Two Spanish museums, both located in Madrid, the Prado Museum and the newly built Museum of Royal Collections, are having a ‘Mexican standoff’ that involves fighting over four paintings, including the world-famous tryptich ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ by Dutch medieval painter Hieronymus Bosch. The new museum is scheduled to open in 2016 and has been told by many experts that it won’t attract the number of visitors expected with the pieces it currently has in its possession.
The Spanish royal family have owned the Bosch painting since 1593 and had it restored in 1933 then stored at the Prado in 1936. The painting has been on loan for a long time, but now that the Museum of Royal Collections wants to have it, the Prado won’t budge. The chairman of the Prado’s board said that if the country’s public heritage agency who owns the painting wanted to have it for its new museum, they’d have to “wait until hell freezes over”. Other museums around Spain are on alert because some of their paintings could be next.
(Links: www.nytimes.com, www.omroepbrabant.nl, Illustration: fragment of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Conjurer)
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