Taking a quick look at some of the ghoulish and misshapen figures, you might think this is something by Hieronymus Bosch. It’s actually a commissioned religious piece by Master van Eyck. Take a moment to appreciate the horrors of the pits of Hell that this man painstakingly rendered in the smallest detail:
Death looms over the Abyss with bat-like wings. Note with delight the amount of clergymen you can spot by their headdresses or tonsured hair. Very gratifying.
Meanwhile, this motherfucker is wearing some sort of flesh-crown and smiling with painful glee, while his ghoulish, fanged belly devours the ass of some sinner, all the while triggering your deepest trypophobia.
Here a Lovecraftian child of Dagon is fighting with a bear monster over who is going to get wing or the thigh of the next sinner entree.
Yes, people of the ancient world had imaginations just as fucked up as we do today, as you can tell by these demonic creatures that would look right at home in a Hellraiser movie.
I am watching this amazing documentary about Bosch’s Garden of Earthly delights on youtube. I just found what trypophobia is and it was a stunning revelation because I have it. I have long been gobsmacked by Bosch (art major) but today for the first time I realized that is why so much of the imagery makes my skin crawl. So I googled Hieronymous Bosch and trypophobia and you were the first hit after a bunch of hits that didn’t include “trypophobia.”
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