Purgatory

The museum lists this panel as Purgatory and records a second title for it, Hell. To the people who bought pictures like this, the two words named very different places. Hell was for ever. Purgatory was a place of temporary pain where souls were cleansed before heaven, and the living could shorten that stay with masses and prayers for the dead.

In the 16th century that difference turned into a battle line. The Protestant reformers rejected purgatory, and the Catholic Church restated the doctrine at the Council of Trent in 1563. This panel was painted at some point in that century by an unknown follower working in Bosch's manner, and the record gives no year that would place it before or after the quarrel.

It came to the museum in 1908, a gift from a donor recorded only as E. M. Raymond.