This intricate tattoo of a 500-year-old painting on a woman's back is actually not what it seems

• Artist Agnieszka Nienartowicz made a painting of a woman with a tattoo of the Hieronymus Bosch painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights."
• Her painting is so detailed, it looks like a woman with a real tattoo of the painting.
• Here's a closer look.

Polish artist Agnieszka Nienartowicz made an oil painting of a woman's back that's so photorealistic, it looks like a tattoo.

It's called "The Garden of Earthly Delights," adapted from the 16th century Hieronymus Bosch painting of the same name. The Bosch painting is famous for its intricate detail and multilayered storytelling. It features unusual creatures and people indulging in physical pleasures.

"I love this painting, it is so strange, weird and beautifull at the same time," Nienartowicz told INSIDER. "I focused on the fragment of the central panel, the part which shows the earthly delights. I decided to show it on the woman's back — as a fallen nature contained in even a beautiful body."

Nienartowicz's painting puts a section of the Bosch painting on a woman's back, with similar amounts of detail. But by projecting it as a tattoo, it looks more realistic and connected to flesh itself.

Here's a close-up of Nienartowicz's painting:

And here's a similar part from the Hieronymus Bosch version of "The Garden of Earthly Delights," which was finished more than 500 years ago:

And if you zoom out from just the back tattoo, you'll see it's actually a painting of a tattoo, not a real one.

Nienartowicz told INSIDER that her paintings are a way of engaging with other artists' works and introducing new meanings into what the original artist intended.

"By appropriating fragments of [their] works, I estabilish a kind of dialogue with their authors," Nienartowicz  said. "Placing those works in a completely new context, I deprive them of their original meaning, transform them into an artifact, introduce ambiguity."

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