Despite its lush and lustful depictions of a prelapsarian world and the myriad temptations of the flesh, the most arresting part of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights appears to be the final panel of the famous triptych, in which pleasure’s price is paid, excruciatingly and inventively, for all eternity.
According to new research commissioned by Madrid’s Prado museum, where Bosch’s masterpiece has hung for almost a century, visitors’ eyes are most drawn to the hell panel where sinning flesh is pierced, processed and punished.
