Judgment, self-scrutiny and punishment

Abstract

At its core, this essay examines how Hieronymus Bosch’s (circa 1450-1516) pessimistic Christian worldview enabled him to break into a new artistic paradigm through his unrelenting and unprecedented focus on human sin and Divine Judgment. Working in Northern Europe during the time of the Renaissance, Bosch made paintings so radical and complex that nothing of the likes has been seen before nor since. With an oeuvre characterized by a deeply rooted fascination with sin and evil, in the three works that I examine, I trace Bosch’s understanding of humanity’s predisposition toward sin, the consequent punishment and, finally, the origins of such evil.