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35: Hieronymus Bosch • The Hell Panel (The Garden of Earthly Delights Part II)

Creative Codex

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The Prince of Hell by Bosch - A Dark Visual Metaphor

Bosch painted a severed hand with a knife through its palm, giving the symbol of benediction. This appears to be an echo of the hand of God, which we see in panel one. The Prince of Hell's tall chair is positioned at a relative mirror image to the dragon blood tree's position. A hole where terrified people with open mouths receive gold coins from an ass is Bosch's perversion of the Eucharist. Both leaves and coins appear on a perfect horizontal axis to one another.

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