St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness

John the Baptist reclines in the wilderness and points, as he always does, toward the Lamb of God down in the corner. But your eye goes instead to the huge fleshy plant sprouting beside him, all spikes and swollen red fruit, like nothing in any garden. It is pure Bosch, and this is roughly the first painting where his invented plants take the leading role. There is a stranger fact underneath the paint. Infrared study shows Bosch laid that plant over a kneeling donor, the very man who paid for the picture, blotting a real portrait out with one of his fantasies. He made it around 1489 in the town of 's-Hertogenbosch, whose name he took as his own.