Bosch

I was not planing to write before my exploration in the Amazons because there was not anything really interesting to write about till my last stop before my final destination.

But I felt so compelled to write after the synvhronistic coincidances I've experienced after watching the film Zeitgeist and seeing a Bosch painting distorted.

I was so excited when I first heard that there was an original Bosch painting in the capital of Equador, Quito. It was being exhibited in the church called San Diego located in the colonial part of the city. According to the book I was reading nobody knew how it came there....After waiting three hours in front of the church -sometimes under the rain sometimes sleeping on the bank- for the guide to arrive I was finally able to enter the church...

I paid the 2 US dollars entrance fee and asked the guide -who was an old señora in her fifties-to not show me the artwork about the story of Jesus, virgin Mary, etc and lead me to the room where Bosch’s panting is…Tough a little bit surprised she did so happily knowing that this was easier for her...

On the way to the room she showed me a very heavy secret stone door opening to a room where the priests were supposed to use. After this short interruption we finally arrived at Bosch.

When I first saw the painting I felt exhilarated….I do not know why but Bosch’s paintings are so impressive and I feel so absorbed when I look at them…I can look for hours trying to grasp the idea behind all the strange figures. But from the beginning there was something wrong about the painting…

After a few minutes of exploring the painting I started realizing to my astonishment that the original painting was painted over and distorted by somebody.....

As far as I know nobody really knows what Bosch was depicting in his pictures...There are assumptions about the possible explanations....Having that idea in mind when the guide started explaining me “the meaning” of the painting I struggled hard to contain myself…When she finished the come to Jesus he will save you church version of the meaning of the painting, with my beginner level Spanish I kindly tried to tell the guide my personal idea. For me it was painted over in a way that the story in the painting was possibly changed to fit the opinions of the church.... You could see the original odd anthropomorphic, animal plant like Bosch figures lingering underneath the second layer of paint.....You could see how some of the figures were distorted so amateurishly and sometimes distorted completely by being painted over…..For me this was like painting over Mona Lisa: Painting a moustache on her face and then claiming that it is a HE…

Who could have done that and why? I do not know. Can it be somebody who did not like Bosch or his ideas about life and/or the church at that time? Or someone who decided to convert Bosch to Christianity? If not him, at least his paintings...

I am not an expert but the painting was most probably original....Plus, both the Lonely Planet Guide and the church say that it is an original Bosch painting....

But how come they or anybody did not and still do not recognize that the painting was distorted -or better destroyed ? Or am I hallucinating?