The Garden of Earthly Delights hangs in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, in Room 056A. Hieronymus Bosch painted it as a triptych, three hinged panels, and the Prado's catalogue lists it as on display.
Bosch painted it in the Netherlands, and it reached Spain only decades after his death. Its path from Brussels to Madrid runs through a confiscation, an auction and a monastery.
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Hanging in the Prado is not the same as belonging to it. The museum's own catalogue entry lists a different owner, and it begins its list of owners somewhere other than Spain.
That list is long. It names the Nassau family of Brussels, a prince of Orange, a duke who seized the painting from him, the duke's son, and a king. The painting passed from the last Nassau-side owner to the duke by force, on a single day in the spring of 1568.
Each of those hands left a date in the records. The earliest trace is not a deed or an inventory but a travel diary, written a year after Bosch died, by a man who was only passing through Brussels.
Who was the Garden of Earthly Delights painted for?
For the Nassau family of Brussels. The Prado's catalogue names Engelbert II of Nassau as the first owner and says he commissioned the triptych, probably for the Nassau palace of Coudenberg in the city.
The patron is not entirely settled. The same catalogue gives the next owner as Henry III of Nassau, from 1504 to 1538, and some historians date the finishing of the panels after Engelbert's death in 1504.
The first sure trace is a diary. In 1517, a year after Bosch's death, the Italian traveler Antonio de Beatis, secretary to Cardinal Luis of Aragon, was in Brussels. The Prado places the triptych in the Coudenberg palace on 30 July 1517 and says De Beatis presumably saw it there.
The Nassau line then passed the painting to René de Châlon and, in 1544, to William of Orange. William held it until 1567, and the next year it was gone.
What You'll Discover
Who took it to Spain.
What a monk called it.
Who really owns it today.
What the closed doors show.