Based on the little historical information about the artist's life, the novel tries to dissect the context in which Bosch's imagination incorporated the sacred and the profane, the symbol and the metaphor, around which the dramatic life of the creator revolves.

Some documented facts of Bosch's life regarding his marriage to a wealthy woman whose dowry allowed him the freedom of creation, or his survival of a plague epidemic and the great fire of 1463 in 's-Hertogenbosch, are mentioned in the novel to identify the artist's personality and recreate the social and historical context of the western European Middle Ages, haunted by the fear of the Inquisition and religious reform. The artist immerses in the creation process in which the factual circumstances disappear and re-emerge into his artistic universe populated by fantastic characters, grotesque situations, tortures and suffering, that evaporates at the end of the story like a nightmare in the morning light.