Symbolism

Hieronymus Bosch Symbolism and Iconography: Introduction

Hieronymus Bosch is tempting to read as if every owl, fruit, funnel, knife, fish, musical instrument and monster had a fixed translation. That temptation is understandable. His paintings look as though they are packed with clues. A bird-headed demon swallows the damned. A giant pair of ears advances with a blade between them. Lovers carry fruit, riders circle a pool, monks appear beside burning buildings, fools crowd into boats, and a lone traveller moves along a road that seems to ask what kind of life he has chosen.

Yet Bosch is most rewarding when he is not treated as a codebook. His symbolism belongs to a late medieval and early Renaissance world of Christian teaching, sermons, devotional images, moral satire, proverbs, popular theatre, manuscript illumination, workshop practice and courtly collecting. Some motifs have strong contextual support. Others remain open, and responsible interpretation should leave them open. The aim is not to flatten Bosch into a dictionary, but to learn how his images make moral, comic and devotional pressure visible.

This guide sits beside the main Hieronymus Bosch overview, the documentary biography, the paintings hub, the individual studies of The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Haywain Triptych, The Last Judgement and The Temptation of Saint Anthony, and the related guides to Bosch's Hell imagery, style and technique and workshop and attribution.

Contents

1. Why Bosch Symbols Resist Simple Decoding
2. Start With the Triptych
3. Sin, Folly and Moral Satire
4. Hell: Punishment as Inversion
5. Temptation and the Isolated Saint
6. Animals, Birds and Hybrids
7. Fruit, Bodies and False Delight
8. Musical Instruments, Tools and Everyday Objects
9. Pilgrims, Pedlars and the Way Through Life
10. Devotional Culture and the Viewer

Why Bosch Symbols Resist Simple Decoding

Bosch's pictures often feel mysterious because they combine recognisable moral themes with invented visual forms. The themes are not obscure: sin, folly, temptation, death, damnation, false pleasure, religious hypocrisy, avarice, lust, gluttony and the danger of choosing the wrong path. The forms are the unsettling part. Bosch translates moral ideas into hybrid bodies, impossible buildings, enlarged animals, cracked fountains, burning cities, strange machines and comic cruelties.

The National Gallery in London describes Bosch's mature work as an "original and often macabre language of visual symbolism", sometimes connected to verbal metaphors from the Bible. ^[1] That phrase is useful because it treats Bosch's symbols as language, but not as a mechanical alphabet. A metaphor can be literalised, exaggerated, inverted or made grotesque. A proverb can be visualised without losing its ambiguity. A monster can be a punishment, a joke, a temptation, a parody of appetite and a brilliant act of invention at the same time.

Modern Bosch research has made caution more important, not less. The Bosch Research and Conservation Project studied paintings, drawings, workshop material and followers through close looking, technical imaging and comparative research. Its work reminds us that a "Boschian" motif is not always by Bosch himself, and that copied or workshop imagery may preserve Bosch's inventions while changing their meaning. ^[2] The companion Closer to Bosch platform and current museum records are therefore essential for separating what is visible, what is technically supported and what remains interpretation. ^[3]

That caution should not make Bosch dry. It should make him more interesting. A symbol that refuses one answer can still guide the eye, sharpen a moral question, or show how late medieval viewers were invited to recognise danger in pleasure, comedy in sin and terror in ordinary things.

Start With the Triptych

Many of Bosch's most important works are triptychs: three-panel paintings whose wings could close over the centre. This matters because a triptych is not simply a wide image. It is a structured object. Closed wings, outer grisaille scenes, inner colour, left-to-right movement, central emphasis and side-panel contrast all shape the meaning.

In The Garden of Earthly Delights, the Prado identifies the closed exterior as the Third Day of Creation, painted in grisaille, with God the Father and Latin inscriptions drawn from the Psalms. When opened, the triptych moves through Eden, a central scene of deceptive pleasure, and Hell. The Prado's account stresses sin as the connecting thread, while also noting the complexity of the centre panel and the scholarly debates around its precise interpretation. ^[4]

That structure changes how individual motifs should be read. Fruit in the central Garden panel is not just fruit. It appears inside a larger sequence from creation to false delight to punishment. Enlarged animals, pools, shells, berries and glassy forms become part of a world where pleasure looks abundant but unstable. The right wing then reveals the moral consequence of that instability, including punishments that turn delight into torment.

