La morte e l'avaro

Bosch painted this tall narrow panel around 1500, when printed handbooks called the Ars Moriendi, the art of dying well, were circulating widely and teaching ordinary people how to face their final hour. That is exactly the scene here. A dying man sits up in bed while Death slips through the doorway with an arrow, and at the bedpost an angel and a leering demon compete for his choice. Down below, another version of the same man still clutches at gold even as a rat-like creature offers him a bag of coins from under the chest. It was once the wing of a larger dismantled altarpiece, so its missing companions are lost. The strongbox, the coins and the discarded armour on the floor all belong to a man who spent his life storing up the wrong things.