Rilla's Garden of Earthly Delights

Rilla Alexander of the design group Rinzen was kind enough to share the story behind their line of merchandise for the Prado based on Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. You can buy some of the items featured in this post at the Prado website.

Read a recent interview with Rilla at Grain Edit.

Rilla is responsible for the rest of the text in this post.

Bosch, Paradise panel, with boxes around some of the figures Rilla used for her designs

The Prado initially asked me to design characters for children based on three that they had chosen from the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. They referenced some animals I had drawn in the past and I started by doing three different sets of pencil sketches to determine exactly how stylized they should be. After some feedback I drew some more pencil sketches and finally the finished vector art. It was quite a simple process -- and especially fun given that drawing animals is one of my favorite things to do.

three characters in silhouette


initial sketch, level of abstraction 1


initial sketch, level of abstraction 2


initial sketch, level of abstraction 3


final sketch, dog


final sketch, giraffe 1


final sketch, giraffe 2


final sketch, lizard

While these were being approved I visited the Prado Museum in Madrid for the first time and spent quite some time absorbing the painting's every intricacy. It kept the attention of a constant crowd and I could see what a special place the painting had in the hearts of so many people. Adults assumed the air of experts and pontificated about the state of surrealism in the 1400s... oblivious, the children pushed in front and counted animals, gave them names, or told their stories. Or, inevitably, laughed at the torture in the "Hell" panel.

I returned to Berlin to apply the Giraffe, Lizard and two-legged dog to bags, cups and pencils... but feeling like I now had a one-on-one relationship with all the creatures in the painting, I instead started to draw them all. It was actually more like visual note-taking... since Mr. Bosch had already created such personality filled characters.

Sketches for Red Pattern

From my new sketches I created the series of patterns, which I hope will make the casual observer look deeper into the painting...

Red pattern

...even if it is simply to match my drawings to the originals.

central panel, with boxes around the figures Rilla used for her blue pattern design (below)

As I worked I read this book and was struck by the fact that the process was somewhat similar to that which Bosch himself had gone through... drawing animals based on the drawings from travel letters of Cyriac of Ancona. "Repeated almost literally by Bosch: art quoting art," it says. (Of course, I have the advantage of having actually seen a real Giraffe!)

Blue pattern


sketches for blue pattern


green pattern


sketches for green pattern

The patterns certainly made the various applications much more fun. I most enjoyed designing the ceramic plates:

Since these first products were made I have drawn more complex scenes from the painting -- including the dancing owl with legs -- and hopefully these will appear on new applications soon. Some toys might be on the horizon too.

I would also very much like to tackle the Hell panel -- as I'm sure children would LOVE the bird in armor, the pig nun, and the knife ears. Though perhaps visitors to the Museum store might think twice before buying their niece a souvenir of a bird monster sitting on a throne (ok toilet!) whilst devouring a man with birds flying out of his behind?

detail from hell panel

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