The Haywain Triptych is more explicit in its moral direction. The Prado describes the inside as devoted to sin: the left panel shows its origin, the centre shows humanity following the haywain, and the right panel shows Hell. The hay itself evokes the biblical and proverbial idea of worldly glory as fleeting, supported by the verse from Isaiah that "all flesh is grass". ^[5] The haywain is therefore not a neutral cart with a symbolic label attached. It is the moving centre of a social satire: rulers, clergy, lovers, beggars and ordinary people all chase a perishable reward while demons pull the procession toward damnation.

In The Last Judgement, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna describes a Christian moral programme that runs from the Fall of Man to the Last Judgment and the punishments of the damned. Its outer wings show saints in grisaille, setting models of holy conduct against the inner vision of human failure and punishment. ^[6] Again, the triptych form controls the symbolism. The viewer moves between concealment and revelation, sober exterior and terrifying interior, saintly example and infernal consequence.

Sin, Folly and Moral Satire

Bosch's symbolism often works through moral satire rather than private dream imagery. Satire lets him make sin ridiculous before it becomes terrifying. Fools, drunkards, quacks, gamblers, corrupt clergy, gluttons and greedy men are not merely condemned; they are exposed as absurd.

The Ship of Fools tradition is a good example. Bosch's painting belongs to a wider late medieval culture in which folly could be staged as a social condition. A boat full of foolish people is funny because it is unstable and communal: nobody in it is steering wisely, and everyone participates in the disorder. The Louvre connects its Ship of Fools with Sebastian Brant's 1494 book of the same name, while also stressing the painting's later rediscovery and fragmentary triptych context. ^[7] The symbol is therefore both literary and visual, rooted in a culture that enjoyed exposing folly in public form.

The fool in Bosch is rarely just a harmless comic figure. Foolishness can mean spiritual failure, bad judgment, susceptibility to appetite or the refusal to recognise death. Satire becomes an ethical instrument. It makes the viewer laugh, then asks whether the laughter is safe.

That is also why proverbs matter. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, discussing The Pedlar, notes that some details may refer to well-known sayings, while also warning that certainty is impossible. The figure has been read as a traveller through life, a human being weighed down by earthly baggage and moving along a path full of temptations. ^[8] This is a model for reading Bosch well: proverb culture is real, but not every detail can be pinned to one proverb with confidence.

Hell: Punishment as Inversion

Bosch's Hell imagery is famous because it is spectacular, but its logic is often moral rather than random. Hell turns earthly pleasures into punishments. Music becomes torture. Eating becomes being eaten. Desire becomes exposure. Games become traps. Fire, darkness, frozen water and monstrous bodies transform the habits of life into consequences.

The Prado's interpretation of the right panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights is especially important. It notes the panel's "musical Hell", where instruments are used to punish sinners, and it identifies punishments connected with avarice, gluttony, envy, games and clerical criticism. ^[4] The point is not simply that Bosch thought lutes and harps were evil. In the world of the painting, instruments that could accompany secular pleasure become devices of pain. The object is inverted.

The same principle runs through the Hell imagery associated with Bosch's larger moral universe. Fire is not just atmosphere. It marks destruction, judgment, spiritual danger and civic terror transformed into theology. Burning cities in the distance create a stage on which private sins have public consequences. Yet caution is needed: unless a reliable source connects a specific Bosch fire to a specific historical event, the flames should not be turned into biography.

Monsters in Hell also work by inversion. A creature may combine bird, human, vessel, weapon and furniture. That hybrid body collapses categories, as if sin has scrambled creation itself. In The Garden, the bird-headed infernal figure who devours and excretes bodies is horrifying because appetite has become judgment. In The Last Judgement, the Academy describes a world of torments, demons and devils under Christ as Judge, with the possibility of heavenly light almost swallowed by darkness. ^[6]

Bosch's Hell is therefore not a separate fantasy genre. It is the end point of a moral sequence.

Temptation and the Isolated Saint

The symbolism of temptation is different from the symbolism of final punishment. Temptation tests the living person before judgment has been sealed. That is why Saint Anthony became such a powerful subject for Bosch and his circle.

The Lisbon Temptation of Saint Anthony triptych, presented by the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga through Google Arts & Culture, gathers air, earth, water and fire into a world of monstrous and hybrid assault. The account describes temptation as a central Bosch theme: the just person faces evil in both openly demonic forms and deceptive beauty. ^[9] That distinction matters. Not every danger in Bosch announces itself as ugly. False beauty, false holiness and false comfort may be just as dangerous as obvious devils.

