Kirsten Kakadelas and Dr. Martha Peacock, Visual Arts
The mystery of Hieronymus Bosch’s intent has been debated for centuries. The iconography of his works poses many different questions and problems in determining his intent, meaning, and symbolism as an artist. Bosch encountered many different influences that had an effect and impact on his style and work. I set out to research the iconography of the panel of Saint Giles within the triptych of Hermit Saints by Hieronymus Bosch in the Ducal Palace in Venice. This research is helping my search in determining Bosch’s intent, meaning, symbolism, and influences in this panel.
The Golden Legend, written in the tenth century and popular during the Middle Ages, certainly influenced Bosch in his rendering of St. Giles. In the Legend Saint Giles performed many miracles, but fled his people because he feared the perils of being praised by men. He found a cave with a small spring in the desert and befriended a doe. The local king’s men hunted the doe down with their dogs and the doe fled to Giles. One huntsman shot an arrow that inflicted a serious wound on Giles as he prayed for his doe. The king begged his pardon and promised a physician and offered him presents, but Saint Giles refused medical care and rejected the gifts. A different king, King Charles, who had heard of Giles met with him and asked him to pray for him because he had committed an enormous crime. After some time, an angel appeared to Giles and deposited a scroll that said the king’s sin was forgiven because of Giles’s prayer.i Bosch’s depiction of St. Giles complies with The Golden Legend.
In his panel, Bosch pictures St. Giles in a cave chapel praying before an altar. An arrow has pierced his breast commemorating the time when he was shot by a hunter in the Golden Legend. St. Giles appears with his companion doe at his feet. Typically a deer whose head rested on a man’s lap signified Giles in other art pieces.ii He is dressed in a monastic garb, realistically depicted as an old hermit. Even though a hunter’s arrow has pierced St. Giles, these hunters of the world are not depicted in Bosch’s heavenly sphere created for St. Giles. He is pierced in his upper body yet he still prays fervently, likely for the doe and the people whose names are on the scroll. He becomes a type of Christ, Imitatio Christi, by taking the arrow and saving the deer from death and pain.
I researched the unusual creatures and objects on the panel. The emblem of Saint Giles is the arrow, symbol of the sufferings of the weak and afflicted protected by the compassionate saint.iii Bosch includes the arrow piercing the Saints breast providing clear identification as the Saint Giles. An arrow also symbolizes the power of a king or god.iv A scroll is also pictured attributing Giles as a saint signifying prayer and law.v In the depiction, he was praying for his doe and any others that were in need. The scroll also is likely referencing his praying for the king and others in their quest for forgiveness. In the foreground, a skull is depicted. This skull appears to be a deer, possibly being a type of vanitas reminder and that in death all of us are the same. The deer could have died from the hunter’s arrow, yet Giles’s doe is saved from the fate that the deer suffered whose skull is pictured.
In the background of the right of the panel, there appears to be another deer. It might depict the deer at a time before the hunt, with the middle ground depicting the deer as it hid from the hunters, and with the skull in the foreground noting the future death of the deer. The male deer, the stag, takes its symbolic significance from Psalm 42:1, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” The stag has come to signify piety and religious aspiration.vi The stag also seeks freedom and refuge in the high mountains coming to symbolize solitude and purity of life, much like the significance of a hermit saint.vii
The land around St. Giles is very deserted yet there appears to be a distant cityscape in the far right background. Other descriptions of the saint add to the legend describing the spot where St. Giles supposedly found his cave as being overgrown with trees and tangled with bushes, with the only inhabitants of which were wild beasts.viii On the left side of the panel, a berry bush is pictured following the story of St. Giles living off berries, water, herbs, and the doe’s milk. The cave St. Giles appears in is integrated naturally into the landscape scene.
I am currently researching other depictions of Saint Giles and his iconography to discover why Bosch included this saint in the triptych. I am still trying to analyze other figures of Saint Giles that Bosch employed in the completion of this panel and how these symbols may have influenced his depiction of the saint. I will continue to compile this research in my honors thesis, which will be finished in June.
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i Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Volume II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) 147.
ii Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Dictionary of Christian Art (New York: Continuum, 1994) 41.
iii A.L. Todd and Dorothy B. Weisbord, Favorite Subjects in Western Art (New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1968) 105.
iv James Hall, The Illustrated Dictionary of Symbols in Eastern and Western Art (London: Murray, 1994) 55.
v Adder Vries, Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery (New York: American Elsevier Publication Co., 1974) 405.
vi George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955) 26.
vii Ferguson 26.
viii F. Brittain, Saint Giles (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1928) 24.