In the 500 years since Bosch's death, his art has lost none of its power to reflect the complexities of our lives.
The harvester leading the hayride to hell has a mouse’s head, clad in a white wimple, and wears a beaded dress and a gigantic fish about his waist. The horse is actually a clay jug pissing wine from its rear-spout; its rider has pheasant wings and a spiky chestnut-conker for a head. Death rides a fish through the sky; a duck-billed platypus is ice-skating; a fleet of black swallows shoot forth from a man’s flaming bottom. A bearded woman saint is being crucified.
And God? Every time he tries to do something reasonable, such as materialize Eve from a human rib, he gets dive-bombed by rebel angels in the shape of flying centipedes. Are we having fun yet?