The Prado's workshop panel of The Temptations of Saint Anthony Abbot sharpens this idea. The saint appears in prayer, while the surrounding landscape introduces brothel imagery, Eve's apple, a burning monastery and airborne demonic disturbances. Prado's catalogue-derived text also treats the panel's authorship carefully, connecting it to Bosch's workshop and the problem of copies after lost or masterly designs. ^[10]

Saint Anthony imagery helps explain Bosch's hybrids. A flying fish, a woman-house, a monkish rider or a vessel-creature can look absurd, but absurdity itself is part of the temptation. The world has become unstable. The saint's task is not to decode every monster; it is to remain spiritually oriented while the visible world tries to confuse him.

Animals, Birds and Hybrids

Animals in Bosch often carry moral pressure, but they should be read by context. An owl, pig, fish, toad, dog, bird or hybrid creature may echo bestiary lore, proverb culture, biblical metaphor, social satire or the immediate action of the painting. The same animal can shift in force from one work to another.

The owl is a useful example. In The Garden of Earthly Delights, the Prado notes owls in the central panel and connects them with evil. ^[4] That does not mean every owl in every Bosch-related work must be glossed the same way. It means the owl in that context participates in a larger scene of deceptive pleasure, watching and unsettling the viewer.

Pigs, dogs and bird-creatures also depend on setting. In the Garden's Hell, a pig wearing a nun's veil contributes to criticism of corrupt religious life. ^[4] In Christ Mocked, the National Gallery explains that a spiked collar may connect Christ's attackers with dogs through a late medieval reading of Psalm 21:17. ^[11] In other contexts, a dog may suggest appetite, loyalty, animality, pursuit or social type. The object does not carry one fixed meaning.

Hybrids are even more flexible. Bosch's hybrid creatures often combine parts of animals, people, objects and architecture. They may embody demonic disorder, but they also parody human vice. A fish that flies, a man transformed into a vessel, a musical instrument used as a rack, or a walking object with ears and a knife all make the created world behave wrongly. That wrongness is funny and frightening at once.

The safest question is not "what does this animal mean?" but "what is this animal doing here?" Is it watching, tempting, punishing, carrying, devouring, disguising, parodying, or obstructing? Bosch's iconography usually begins with action.

Fruit, Bodies and False Delight

Fruit is one of the most dangerous subjects in Bosch interpretation because it invites confident overreading. In The Garden of Earthly Delights, fruit clearly belongs to the central panel's world of sensual pleasure, erotic charge, abundance and fragility. The Prado notes the enlarged plants and fruit, the red and blue colours scattered through the scene, and the centre panel's association with lust and false paradise. ^[4]

But a strawberry or berry should not be isolated from the triptych. Fruit in the Garden is persuasive because it is shared, carried, entered, bitten, balanced and displayed by human bodies. It is part of a social choreography. Pleasure is not private; it circulates. The figures seem absorbed in play, but the whole scene is enclosed by the triptych's movement toward Hell.

That is why Bosch's bodies matter. The naked figures in the Garden are not painted with the heroic weight of classical nudes. They are pale, busy, numerous and strangely light. They move through shells, pools, fruit skins, animals and glassy structures with little sense of stable individuality. Their bodies become part of the pattern of appetite.

This does not require a single answer to the Garden's central mystery. Some scholars have stressed lust, others courtly love, false paradise, human generation, marriage, alchemy, innocence, or deliberate ambiguity. The evidence supports a strong moral reading, but the painting's force partly depends on Bosch making pleasure look beautiful before he makes it terrible.

Musical Instruments, Tools and Everyday Objects

Bosch repeatedly turns ordinary objects into moral instruments. This is one reason his symbolism feels so immediate. He does not need distant mythological monsters when knives, funnels, stools, ladders, baskets, bells, helmets, skates, tavern furniture and musical instruments can become strange.

In the Garden's Hell, musical instruments punish the damned. ^[4] The symbolism is not merely anti-music. It is about misplaced delight, bodily indulgence and the reversal of entertainment into pain. A lute becomes a rack, a harp becomes a frame of torture, and written music may become part of a humiliating infernal scene. The cultural object is turned against the user.

Tools often work similarly. In The Cure of Folly, the Prado explains the satirical surgery of extracting the "stone" of madness, with inscriptions, costume details, underdrawing and technical data all contributing to the interpretation. ^[12] The surgeon's tool does not heal; it exposes fraud, foolishness and social performance. Bosch's objects often ask whether the thing presented as useful is actually corrupt.

Weapons and hunting signs in Christ Mocked show the same sensitivity. The National Gallery notes that an arrow in an attacker's headdress and a spiked collar may carry symbolic force, while the underdrawing shows Bosch adjusting the brutality and ambiguity of the scene. ^[11] Here objects do not create fantasy; they intensify a devotional image by making cruelty more legible.

