Tangling Over Bosch

I am one of those hundreds—if not thousands—of pilgrims who crowded around this transcendental triptych in the Museo Nacional del Prado. Tourists and art enthusiasts packed themselves in front of this painting the way New York commuters pack themselves into trains during rush hour. Once I was finally able to get a place close enough to the painting to properly observe it, I tenaciously held on to my spot the way a driver holds on to a prime parking spot in midtown Manhattan.

I frolicked with Hieronymus Bosch in his gluttonous garden, partook of the visual pleasures of his lustful paradise, and endured the ravages of his angry purgatory for what must have been the length of an average film feature—coming attractions included—because The Garden of Earthly Delights (ca. 1490-1510) is almost as close as you can get to a blockbuster movie on canvas (or on oak, as is the case with The Garden). I was fascinated, as every viewer of this sublime spectacle is, by the fantastic images, profound symbols, and ancient theological and mythological motifs in this masterpiece of religious art.

Altogether, I spent eight hours in the Prado, including almost an hour with Diego Velázquez’s marvelous Las Meninas (ca. 1656), perhaps the most important painting in the history of modern art. And I spent half an hour with Rogier van der Weyden’s The Descent from the Cross (ca. 1435) before realizing that I had better move away from it before a couple from the Manhattan synagogue I’ll be interning at next year (and whom I bumped into at the Prado) would see me and wonder what an orthodox rabbinical student was doing standing transfixed in front of this, of all paintings.

This was my first trip to Madrid. I was in Spain because my sister was getting married in Barcelona, and I did not know when I would be back. I felt that I needed to take in as much of the Prado as I could. And little did I know what a good thing it was that I did, for if I (or anyone else) returns to Madrid in the near future, we will never see Bosch’s Garden or van der Weyden’s Descent in the Prado again.

At least, if a daring new museum in Madrid has its way. Scheduled to open near the baroque Spanish royal palace in the fall of 2016, the Museum of Royal Collections has had the audacity to demand that Spain’s most important museum relinquish several seminal masterpieces, including Bosch’s Garden, van der Weyden’s Descent, and several important Velázquezs, Goyas, and El Grecos to the new royal museum.

The Prado’s response was as predictable as an intrepid driver’s reply would be to a kind request from a slothful driver to surrender his Manhattan parking spot: Go to hell. Which were almost the exact words that the Prado used in its reply to the royal museum’s demand. “If [the director] is waiting to have the paintings in his place, he has to wait until hell freezes over,” said José Pedro Pérez-Llorca, the Prado’s chairman of the board, in a public statement. Which will obviously never happen, especially if Bosch’s weather report from hell was accurate: His five-billion-year forecast of inferno didn’t seem to show the heat letting up anytime soon.

The basis for the royal museum’s claim is that the Prado has merely been a placeholder for artworks that once belonged to the Spanish royal collection. These paintings were transferred from the San Lorenzo de El Escorial monastery to the Prado in 1936. Because the Museum of Royal Collections is controlled by the Patrimonio Nacional—the Spanish heritage agency that governs all royal properties—it now feels that, with the opening of its new museum, the time has come to demand the return of artworks it once had in its possession.

But the Spanish royal collection has been in possession of the paintings for nearly 80 years. Though they have continued to be listed by the Prado as being on temporary loan, they are on loan to the Prado as our bodies are on loan to us during our temporary sojourns on earth. Bosch’s Garden is the soul of the Prado, and The Descent, along with the other various works of Goya, El Greco, and Velázquez, has become part of its warp and woof. And the Prado, the pride of Madrid and Spain’s true crown jewel, attracts nearly three million visitors a year. It has become powerful enough in its own right to resist the demands of the Patrimonio Nacional. So to paraphrase Pérez-Llorca, there is no way in any hell—be it Bosch’s purgatory and hell, the Talmud’s Gehinnom, or Dante’s Inferno—that the royal museum will receive these paintings from the Prado.

To many, the royal museum’s requests may be ridiculous, but it’s the prospect of a precocious new museum demanding the most important paintings from one of the world’s most important art museums that is disturbing. The masterpieces that the royal museum is demanding have become an integral part of the Prado, and they give the Prado its unique spirit and enchanting prestige. As Pepe Serra, director of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, remarked, “I’m sure it’s a very good project, but to create this new museum, is it necessary to dismantle another one that is the most important in Spain?”

This is not, moreover, a case of stolen art. The works were placed in the Prado during the Civil War to protect them from the depredations of warfare. They were not acquired by force or coercion. To allow an envious collection to raise greedy claims about works that have been legitimately housed in important museums would yield a never-ending series of lawsuits and produce chaos in the museum world. For even if the Prado were to concede to the royal museum’s demands, who’s to say that the Dutch wouldn’t demand that Spain return The Garden to Holland? After all, Spain did acquire the triptych by force—the Duke of Alba commandeered it from the House of Orange-Nassau in the 16th century—during its tumultuous reign over the Netherlands and the Low Countries.

My rabbi in yeshiva, who possesses the unique combination of being both a Talmud scholar and an art connoisseur, spoke with me recently about Bosch’s masterpiece. “Some day,” he said, “somebody needs to write something about that painting.” Well, this isn’t exactly what he had in mind, but as long as hell is still nice and toasty, perhaps one day I, or you, or someone else, will return to the Prado to partake of the exquisite fruits of The Garden of Earthly Delights and write that proper piece about Bosch’s prophetic vision of paradise, pleasure, and purgatory.

Daniel Ross Goodman is a writer and rabbinical student in New York.