Temptation of Saint Anthony

Anthony, who withdrew into the Egyptian desert, is regarded as the founder of Christian eremitic life. His contemporary biography remained popular reading until the Renaissance. Among other episodes, it recounts the saintly hermit’s temptation by sensual pleasures. In the painting, the saint, bearing the T-shaped Tau emblem of the Antonine Order, is absorbed in prayer, which these human beings in animal form—and animals behaving like humans—attempt to disrupt. The beautiful female figure personifying Luxuria, or Lust, bears the horns of the Devil upon her head. Such anthropomorphic and zoomorphic creatures are familiar from the works of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel. Jan de Cock worked in the period between these two great masters, probably in Antwerp, and is regarded as one of Bosch’s imitators and followers. This painting is almost certainly a fragment of what was once a horizontally oriented composition. Its deep, glowing palette evokes the style of the Flemish Renaissance, while its light and airy landscape recalls the tradition of northern Netherlandish landscape painting. (Zsuzsa Urbach, 2002)

Provenance

Ismeretlen származású

Exhibitions

• 1990, Utrecht, Middeleeuwse Nederlandse Kunst uit Hongarije
• 2022 Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum. Menny és pokol között. Hieronymus Bosch rejtélyes világa

Bibliography

• Cséfalvay Pál, szerk.: Keresztény Múzeum, Esztergom. Budapest, 1993. kat. 54. (Végh János)
• Middeleeuwse Nederlandse Kunst uit Hongarije (kiállítási katalógus). Rijksmuseum Hét Catharijneconvent. Utrecht, 1990. 23.
• Mucsi 1975 , 29;
• Mucsi 1973, 19;
• Urbach 1971, 34;
• Boskovits-Mojzer-Mucsi 1964, 192;