Bosch's tools therefore should be read as active agents. They prod, cut, tempt, measure, bind, display, burden or punish. They show the moral status of use.

Pilgrims, Pedlars and the Way Through Life

One of Bosch's most humane symbolic types is the traveller. The figure known as The Pedlar or Wayfarer has been read as homo viator, the human being on the road of life. Museum Boijmans describes him as a vagabond or pedlar with mismatched shoes, a figure burdened by earthly existence and moving along a path full of temptations. ^[8]

This figure matters because he is not a spectacular sinner in Hell. He is still moving. He has not become a damned body or a comic fool trapped inside a boat. He is a person in between choices. That makes him a key to Bosch's symbolism more broadly. Bosch is not only interested in what sin looks like after judgment; he is interested in the moment when a person can still turn, hesitate, recognise danger or fail to do so.

The wayfarer also connects Bosch's symbolism to devotional culture. Late medieval Christianity repeatedly framed earthly life as pilgrimage, testing and preparation for death. Death and the Miser gives the same idea a deathbed form. The National Gallery of Art describes the miser's final choice between demonic gold and the crucifix, with an angel pointing toward salvation and death entering with an arrow. ^[13] The picture's symbolism is not decorative. It stages the last possible decision.

That is why Bosch's roads, thresholds, doors and bridges are important. They create moral geography. A raised bridge, a narrow path, a bedchamber door, a triptych wing, a Hell gate or a city in flames can turn space into choice.

Devotional Culture and the Viewer

Bosch's symbols were not made only for detached decoding. Many of them were meant to affect the viewer's conscience. Triptychs could belong to devotional settings, private chapels, courtly collections or elite households, but their imagery still works through Christian meditation on sin, judgment, death and salvation.

The Academy in Vienna explicitly describes The Last Judgement Triptych as a three-part winged altarpiece of a type traditionally used in Christian worship, with closed wings and inner panels revealed on Sundays or feast days. ^[6] Whether Bosch's exact triptych was originally installed in a church or chapel remains uncertain, but the form itself carries devotional memory. It trains the viewer to move from exterior restraint to interior revelation.

The same is true of Passion imagery. In Christ Mocked, Bosch compresses several episodes of Christ's humiliation into a close, claustrophobic image. ^[11] The surrounding figures can be symbolic, but the central devotional problem is direct: Christ remains calm while human cruelty crowds around him. Here Bosch's strangeness serves meditation rather than spectacle.

Even the comic scenes have a devotional edge. A fool, glutton, miser or false healer is not merely someone else. Bosch's moral satire places the viewer close enough to recognise the joke and then close enough to feel implicated by it.

Ambiguity Is Part of the Meaning

Bosch's ambiguity is not a failure of scholarship. It is part of how the paintings operate. Some details are grounded in biblical texts, saints' lives, moralising literature, proverbs or common visual traditions. Others may come from lost jokes, local sayings, workshop patterns, courtly entertainment, personal invention or combinations we can no longer fully reconstruct.

Boijmans is especially careful on this point in its discussion of Bosch and proverbs: some elements may refer to known sayings, but the museum stresses that Bosch's exact intention cannot be determined with certainty. ^[14] That caution is not an admission of defeat. It protects the paintings from false neatness.

The same applies to attribution. A symbol in an autograph Bosch painting, a workshop panel, a follower's copy and a later print after Bosch may not carry the same authority. The workshop and attribution question is therefore part of iconography. Before interpreting a motif, it helps to ask what kind of object preserves it: Bosch's hand, workshop practice, a copy after Bosch, or later Boschian reception.

Ambiguity also makes Bosch durable. His paintings have appealed to theologians, collectors, moralists, art historians, psychoanalytic readers, Surrealists and modern viewers because they never reduce completely to a single lesson. But the best modern reading still begins with the historical object: panel, triptych, inscription, subject, patronage, technical evidence, museum record and scholarly debate.

A Responsible Way to Read Bosch

A good method begins with the whole object. Is it a triptych, a fragment, a panel, a drawing, a copy, or a work by a follower? Is it open or closed? What sequence does it create? What does the current museum record say about title, date, authorship and condition?

Then identify the primary moral setting. Is the work about creation, temptation, folly, death, Last Judgment, Hell, Passion devotion, saintly resistance, false pleasure or social satire? Individual motifs make more sense once the larger subject is clear.

Next, follow actions rather than labels. Ask what each creature, object or figure is doing. Is it tempting, punishing, mocking, carrying, consuming, watching, pointing, fleeing or blocking the way? Bosch's symbols are often verbs before they are nouns.

