Madrid, day two: I wandered the rainy streets of Madrid, alive with midweek activity.
I found a delicious breakfast of eggs, grilled veggies, and fried potatoes, along with the required café con leche. So good!
From there, I walked to the Prado museum and admired the architecture on the way. The Prado museum is to Madrid what the Louvre is to Paris.
In addition to masterworks by Goya (Saturn in person—holy ay yi yi!), Picasso, Velázquez, and El Greco, they also have a dedicated room to Hieronymus Bosch, the Dutch fifteenth-century painter.
Bosch is one of my favorite painters. He painted things that were so absurd and surreal—in the late 1400s and early 1500s, mind you—he sort of predated Mad Magazine and underground comic books by more than five hundred years.
The Prado has Bosch’s most famous work on display, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and it takes my breath away every time I enter the room and see it. It is a huge triptych, perhaps eight or nine feet tall, painted between 1495 and 1505. There are more tiny little details in this painting than you would be able to notice even if looking at it for a week straight. It’s just an absolutely incredible piece of art. And it is super weird, which appeals to my sensibilities. If you look quite closely, there is a little man laying naked on the ground with a trumpet coming out of his butt, for example. Not exactly standard fare for fifteenth-century paintings!
King Philip II of Spain was a huge admirer of Bosch (known as “El Bosco” in Spain), and he acquired this painting for the Spanish national collection in the late 1600s. It has been on display here at the Prado since 1939.
Taking photographs inside the Prado is not allowed. However, my finger accidentally kept taking photos on my iPhone as I walked around. But I swear, it was an accident…
Now it is time to prepare for my show tonight! I’ll be doing the first solo show of my two-night stand at the Fun House here in Madrid. In case you’re on the fence about coming out, put on your coat and get out of the house. I hope to see you tonight!
See many more photos at Deke’s original Facebook post!
