bAn accessible biography of the celebrated early Netherlandish painter, now in paperback.b p In his lifetime the early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch was famous for his phantasmagoric images, and today his name is synonymous with the infernal. The creator of expansive tableaus of fantastic and hellish scenes--where any devil not dancing is too busy eating human souls--he has been as equally misunderstood by history as his paintings have. In this book, Nils Bttner draws on a wealth of historical documents--not to mention Bosch's paintings--to offer a fresh and insightful look at one of history's most peculiar artists on the five-hundredth anniversary of his death. p Bosch's paintings have elicited a number of responses over the centuries. Some have tried to explain them as alchemical symbolism, others as coded messages of a secret cult, and still others have tried to psychoanalyze them. Some have placed Bosch among the Adamites, others among the Cathars, and others among the Bre