Ask the Scholar

Around 1500, the Netherlander Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1450-1516) created images of hell as a fantastical wasteland of torment that relied heavily on the hold that belief in monsters had on the imagination of his contemporaries. Pieter Huys was prominent among his many imitators. In this vision of the end of time, Christ, surrounded by angels and the apostles, sits in the heavens as judge. Below, in a blasted landscape, angels and demons battle for souls risen from the dead. In the foreground the damned are subjected to an eternity of punishment fitted to their sins by monstrous demons - half-human, half-animal. At the lower left, a glutton is force-fed food and drink so that his stomach is about to burst. The brilliant, crudely humorous mixing of the ordinary and the extra-ordinary brings home the message. The painting is initialed "P.H." on the knife blade lower left. There is a version of the Walters' painting (without the vision of Christ) in the Museo del Prado, Madrid (Silva Maroto 2003; 2095 in 1963 Cat.) and a version dated 1554 in the Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels..