Head of an old woman

This is barely a scrap of a painting, about 13 centimetres tall and 5 wide. It is a fragment, cut at some point from a larger panel by Hieronymus Bosch that has otherwise vanished, so all that survives is the head of an old woman in a white headdress. Bosch worked around 1500 in 's-Hertogenbosch in the Low Countries, far better known for his swarming visions of hell and temptation than for a quiet study of a face. Here there are no demons, just close attention to worn, elderly skin. What the woman was once part of, a saint's story, a crowd, a scene of mockery, we no longer know.