robotmango:jaw8jaw:Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (right panel detail), 1503-1515.
robotmango:jaw8jaw:Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (right panel detail), 1503-1515.nearly all of his depictions of hell have a scene like this to the very back: the world burning at night. in this one, the landscape is a bit mountainous and volcanic and dramatic, but in a lot of them, it actually looks more like recognizable buildings or a cityscape: less like mordor and more like an actual town on fire. i think about this a lot, in relationship to the fact that when hieronymus bosch was about twelve or thirteen years old, his hometown (s’-hertogenbosch, or “den bosch”) burned nearly to the ground in a catastrophic fire. something like four THOUSAND houses were consumed in that fire. it’s hard to imagine the suffering it caused. the marks it would have left on everyone who lived through it.when i look at this, i think, “ah. here’s a man who knew what hell looked like.” -- source link