” reports Eduardo Fernández Jover, director of the UMH group. The research’s expectations have been met more than expected, according to Fernández, since one of its goals was to allow blind people with brain stimulation to have some functional vision, helping with tasks such as orientation or mobility. To do this, “it’s very important to know where we have to look, and this image, with so many areas to fixate on, helps us know what might be more important,” he points out.

Participants viewed the painting wearing glasses with wireless cameras that allow a “fresh and real” visualization of their eye movements, which found that watching the panel of Hell was 33.2 seconds per square meter, compared to 26 seconds for the central table and 16 for Heaven.

In addition, they simultaneously recorded the size of the pupils, which provides relevant information about emotional reactions. “When they look at God, the pupils dilate more. And in the slab of hell, with the vision of cut off ears and a knife, that also happens,” says Fernández Jover.

The technology that made it possible to observe every detail in terms of visitors, their forgetfulness, fixation on something specific, re-watching or the fact that due to the size of the canvas, the lower and upper parts are less observed.

The researchers did not determine whether it was curiosity or fear of hell, that is, the fact that the mysterious portrait of the painter is on that side of the painting, that determines the view towards him, but they made an iconographic measurement, based on the time observation of elements such as fountains or some birds, how would create a “heat map” of the areas that attract the most attention.

This view from a scientific point of view, not just an artistic one, will not be limited to this painting, according to comments from the museum, and will continue with other emblematic paintings in the art gallery, among them Las Meninas by Velazquez.