Visions of the Hereafter: Fall of the Damned into Hell

This is one of four narrow panels Bosch painted on what becomes of the soul after death, and it takes the grimmest part. The museum dates the set to about 1505 to 1515. The theme was close to home for him: in 1484 a printer in his own town, 's-Hertogenbosch, had published the Vision of Tundale in Dutch, the medieval tale of a knight whose soul is led through the torments of the afterlife. What strikes you here 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. Only a few small fires glow further below. Bosch gives Hell almost no architecture and no crowd. He leaves the terror to the dark and to the few figures caught in it.