Man-eating fish

The gruesome hell is depicted on the right panel of the Haywain triptych. Under a bridge, over which the cursed souls meet their fate, a soul is eaten by a fish-like creature. The snake curling around the legs refers to sinful lust.

Hiëronymus, Jeroen for short, Bosch (ca. 1450 – 1516) was born during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, in the Duchy of Brabant. Bosch places visionary images in a hostile world full of mysticism, with the conviction that the human being , due to its own stupidity and sinfulness has become prey to the devil himself. (JB32 – h. 7 cm.)