Finally, keep degrees of confidence visible. It is reasonable to say that the haywain represents the perishable rewards of worldly life because the Prado connects it with a biblical and moral tradition. ^[5] It is reasonable to connect the Garden's musical instruments with infernal punishment because the Prado discusses that panel in those terms. ^[4] It is less responsible to claim that every shell, berry or bird has one fixed meaning in every Bosch image.

Bosch's symbolism is powerful because it makes moral life strange again. He takes familiar Christian teaching and gives it bodies, tools, weather, roads, taverns, fires and jokes. He makes sin ridiculous before it becomes terrifying. He makes pleasure beautiful before it collapses. He makes the viewer look closely, then asks whether looking is enough.

Artworks and related attributions

Browse paintings, drawings and related attributions. Records group triptychs, fragments and two-sided sheets where appropriate. Dates follow the cited museum records or catalogue headings and are generally estimates. Rows marked “2016 catalogue” report that publication’s attribution and collection information; these are dated opinions, rather than a claim that every work is an accepted autograph Bosch.

79 records

Search records Medium All media Drawing Painting Reset

Name	Date	Medium, attribution and collection
A Crossbowman	Second half of the sixteenth century	Oil on oak panel · Copy after Hieronymus Bosch · Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid · P002695 Source 1. Source 2.
A Woman Spinning and an Old Woman	Museum estimates: about 1480–1490 for the women and 1500–1505 for the reverse; the precise chronology is disputed	Pen and brown and grey ink on the front; pen and brown ink on the reverse · Hieronymus Bosch · Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam · N 190 recto and verso (PK) Source 1. Source 2.
Adoration of the Child in Cologne	Second half of the sixteenth century	Oil on oak panel · Imitator of Hieronymus Bosch, in the city collection record · Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne · WRM 0474 Source 1. Source 2.
Adoration of the Magi in Philadelphia	Early sixteenth century in the museum record; around 1495–1520 in the BRCP catalogue	Oil on oak panel · Hieronymus Bosch in the museum record; workshop of Bosch in the 2016 BRCP catalogue · Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917 · 1321; museum object 103592 Source 1. Source 2.
Adoration of the Magi — New York	c.1470–1480	2016 catalogue: Bosch; oil on oak · Metropolitan Museum 13.26 2016 catalogue.
Adoration of the Magi — Prado triptych	c.1494	Oil on oak; grisaille exterior · Bosch · Prado P002048 Object source.
Adoration of the Magi — three associated fragments	c.1515–1535	2016 catalogue: Follower of Bosch · Two Shepherds / Retinue in Philadelphia; associated Adoration in private collection in 2016 2016 catalogue.
Ascent of the Blessed — Venice	c.1505–1515	Oil on panel · Bosch · Gallerie dell’Accademia; Visions of the Hereafter Object source.
Battle of the Birds and Mammals	Not specified in catalogue heading	2016 catalogue: Bosch; pen and brown ink · Berlin KdZ 14715 2016 catalogue.
Beggars and Musicians	Around 1530–1540	Ink and wash on paper · Unknown follower of Hieronymus Bosch · Albertina, Vienna · 7798 Source 1. Source 2.
Christ Carrying the Cross Drawing	Around 1470 in the museum catalogue	Black chalk or charcoal, pen and brush in brown ink, white corrections · Anonymous, workshop of Rogier van der Weyden · Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam · N 81 recto and verso (PK) Source 1. Source 2.
Christ Carrying the Cross in Vienna	Around 1490–1510 in the current KHM record and BRCP catalogue	Oil on oak, painted on both sides · Hieronymus Bosch; possible workshop involvement in the Passion side discussed by the BRCP · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna · Gemäldegalerie, GG 6429 Source 1. Source 2.
Christ Carrying the Cross — El Escorial	c.1495–1505	2016 catalogue: Bosch; oil on oak · Patrimonio Nacional 10014739 2016 catalogue.
Christ Carrying the Cross — Ghent	c.1510–1516 (museum)	Oil on panel · Bosch in museum listing; authorship disputed · MSK Ghent 1902-H Object source.
Christ Mocked — London	c.1510	Oil on wood · Bosch · National Gallery NG4744 Object source.
Concert in the Egg, After Hieronymus Bosch	Around 1561; third quarter of the sixteenth century	Oil on canvas · Anonymous, after Hieronymus Bosch · Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille · P 816 Source 1. Source 2.
