I wrote this post a few years ago and apparently never posted it. Maybe I like it better now. Click the pic for a bigger version.

About the only thing I remember from an art history and appreciation class I took in college is to look in paintings for lines and curves and where they converge. Part of the fun is that a line or curve can be made up of parts of a number of disparate objects, so that they are hidden from a “literal” viewing, one that looks only for the objects themselves. (To the countless people who know more than I do about this, my apologies for the clumsy description.)
    I recently encountered Death and the Miser by Hieronymus Bosch (1494), which looks almost like it was composed to exemplify converging lines. The ray of light from the crucifix, extended by the edge of the dying man’s blanket, forms a line that crosses his chest. Another line formed by death’s arrow, the arrow’s shadow, and the dying man’s left forearm converges with the line from the crucifix along the edge of the blanket.
    There are strong vertical lines extending from nearly the top to the bottom of the painting. Two are centered on the door through which death emerges (or behind which death hides) and on the point where the dying man’s arms cross. His two arms reach separately toward death and toward a bag of money offered by a demon. The arms are paralleled by the arms of another representation of the same man when he was still active, though old and crippled, one reaching for another bag of money and the other grasping a cane and a rosary.
    Meanwhile an angel encourages the dying man to reach (or look) not toward death or wealth but toward the crucifix. Apparently, even at the point of death, there are still decisions to be made. For the miser, they are perhaps more obvious.

For more about Death and the Miser, see this page at the National Gallery of Art site and the Wikipedia article on the painting. There is a detailed article on the painting in J. O. Hand and M. Wolff, Early Netherlandish Painting (Collections of the National Gallery of Art, Systematic Catalogue; Washington:: National Gallery of Art, 1986), pp. 17–23. The book can be viewed here.