Sicut in utrem aquas maris: Jerome Bosch's Prolegomenon to the Garden of Earthly Delights

Abstract

In 1953 Kurt Wolff, the owner of Pantheon Books (publishers of the Bollingen series that had been established by Paul and Mary Mellon), suggested to Huntington Cairns at the National Gallery of Art that Erwin Panofsky might be an appropriate candidate for the Andrew W. Mellon Lectureship, inaugurated only three years before.' Although Wolff recommended Panofsky as a brilliant lecturer, and even though the nomination was heartily endorsed by Bernard Berenson, Cairns rejected the proposal. He wrote in reply that, while he foresaw the time would soon come when professional art historians might be asked to lecture, he did not think the moment yet ripe for technical specialists to be entrusted with so prestigious and ambitious an assignment. Cairns' rationale is astonishing, given that Panofsky's Studies in Iconology, one of the most widely read and influential arthistorical books of the last century, and which had already made a permanent impression throughout all areas of humane studies, had originated as the Mary Flexner Lectures at Bryn Mawr College. Nay, it becomes astounding in light of the fact that Panofsky's monumental Early Netherlandish Painting had been published, with the support of