The Renaissance was an extraordinary period in history where a lot of changes in society happened. This disruptive time was from the 1300s to the 1600s. During this period many exciting, new things happened as a result of two revolutions. Those were the Protestant revolution and the scientific revolution. Of those influential people who were affected by the revolutionary spirit was Hieronymus Bosch. He was a Dutch artist who lived during the Renaissance from 1450 to 1516. He painted dark and disturbing subjects showing how humanity committed sins based on greed. The Renaissance was a revolutionary period in the sense that it was a full 180 years of thinking and exploration. Bosch’s painting has the same elements as the Protestant revolution, which is why the Renaissance is also considered an artistic revolution.
The three ideals of the artist revolution are classicism, humanism, and realism. The artistic revolution caused a big change in the type of art made. For example, Bosch’s paintings started to defy the church by showing clergymen leading people into hell. This helped encourage the Protestant revolution. Artworks started to have new ideas that were not seen before. These new ideas were realism, classicism, and humanism. Bosch mainly focused on humanism and realism. In the famous painting called The Haywain, realism is shown because the people in the painting have human anatomy and facial expressions. You can see that there is humanism in the painting called The Garden of Earthly Delights because the artwork explores human reason, spirit, and grace. Bosch shows humans happy and in paradise alongside images of humans in despair and hell. This showed the dangers of sin.

During the Renaissance, two major revolutions started to play out. These two revolutions were called the Protestant revolution and the scientific revolution. “The Protestant revolution was the 16th-century religious, political, intellectual and cultural upheaval that splintered Catholic Europe”( history.com). The Renaissance helped pave the way for the Protestant revolution through the invention of the printing press which became an easy way to help spread the word to many people instead of word of mouth. This allowed Protestant writers to get their ideas out to everyone without the Catholic church trying to stop them. The Protestant revolution was the revolution that mainly influenced Bosch. This is true because he portrayed the church as leading humanity to hell. We get this idea from The Haywain. The center panel features both clergy and peasants engaged in sinful behavior while the right panel provides a gruesome illustration of where that type of behavior leads. To conclude, Bosch was a memorable Renaissance painter that focused on how the church was leading humanity into a life of sin and hell. He was able to express his thoughts very clearly through the medium of art in which he was very talented.
On multiple occasions, we can see how Bosch painted about death and sin, and how humanity is weak and falling into their nature to sin. He shows how the church does not help humanity. Bosch probably got these ideas from the world around him. These ideals were about how everyone is committing sins based on greed, lust, and pride among other things. This worldview helped shape what Bosch would paint. We can connect Bosch’s main ideas of how our world is full of sin to our modern world. We can still see many people in this world committing sins such as many companies exploiting child labor in 3rd world countries and governments not taking responsibility for their role in climate change. It would be interesting to see how Bosch’s paintings would reflect those things today.