Triptyque de Nava et Grimón

This Flemish altarpiece was painted in Brussels in 1546 and then shipped a very long way. A Tenerife military commander named Tomas Grimon brought it out to the Canary Islands, far into the Atlantic off the African coast, for the private chapel of his house at La Laguna. Tenerife itself had been conquered by Castile only about 50 years earlier, so a fashionable Netherlandish workshop piece was a statement of wealth and reach on a young colonial island. The central Nativity is given to Pieter Coecke van Aelst himself. The wings, showing the Circumcision and the Presentation in the Temple, are largely his workshop. Fold the shutters closed and their backs carry an Annunciation, painted so the altar had something to show even when it was shut.