David Bowie was pop’s ultimate starman, a shape-shifting god of glam – but even he had the odd crash landing. Consider his ...

Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, Duke of Alba (1507-82), the Spanish crown’s henchman in the Netherlands, wanted nothing more than to lay his hands on Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly ...

Bosch’s three-paneled masterpiece takes you from earthly delights to a nightmarish Hell. Bosch’s three-paneled masterpiece takes you on a wild ride from a tranquil Garden of Eden creation scene to a ...

Stay on top of what’s happening in the Bay Area with essential Bay Area news stories, sent to your inbox every weekday. Bay Area-raised host Ericka Cruz Guevarra brings you context and analysis to ...

Dolls have always freaked me out. I do not attribute this to some formative trauma — I’ve never been attacked by dolls, and I have staunchly avoided any horror movies featuring them. But I still won’t ...

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Men race around a phallic fountain on two-legged horses that, on closer examination, are actually penises with reins. A fat brain is ...

From Bosch’s crazed party to the homoerotic images Michelangelo smuggled into the Vatican, this was an age of taboo-busting. And, as our writer argues in a new book, it sparked its own culture wars ...

According to a study by Madrid’s El Prado museum and the Miguel Hernandez University Elche, viewers of the 16th century “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch look longer and harder at ...

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Source: Museo del Prado, Madrid/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain “I’ve come to a decision,” said my patient Bernadine as we Skyped this past week.

The Tree Man, c. 1500–1510. Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish, 1440–1516). Pen and light and dark brown ink on paper; 27.7 x 21.1 cm. Albertina, Vienna, inv. 7876 ...