The devil is always lurking: on Hieronymous Bosch

No more than 25 paintings and a similar number of drawings can be reliably attributed to the Netherlandish artist known as Hieronymus Bosch, who lived from around 1450 to 1516. Yet his images inspired countless imitators and continue to haunt the Western imagination today. His fantastic and capricious inventions, as the Italian commentator Giorgio Vasari described them in the 16th centuryhis monstrous animals and plants, his compelling visualisations of human sinfulnesswere without precedent in