Hieronymus Bosch was a Netherlandish painter whose nightmarish visions of hell, sin, and human folly stand entirely apart from the art of his contemporaries. Working in the small Dutch town of 's-Hertogenbosch, he created complex, fantastical scenes teeming with hybrid creatures, demons, and tortured sinners. His triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights is perhaps the most enigmatic and endlessly fascinating painting in Western art — a panorama of paradise, earthly pleasure, and infernal punishment that has generated an entire library of interpretation.
