The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Prado Museum located in the heart of Madrid, Spain houses one of the world’s finest collections of Renaissance art. Despite the museum’s hundreds of masterworks by the likes of Velázquez, El Greco, Goya, Raphael and Rubens, The Garden of Earthly Delights by Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, housed in the building’s lower galleries, is amongst the most impressive and complex works ever created in the history of art.

Executed between 1490 and 1510, this triptych depicts the fate of humanity in three distinct visual schemes; the left panel rendered in grisaille representing Eden, the inner face in brilliant colors denoting a Paradise that deceives the senses, and the right-most panel executed in dark hues, representing Hell. Each storyline is connected through their principal focus on the concept of sin. While Bosch’s panoramic composition precedes the artistic movement formally known as Surrealism by over four centuries, there is no single more avant-garde work in the world, depicting the creative potential of the imagination or of the unconscious mind. A ‘Must See’ painting that will transfix any viewer for hours.