The Last Judgement (detail) 1482

This disturbing scene was realized in oil paint by Hieronymus Bosch, likely in the early 16th century. Bosch was working at the end of the medieval period, and the painting's details are carefully rendered with fine brushes, in the manner of the Northern Renaissance. Yet Bosch went far beyond the traditional craft of painting. By using his skills to show hell as a place of grotesque imagination, Bosch challenged traditional notions of the craftsperson as a pious member of the workshop. He populated his vision of hell with an array of fantastical demons. Some are hybrids of humans and animals, while others are bizarre contrivances seemingly built from strange materials. Bosch appears to have worked painstakingly on this painting, in an almost obsessive manner. We see this intense labor as nightmarish, rather than devotional. That's because he took the traditional painter's skill and bent it towards a very modern purpose: critiquing the establishment.