Hans Belting here offers his own interpretation of The Garden of Earthly Delights, the luminous triptych by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, which he sees not as apocalyptic, but utopian. Taking readers through each panel, Belting discusses various schools of thought and explores Bosch's life and times. He compares Bosch's vision with the humanistic theories of Thomas More and Willibald Pirckheimer and suggests that the painter's aim was not to evoke the end of the world, but to investigate how the world would exist had the Fall not happened. The book includes a fold-out reproduction of the original painting.