Hieronymus Bosch wrote some music on a naked bum in The Garden of Earthly Delights and someone has recorded it

14 October 2016, 15:43

The Dutch painter is famous for his intricate and macabre visions of hell – but have you ever noticed this bizarre ditty painted on a poor sinner’s naked behind in his most famous painting?

Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is a three-part painting showing the Garden of Eden on the left and a vision of hell on the right. The central panel is something sort of in between – with some frankly crackers animals added for good measure.

Like these ones:

ANYWAY, we’re not here for the giant owls or even the couple having a great time in a mussel shell.

We’re here for MUSIC.

In the vision of hell, there’s a special place reserved for musical instruments (THANKS BOSCH) including a harp, a lute and some sort of woodwind instrument.

There’s also a book of sheet music and a demon whose role, it seems, is to imprint music on sinner’s naked bums with his weird note-shaped tongue.

That’s the best I can do by way of explanation. Here’s a close up:

A music student called Amelia transcribed the music using modern notation and posted it on Tumblr and now you can hear the piece of music written on a sinner’s naked bum for yourself.

Here's the music in modern notation

And here's the audio of Hieronymus Bosch's butt song

Truly, these are wondrous times we live in.

To be fair it is pretty terrible.