Top 10 – Most Violent Works Of Art

Top 10 most violent works of art

10. Hieronymus Bosch – The Garden Of Earthly Delights C. 1480-1505

Hieronymus Bosch

Bosch saves the best for last in the final panel from the artist’s triptych. Earlier visions of Hell are pretty tame in comparison to this particular vision. Against a backdrop of blackness, human bodies huddle in groups, amass in armies, or are subject to strange tortures at the hands of oddly-clad executioners and animal-demons. Dotted about are more crazy machine-like structures that seem designed to process human flesh. Some of these are particularly disturbing. Near the centre, a bird-like creature seated in a latrine chair, like a king on a throne, ingests humans and excretes them out again; nearby a broken human is encouraged to vomit into a well in which other human faces swirl beneath the water – black birds, vomitus fluids, blood; as in any good Boschian world, bottoms continue to be prodded with various instruments. No one does it quite like Bosch.

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