Hieronymus Bosch (Jeroen van Aken, ca 1450-1516), The Garden of Earthly Delights, triptych (ca 1500), right wing.
Prado Museum, Madrid.

On the right wing, Bosch unveils his most powerful, phantasmagorical and terrifying vision of Hell. On the foreground a rabbit carries his bleeding victim on a pole, the blood gushing out from the belly. The scene expresses the chaos of Hell against the normality of earthly life, the hunter having become the prey, and vice versa. Nearby a bunch of damned souls are collectively tortured. In the right corner, an amorous sow with a nun’s headdress tries to persuade her similarly naked lover to sign a binding agreement, an armoured monster reaching them an inkpot dangling from his beak.

A nude figure is attached to the neck of a lute and another is helplessly entangled in the strings of a harp. Scenes with musical instruments and singing choral groups served in Bosch’s time often as symbols of fleshly pleasure, playing the lute, for instance, signifying making love. On the frozen lake in the middle ground, a man balances uncertainly on an oversized skate, and heads straight for the hole in the ice before him, where a companion already struggles in the freezing water.

The middle of the right wing is occupied by the so-called Tree Man. His egg-shaped torso is borne by a pair of rotting tree trunks, which rest on a pair of boats. His hindquarters have rotted away, revealing a hellish tavern scene within, while his head supports a large disc on which devils and their victims promenade around a large bagpipe. His face looks over the shoulder to regard the disintegration of his own body. To the right, a pack of hounds bring down a knight, still holding in one mailed fist a chalice as a proof of having committed acts of sacrilege. Above the Tree Man, a pair of huge ears advances like an infernal army tank, immolating its victims by means of a great knife.

The most vivid scene, claiming immediate attention, is that of the bird-headed monster who gobbles up the damned souls only to defecate them into a transparent bulb from which they plunge into a pit below. Leaning against the base of this construction, a lady is compelled to admire her charms reflected in the backside of a devil, while the frog-like arms of a black demon at her side are slithering across her loins.