Visions of the Hereafter: Fall of the Damned into Hell

Around 1490, in the Low Countries, the old medieval maps of the afterlife were being read in new ways. Dante's journey through Hell had just appeared in Dutch, printed in 1484 in Bosch's own hometown of 's-Hertogenbosch, and visionary tales like the Vision of Tundale were passing from hand to hand. This is one of four narrow panels Bosch painted on that theme, and it takes the grimmest part. What strikes you is how little fire there is. The damned don't so much fall as sink, swallowed into a brown darkness while small demons cling to them and steer them down. Bosch gives Hell almost no architecture and no crowd. He leaves the terror to the dark and to the few figures caught in it.