Conjurer / Comical Concert — Louvre drawing	Not specified in catalogue heading	2016 catalogue: Bosch (recto), follower (concert verso) · Pen and brown ink · Louvre INV 19197 2016 catalogue.
Conjurer / Cross-bearing and beggars — Liège sheet	Not specified in catalogue heading	2016 catalogue: Bosch (verso), follower (recto) · Pen and brown ink · Album d’Arenberg 534 2016 catalogue.
Crowning with Thorns — El Escorial	c.1530–1540	2016 catalogue: Follower of Bosch; oil on oak · Patrimonio Nacional 10014743 2016 catalogue.
Crucifixion with a Donor	Circa 1495–1505; Circa 1490–1500	Oil on oak panel · Hieronymus Bosch · Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels · 6639 Source 1. Source 2.
Death and the Miser Drawing	Not securely established; probably made after the painting	Pen and brush, dark ink and white highlights on prepared paper · Workshop of Hieronymus Bosch in the BRCP catalogue; alternatives recorded by the Louvre · Musée du Louvre, Department of Prints and Drawings, Paris · RF 6947, Recto Source 1. Source 2.
Death and the Miser — Washington	c.1485/1490 (NGA)	Oil on panel · Bosch · National Gallery of Art 1952.5.33 Object source.
Ecce Homo Triptych — Boston	c.1495–1500; wings c.1500/1503	2016 catalogue: Workshop of Bosch; oil on oak · Museum of Fine Arts Boston; several production phases 2016 catalogue.
Ecce Homo — Frankfurt	c.1490	Mixed technique on oak · Bosch · Städel 1577 Object source.
Fall of the Damned — Venice	c.1505–1515	2016 catalogue: Bosch; oil on panel · Visions of the Hereafter · Venice 2016 catalogue.
Garden of Earthly Delights	1490–1500 (Prado)	Oil on oak; grisaille exterior · Bosch · Prado; triptych Object source.
Gluttony and Lust / Allegory of Intemperance — Yale fragment	c.1500–1510 (group dating)	2016 catalogue: Bosch; oil on oak · Yale 1959.15.22; fragment associated with Ship of Fools 2016 catalogue.
Group of Ten Spectators, a Follower of Bosch	Around 1510–1540 in the current museum record	Pen and two brown inks on paper, with a brown framing line · Follower of Hieronymus Bosch in the Morgan record; Bosch in the BRCP catalogue · Morgan Library & Museum, New York · I, 112 Source 1. Source 2.
Head of an Old Woman	About 1500	Oil on panel · Attributed to Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen · Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam · 2439 (OK) Source 1. Source 2.
Hell and the Flood — Rotterdam panels	Around 1515 in the museum records; around 1510–1520 in the BRCP catalogue	Oil on oak panels · Jheronimus Bosch in the museum records; workshop of Bosch in the BRCP catalogue · Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam Source 1. Source 2.
Hermit Saints Triptych	Circa 1495–1505	Oil on oak panels · Hieronymus Bosch · Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice · 2044 Source 1. Source 2.
Infernal Landscape	Not specified in catalogue heading	2016 catalogue: Bosch; pen and brown ink, red accent · Private collection in 2016 2016 catalogue.
Infernal Scene with Anvil / Monster Studies	Not specified in catalogue heading	2016 catalogue: Bosch; attribution debated in entry · Pen and brown ink · Berlin KdZ 548 2016 catalogue.
Infernal Scene with Tree-Man / Standing Man	Not specified in catalogue heading	2016 catalogue: Workshop of Bosch; pen and brown ink · Dresden C 1875; historical reverse title includes a proposed prophet 2016 catalogue.
Job Triptych — Bruges	c.1510–1520	2016 catalogue: Workshop of Bosch; oil on oak · Groeningemuseum / Hoeke loan in 2016 2016 catalogue.
Last Judgement — Bruges triptych	c.1495–1505	2016 catalogue: Bosch; oil on oak · Groeningemuseum 2016 catalogue.
Last Judgement — Munich fragment	c.1530–1540	2016 catalogue: Follower of Bosch; oil on oak · Alte Pinakothek 5752 2016 catalogue.
Last Judgement — Vienna triptych	c.1500–1505 (BRCP 2016)	Oil on oak · Bosch and workshop (BRCP 2016) · Academy of Fine Arts Vienna 2016 catalogue.
Man in a Basket and Comic Figures	Around 1500–1515 in the museum record	Pen and brown ink on paper; the reverse is catalogued as iron-gall ink · Hieronymus Bosch in the current Albertina record; attribution has been debated · Albertina, Vienna · 7797 recto and verso Source 1. Source 2.
Man Seen from Behind	About 1550–1569; About 1565–1570	Traces of black chalk, pen and brush in light brown ink · Anonymous, circle of Pieter Bruegel the Elder · Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam Source 1. Source 2.
