荊冠のキリスト

By 1593 this panel was in the collection of Philip II of Spain, the king who filled El Escorial, his monastery-palace outside Madrid, with Bosch and Bosch-like pictures. It may have come to Spain through a soldier who fought in the Netherlands under the Duke of Alba. The centre is a golden circle, a tondo, holding the mocking of Christ as the crown of thorns is pressed down. Around it runs a grey battle of angels and demons painted to look like carved stone. The design elaborates a simpler Bosch composition of the same scene now in London. It was made in the 1530s, after Bosch's death, by a follower who kept his cast of leering, close-pressed faces while pushing the whole thing toward something more ornamental.