Le Chariot de foin

Around 1510, in the Low Countries, hay was the plainest thing imaginable, cut grass, worth almost nothing, and there was a Flemish saying that the whole world is a haywain and every man grabs what he can. Bosch built a whole triptych around that line. In the centre a great cart of hay rolls forward, and everyone piles onto it, peasants and merchants, monks and nuns, even a pope and an emperor riding behind, some trampled under the wheels as they fight for a fistful of grass that is already worthless. High above the cart, small and easy to miss, Christ looks down from a golden sky with his wounds showing, and no one below is looking back up at him. On the right the cart is heading straight into a burning landscape where towers are being built by demons. It reads left to right like a warning about where all that grabbing ends.