Dose of Art #125: Hieronymus Bosch – detail The Garden of Earthly Delights (c.1490 – 1510)

The more you look at The Garden of Earthly Delights, the more wondrous it gets. The colour, the forms and the sheer number of objects are unique in themselves. But when you look at the attention Bosch paid to each individual object, it gets even more unique.
Take this detail from the right panel (The Last Judgement) where we see a naked man on a skate. The wood and the metal of the skate are painted to look real (including the lighting and reflection) and the skate itself is wonderfully detailed. As a side note; more than 500 years later you can still buy the same kind of skate in The Netherlands.
The man on the skate is equally detailed from his head to his toes.
This detail may be a marvel in itself but when you look at its place is in the painting as a whole you will probably hardly notice it (take a look at Daily Dose 123). Normally painters tend to lead their viewers to what they find important by the lighting, the composition, colour or detail. So what can we, as viewers, make of a painting where every little detail seems to be equally important?