Allegory of Gluttony and Lust

The intimate association between Gluttony and Lust in the medieval moral system was expressed by Bosch in this fragment of a painting at Yale University. Gluttony is personified by the swimmers at the upper left who have gathered around a large wine barrel straddled by a pot-bellied peasant. Another man swims closer to shore, his vision obscured by the meat pie balanced on his head. This scene is followed, on the right, by a pair of lovers in a tent, another motif reminiscent of the Lust scene in the Prado “Tabletop”. That they should be engaged in drinking wine is entirely appropriate: “Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus” (Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes); this tag from Terence was well known to the Middle Ages, and that Gluttony and Drunkenness lead to Lust was a lesson that the moralizers never tired of driving home to their audiences.