The Garden of Earthly Delights

Bosch's great triptych runs from Creation to damnation. At the left, in a serene Eden, God presents Eve to Adam among strange beasts and a pink fountain of life; in the wide central panel a teeming garden of naked humanity rides animals, climbs into giant fruit, and couples without shame or consequence; at the right all of it curdles into a black, burning hell where a hollow Tree-Man stares out and musical instruments turn into engines of torture. Whether the center warns against lust or dreams of a lost innocence has never been settled. Nothing in painting is quite like it - a whole moral cosmos imagined detail by feverish detail.