Garden of Earthly Delights- c.1500 By Hieronymous Bosch Garden of Earthly Delights (Triptych) Left wing, "Paradise" (upper detail) Museo del Prado, Madrid Hieronymus Bosch, also Jeroen Bosch, Jerome Bosch, (c. 1450 - August, 1516) was a prolific Dutch painter of the 15th and 16th century. Many of his works depict sin and human moral failings. Bosch used images of demons, half-human animals and machines to evoke fear and confusion to portray the evil of man. The works contain complex, highly original, imaginative, and dense use of symbolic figures and iconography, some of which was obscure even in his own time. He is said to have been an inspiration to the surrealism movement in the 20th century. His true name was Jheronimus (or Jeroen) van Aken. The triptych depicts the history of the world and the progression of sin. Beginning on the outside shutters with the creation of the world, the story progresses from Adam and Eve and original sin on the left panel to the torments of hell, a dark, icy, yet fiery nightmarish vision, on the right. The Garden of Delights in the center illustrates a world deeply engaged in sinful pleasures. ?006 Credit:TopFoto