Hieronymus Bosch
On the right wing of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Last Judgment, the torments of the sinners are continued in Hell, which was also shown in the central panel with Christ as Judge of the World. Bosch binds these two panels together through the dark landscape in the background, with flames and fires, and the oppressive doomsday atmosphere.
Bosch lets his story start in the left wing, the Paradise wing, at the upper end with the expulsion of Lucifer, and end in the right wing, that is to say, in Hell. Thus in his paintings the entire scenic repertoire forms a powerful panorama of humanity’s desperate entanglement in its sinful state. In the triptych Bosch has created a panel of deadly sin rather than a Last Judgment scene in the sense that it would have been used iconographically at the time.
Is there then still hope for salvation and redemption? In this painting, Hieronymus Bosch’s answer, one which is colored by profound pessimism about humanity, is short and sweet: no!
Don't forget to look at the central and left panel of the triptych; thanks to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna you can see them in our archive. :)
P.S. If you love Bosch as much as we do, you can dive here into a fascinating world of The Garden of Earthly Delights.