Circles of Thorns

Unlike Bosch''s better-known, fantastical, ''proto-surrealist'' paintings, Christ Mocked is small, still and sombre, and yet, with a little effort of knowledge and interpretation, it reveals a depth of understanding of both the Passion, and of human nature, that speaks as much to the twenty-first century as it did to the sixteenth.

By exploring the political, scientific, psychological and devotion...