Hieronymus Bosch review – a heavenly host of delights on the road to hell

Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch, Netherlands
An astonishing homecoming for this madly inventive artist sets the grotesque against a deep but compassionate melancholy that burns into your soul

They nibble giant strawberries and cavort inside transparent spheres, naked as newborns. Towers as pink and moist as bodily organs rise above the nude revellers, as they ride unicorns and camels bareback, swim with mermaids or crawl inside an egg. There’s always so much to do in The Garden of Earthly Delights.

At the turn of the 16th century, a Netherlandish painter who signed himself Hieronymus Bosch created one of the world’s most fascinating and confounding works of art. The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych, a three-part painting whose side panels can be closed like doors. Between Eden to the left and Hell to the right is Bosch’s vision of naked bliss. But what does it all mean?

The Noordbrabants Museum has put on one of the most important exhibitions of our century

Related: Dutch museum achieves the impossible with new Hieronymus Bosch show

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