Mary and John at the Foot of the Cross	About 1440	Brush in grey and black · Unknown, possibly Netherlandish · Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden · C 815 Source 1. Source 2.
Model Sheet with ‘Witches’	Disputed; proposals depend on the attribution	Pen and brown ink; the BRCP also records underlying black chalk · Hieronymus Bosch; follower attributions also recorded · Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, Paris · INV 19721 recto Source 1. Source 2.
Peasant and Three Bust-Length Figures	1401–1500	Brown pen over a black preliminary drawing · Attributed to the Master of the Drapery Studies; Bosch circle also recorded · Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin · KdZ 777 Source 1. Source 2.
River to Hell — Venice	c.1505–1515	2016 catalogue: Bosch; oil on panel · Visions of the Hereafter · Venice 2016 catalogue.
Saint Anthony and a Concert in an Egg	Around 1510–1525 in the museum’s 2016–17 exhibition texts	Pen in light and dark brown inks · Workshop of Hieronymus Bosch; underlying monsters: Bosch (BRCP), possibly Bosch (exhibition text) · Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin · KdZ 711 recto and verso Source 1. Source 2.
Saint Christopher Carrying the Christ Child	c.1500; 1490–1505 in restoration material	Oil on panel · Bosch · Boijmans St 26 Object source.
Saint James and Hermogenes	About 1551–1575 in the KIK-IRPA catalogue	Oil on wood, painted on both sides · Anonymous follower of Hieronymus Bosch · Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes · P.46.1.44; older number 176 Source 1. Source 2.
Saint Jerome at Prayer	Circa 1485–1495	Oil on oak panel · Hieronymus Bosch · Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent · 1908-H Source 1. Source 2.
Saint John on Patmos / Passion Scenes	c.1495–1505; estimates vary	Oil on oak · Bosch · Gemäldegalerie Berlin 1647A Object source.
Saint John the Baptist in Meditation	Late 15th century; c.1485–1510 (Prado exhibition)	Oil on panel · Bosch · Lázaro Galdiano 8155 Object source.
Saint Liberata Triptych	Circa 1495–1505	Oil on oak panels · Hieronymus Bosch · Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice · 2045 Source 1. Source 2.
Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things	1505–1510 (Prado)	Oil on poplar · Bosch (Prado); workshop/follower disputed · Prado Object source.
Ship of Fools — Louvre painting	1475–1500 (record); c.1505–1515 (exhibition)	Oil on oak · Bosch · Louvre RF 2218; fragment Object source.
Ship of Fools — Louvre workshop drawing	Not specified in catalogue heading	2016 catalogue: Workshop of Bosch · Pen, brush, grey-brown ink and white highlights on prepared paper · Louvre RF 3714 2016 catalogue.
Studies of Monsters	About 1530–1550, according to the current Ashmolean record	Pen and brown ink on laid paper, both faces · Anonymous follower of Hieronymus Bosch · Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford · WA1863.155 Source 1. Source 2.
Studies of Saint Anthony and Monsters	No execution date specified in the current Louvre records	Pen and brown ink on paper · Bosch listed; reverse questioned by Louvre; BRCP accepts both faces · Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, Paris · INV 20871 recto and verso Source 1. Source 2.
Temptation of Saint Anthony — Kansas City fragment	c.1500–1510	2016 catalogue: Bosch; oil on oak · Nelson-Atkins 35–22 2016 catalogue.
Temptation of Saint Anthony — Lisbon triptych	c.1500	Oil on oak · Bosch · Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga 1498 Pint Museum.
Temptation of Saint Anthony — Prado panel	c.1530–1540	2016 catalogue: Follower of Bosch (2016 opinion); oil on oak · Prado P002049 2016 catalogue.
Terrestrial Paradise	Approximately 1505–1515	Oil on oak panel · Hieronymus Bosch · Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice Source 1. Source 2.
The Burning Ship Drawing	1500–1520	Pen and iron gall ink on paper · Attributed to Hieronymus Bosch · Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Graphic Collection · HZ-2554; numbered 2554 in the BRCP catalogue Source 1. Source 2.
The Comical Barber Scene	About 1550–1580, according to the British Museum	Pen and brown ink, grey and brown wash, over black chalk · Anonymous follower, after Hieronymus Bosch · British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, London · 1854,0628.46 Source 1. Source 2.
The Conjuror, After Hieronymus Bosch	Probably after 1525; around 1530–1540 in the BRCP technical report	Oil on oak panel · Anonymous follower of Hieronymus Bosch · Musée Ducastel-Vera, Saint-Germain-en-Laye · 872.1.87 Source 1. Source 2.
