The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things

Bosch's Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (c. 1500) at the Prado is a painted table-top — an unusual format — depicting in the circular center the eye of God surrounded by vignettes of each of the seven sins in their characteristic settings, and in the four corner roundels the Last Things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The inscription in the center — 'Cave, cave, Deus videt' (Beware, beware, God sees) — gives the work its didactic function: a constant reminder, placed on a table where it would be seen daily, that human behavior is always observed by divine justice. The combination of satirical comedy in the sin vignettes with the gravity of the Last Things creates the characteristic Boschian tone of moral warning delivered through inventive entertainment.

The circular format with its radiating vignettes of the seven sins creates an encyclopedic visual catalog of human weakness, each scene rendered with Bosch's characteristic narrative precision and satirical observation.