Paisaje con Caronte cruzando la laguna Estigia

Patinir made this in the years around 1520, in Antwerp, at the very moment northern painters were starting to treat landscape as a subject in its own right rather than a backdrop. He splits the world into three. On the left, a green Christian paradise with angels. On the right, the dark mouth of hell, guarded by the three-headed dog Cerberus. Down the middle runs the river of the dead, and Charon poles his little boat across it with one small soul aboard. Here is the detail worth finding. The soul leans toward the bright, easy left bank, but that side is a trap, and the hard road to salvation is the other way. Patinir has quietly turned an ancient Greek myth into a Christian warning about the choice waiting at the end of every life. It hangs in the Prado in Madrid.