Hieronymus Bosch (Jeroen van Aken, ca 1450-1516), The Garden of Earthly Delights, triptych (ca 1500), right wing, detail 5.
Prado Museum, Madrid.

On the foreground a rabbit carries his bleeding victim on a pole, the blood gushing out from the belly. The scene expresses the chaos of Hell against the normality of earhtly life, the hunter having become the prey, and vice versa. Nearby a bunch of damned souls are collectively tortured. To the right, an amorous sow with a nun’s headdress tries to persuade her similarly naked lover to sign a binding agreement, an armoured monster reaching them an inkpot dangling from his beak.

A nude figure is attached to the neck of a lute and another is helplessly entangled in the strings of a harp. Scenes with musical instruments and singing choral groups served in Bosch’s time often as symbols of fleshly pleasure, playing the lute, for instance, signifying making love. On the frozen lake, a man balances uncertainly on an oversized skate, and heads straight for the hole in the ice before him, where a companion already struggles in the freezing water.

The most vivid scene, claiming immediate attention, is that of the bird-headed monster who gobbles up the damned souls only to defecate them into a transparent bulb from which they plunge into a pit below. Leaning against the base of this construction, a lady is compelled to admire her charms reflected in the backside of a devil, while the frog-like arms of a black demon at her side are slithering across her loins.