The Cure of Folly / Extraction of the Stone of Madness	1501–1505 (Prado)	Oil on oak · Bosch (Prado); workshop/follower disputed · Prado P002056 Object source.
The Entombment Drawing	About 1505–1515, current museum record	Brush and black and grey ink, with grey wash, over black chalk · Workshop of Hieronymus Bosch; drawn by the Master of the Prado Haywain Triptych; Hieronymus Bosch, argued by the BRCP in 2016 · British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, London · 1952,0405.9 Source 1. Source 2.
The Gathering of the Birds	Not specified in catalogue heading	2016 catalogue: Bosch; pen and brown ink · Berlin KdZ 13136 2016 catalogue.
The Haywain — Prado triptych	1510–1516 (BRCP 2016)	Oil on oak · Bosch (BRCP 2016) · Prado; separate Escorial version exists 2016 catalogue.
The Hearing Forest and the Seeing Field	Circa 1500–1505	Pen and brown ink on paper · Hieronymus Bosch; reverse: Bosch and workshop · Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin · KdZ 549, front and reverse Source 1. Source 2.
The Owl’s Nest — Rotterdam	Not specified in catalogue heading	2016 catalogue: Bosch; pen and brown ink · Boijmans N 175 2016 catalogue.
The Passion Triptych in Valencia	Workshop of Bosch, about 1510–1520; Follower of Bosch; centre about 1530–1540, wings about 1540–1550	Oil and gold on oak panels · Workshop of Bosch, about 1510–1520; Follower of Bosch; centre about 1530–1540, wings about 1540–1550 · Museu de Belles Arts de València Source 1. Source 2.
The Pedlar / Wayfarer — Rotterdam	c.1500 (museum)	Oil on panel · Bosch · Boijmans 1079 (OK); rejoined exterior Object source.
The Tree-Man — Vienna drawing	c.1505	Pen and brown ink · Bosch · Albertina, Vienna Object source.
The Wedding at Cana, After Hieronymus Bosch	Approximately 1560 in the current museum record	Oil on panel, 93 cm high × 72 cm wide · Anonymous, after Hieronymus Bosch · Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, St 25 Source 1. Source 2.
Two Fantastical Creatures — Berlin KdZ 550	Around 1505–1515 in the museum’s 2016 exhibition text	Pen in brown ink on reddish prepared laid paper · Hieronymus Bosch · Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin · KdZ 550, recto and verso Source 1. Source 2.
Two Figures Wearing Mitres	About 1480	Oil on panel · Anonymous (Boijmans); Bosch circle (RKD) · Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam · 1177 (OK) Source 1. Source 2.
Two Men and the Temptation of Eve	About 1505–1515 in the Prado’s 2016 exhibition guide	Pen and grey-brown ink on paper · Hieronymus Bosch in the 2016 catalogues discussed here · Private collection, as recorded in 2016 Source 1. Source 2.
Two Men Fighting	Not specified in the current Louvre record	Pen and brown ink · In the manner of Hieronymus Bosch · Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, Paris · INV 20660 recto; formerly NIII 8896 and MA 8400 Source 1. Source 2.
Two Men — Berlin KdZ 5210	Not specified in catalogue heading	2016 catalogue: Bosch questioned · Pen, brush, ink, chalk and white highlights · Berlin KdZ 5210; historical title Two Oriental Men 2016 catalogue.
Two Monsters — Berlin KdZ 547	Approximately 1500–1510 in Berlin's 2016 exhibition catalogue; an estimated range	Pen and brown ink on paper · Hieronymus Bosch · Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin · KdZ 547, drawn on both sides Source 1. Source 2.

References

1. The National Gallery, London, "Hieronymus Bosch": View source
2. Bosch Research and Conservation Project, project information (in Dutch): View source
3. Closer to Bosch: View source
4. Museo Nacional del Prado, The Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych: View source
5. Museo Nacional del Prado, The Haywain Triptych: View source
6. Paintings Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, The Last Judgement Triptych by Hieronymus Bosch: View source
7. Louvre, La Nef des fous exhibition note: View source
8. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, The Pedlar: View source
9. Google Arts & Culture / Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, The Temptations of St. Anthony: View source
10. Museo Nacional del Prado, The Temptations of Saint Anthony Abbot: View source
11. The National Gallery, London, Christ Mocked (The Crowning with Thorns): View source
12. Museo Nacional del Prado, The Extraction of the Stone of Madness: View source
13. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Death and the Miser: View source
14. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, "Jheronimus Bosch - the Devil Maker": View source