The Prado Museum houses 8,000 paintings, but only a masterpiece comes from an plunder. Under this criterion, 0.0125% of its funds. The painting confiscated in 1568 – more than 450 years – by the Duke of Alba is an old acquaintance: The Garden of Delights (1490-1500). The teacher is very alive. The Pinacoteca decided that on April 5 it will become the day of Jheronimus van Aken, El Bosco (1450-1516), because it coincides with the first date on which there is record of its existence.
In addition, as grammar is memory, the inclusion of the term has proposed to the RAE Bosquiano In the dictionary. The meaning is simple: “It is said of everything related to the painter”, as is picassiano o Velazqueño. The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the National Museum of Art of Lisbon and the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum of Rotterdam have joined the semantic proposal. Oversight to the destiny of the words, what we know, through a job of the Miguel Hernández University of Murcia (UMH), is that it is the painting – especially about four minutes – to the one that the visitor dedicates the longest time.
We walk through the Prado Salas, perhaps, too quickly and his true story has been lost. How was the triptych looted? Because? In those years, Felipe II reigned (1527-1598), an admirer of the teacher, but did not commission his robbery. The Duke of Alba and his enmity with Guillermo de Orange. It was a revenge.
Few doubts exist from theft or terrible torture to which, for months, its custodian was subjected in several Belgian prisons until the whereabouts of that wonderful painting revealed. He would protect, he told his guardians, the secret, even if he paid with his life.
However, everything begins before, in the 1490s. EngelBrecht II of Nassau commissioned the work, which had to allocate to his Brussels Palace. After death in 1504, he continued belonging to his descendants until 1568: Hendrik III of Nassau (1504-38), Rene de Châlon (1538-44) and Guillermo I of Orange (1544-68). By declaring himself in rebellion against King Felipe II, all his assets were expropriated. The Duke of Alba plunged the triptych on May 28, 1568. But he did not think about the loyalty due to his sovereign. I wanted to keep El Bosco’s masterpiece.
Guillermo de Orange, known as Guillermo the silent, and the Duke of Hierro were enemies of swords. Stoleing the triptych was another episode of this infinite rivalry. First, the Duke pressed Cardinal Granvelle, owner of some upholstery Bosquianoseven the unspeakable – explains art historian Paul Vandenbrock in Hieronymus Boschwithout Spanish translation – for having a tapestry (then they were more valued than the canvases or any work) of the garden. VION, confidant of Granvelle, did everything possible so that the Duke would “forget” – in this way – of the triptych. It didn’t matter. First he got (December 1567) the tapestry. Today is part of the National Heritage collection. Although in his day he hung in his personal residence.
But it was the 16th century and we were at the beginning of an open field confrontation, deep down, for the possession of a masterpiece. The Duke longs for the painting and also a victory against the rebel Guillermo de Orange. It entrusts an inventory of all the assets of the Nassau court in Brussels. It is March 11, 1568. If it breaches the order “it will be banished for life and (Guillermo) will lose all its possessions.” May 28 everything is confiscated. Forestrious, the Duke had already done, five months before, his own list: the perfect excuse to snatch the garden.
Now the myth and certainty is mixed, difficult to draw the line. The jerk of the Nassau court in Brussels, Pieter Col, “was tortured, of the most horrendous ways, because he refused to reveal the location of the triptych,” writes Paul Vandenbrock. Or confessed, ”Vargas and the river, officers of the Duke threatened him, or would torture him until the end. Despite the torture that included the dislocation of all ribs, lack of food, open wounds and nails ripped, the janitor was willing to die from painting.
“This is the northern story that has been imposed,” he warns, with caution, José Juan Pérez Preciado, Flemish painting expert of the Prado Museum. But the pressure is unbearable. Guillermo gives. In May 1568 the Duke of Alba plunged him not for Felipe II – a passionate of the painter and who must obedience – but for his personal enjoyment. The spell of the painting. From the hands of the Duke of Alba he went to those of his illegitimate son, the prior Don Fernando de Toledo, who possessed him until his death in 1591. Felipe II, who saw him on his first trip to the Nassau palace in Brussels in 1549, being still prince, bought it in the prior’s almoneda. And in 1593 he ordered him to take to the Monastery of the Escorial.
However, until our days you have to stop again. “Felipe II was an unusual man in knowledge, knowledge and taste,” said Great Hispanic Jonathan Brown (1939-2022) in The triumph of painting (Nerea, 1995). And he adds: “It was the richest and most patron of the second half of the sixteenth century.” When he dies in 1598 there were 1,150 paintings in El Escorial and about 358 in the Madrid Alcazar. For what interests us in this story had a superb collection of flamenco painting of the fifteenth century, with masterpieces such as the DSpyians of the Virgin (1420-1430) by Robert Campin, Joachim Patinir or the Triptych of the Virgin (1465) of Dirk Bouts. But, above all, El Bosco – more than 30 works are attributed to him in his possession, it is evident that many would be false or workshop – and his Delight garden. Without a doubt, the most important work he ever possessed.
The painting would continue to travel, already under Spanish possession. In 1800, critic Ceán Bermúdez complains about the bad condition in which he is in El Escorial. In 1857 he moved to the Royal Fourth of San Jerónimo, to the rooms of Felipe II. There he remained – says Pilar Silva in the monograph of the genius – until he took the Prado Museum. He entered during 1933 to be restored and his deposit was regularized in 1998. By the way, neither the Louvre nor the English National Gallery can show off to have only one confiscated masterpiece. Now occupies the room 056a. It is a rayuela painted infinite readings. Besides, it is not alone. The Prado also houses the Hoen car triptych (1512-1515), el Triptych of worship of magicians (1494), La Table of Capital Sins (1505-1510), The extraction of the stone of madness (1501-1505) y The temptations of San Antonio Abad (1510-15). Today could not be returned. There is not even a place called Nassau. No one, ever, has claimed it. The story remains. No institution equals the meadow in teacher funds. A collection worthy of a country that was once an empire.