Damned delight: heaven, hell and Hieronymus Bosch

During his lifetime, the Early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch (around 1450-1516) enjoyed great wealth and respect, and his work was held in the utmost regard. His compositions, packed with pictorial innovations of an often grotesque nature, both surprised and delighted his audience, who were more accustomed to the idealised portrayal of nature found in 15th-century Flemish paintings and 16th-century Renaissance works. Within a decade of his death, artists were churning out hundreds of c