Fiction. These paintings were never painted. Images are AI-generated, stories and auctions are invented.

The Garden, the Morning After

From the Whatifs Catalogue, the encyclopedia of paintings that never were

This article is fiction. Hieronymus Bosch never painted this work. The image was generated by AI and the story below, including its discovery and sale, is invented.

The Garden, the Morning After is an imagined painting attributed, within the Whatifs fiction, to Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1505). It belongs to the Whatifs series of works the great masters never painted.

History and rediscovery

The Garden of Earthly Delights shows the world's night. This panel, perhaps its reverse, shows the same garden the next morning: deserted, giant half-eaten fruit, a single creature sweeping. Separated from the triptych in the 16th century, it was found in 2024 serving as a cupboard door in a Flemish presbytery; dendrochronology dates the oak to 1498.

Sale

Within the fiction, the painting sold for €88,000,000 (2025). Tap the board to replay the imagined bidding. The auction pictured below never took place.

Imagined saleroom (AI-generated photo)
AI-generated photograph of a fictional auction.

See also

Notes

  1. Image generated with AI from a prompt written by Whatifs. No real painting, signature or auction house is reproduced.
  2. Story written for Whatifs. Any resemblance to real discoveries is coincidental.

Hang the painting that never was

A 50 × 60 cm museum-grade print of “The Garden, the Morning After”, labelled as a Whatifs creation on the back. 29 €, shipped in Europe.

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