Souls rise through a tunnel of light into the white

A tall dark panel in which a shaft opens at the top into a tunnel of pale blue-grey rings, narrowing to a disc of pure white where a single tiny figure stands silhouetted at the threshold. Down the length of the panel angels carry naked souls upward through the blackness — one with red-brown wings, one in a deep blue robe with an arm around the soul it lifts, others in white and slate at the bottom edge reaching up out of the dark. Painted around 1505 as one of four Visions of the Hereafter panels, now in the Palazzo Grimani in Venice, and the closest thing in Renaissance painting to a modern near-death account.

Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516) spent his whole life in the Dutch town of 's-Hertogenbosch, painting heavens and hells of such specific strangeness that five centuries of viewers have argued about whether he was a moralist, a heretic or a dreamer. The Surrealists claimed him; the Church commissioned him. His visions of the afterlife remain the most inventive ever painted.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.