Visions of the Hereafter: Ascent of the Blessed

This is one of four panels Bosch painted on what becomes of the soul after death, kept together in Venice for centuries and probably once owned by a Venetian churchman, Cardinal Domenico Grimani. In this scene the saved are carried upward by angels toward a long funnel of light, a bright tunnel that opens onto a small distant figure at its end. People often compare it to modern accounts of near-death experiences, though Bosch was drawing on the spiritual writing of his own day, around 1500, about the soul's final union with God. After the crowded chaos of his hell scenes, the mood here is unusually still and dark, with the light left to do almost all the work.