The Temptation of St Antony

c. 1550 - c. 1600

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 61.8 cm × width 79.7 cm

Inscriptions

signature, bottom right: Jheronimus bosch

Technical notes

The support consists of three horizontally grained oak planks (30.1, 11.6 and 19.6 cm). The panel has been thinned down to a thickness of approx. 0.5 cm, and is cradled. Wooden strips were added later. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1534. The panel could have been ready for use by 1545, but a date in or after 1559 is more likely. The white ground was applied up to the edges of the original panel. Underdrawing could not be seen with the naked eye nor detected with infrared reflectography. The figures were reserved in the background. The paint layers were applied rather thickly, with little attention to detail. Small adjustments were made to the dovecote on the woman’s head.

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 6 June 2000
condition report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 19 March 2007

Condition

Fair. The paint in St Antony’s face is abraded. The varnish is thick and discoloured.

Conservation

H.H. Mertens, 1967: cradling repaired

Provenance

…; the dealer Charles Brunner, Paris;¹ ...; donated by Frederik Schmidt-Degener (1881-1941), Amsterdam, to the museum, on the occasion of the Rijksmuseum’s 50th anniversary, 1935

Object number: SK-A-3240

Credit line: Gift of F. Schmidt-Degener, Amsterdam

The artist

Jheronimus Bosch (’s-Hertogenbosch c. 1450 - ’s-Hertogenbosch 1516), manner of

Jheronimus Bosch came from a prodigiously artistic family. His great-grandfather, Thomas van Aken, his grandfather Jan and his father Antonius were all painters. His grandfather left Aachen for Nijmegen and then moved to ’s-Hertogenbosch, where he is first documented in 1427. Four of his sons became painters as well. The youngest, Antonius, married Aleid van der Mynnen, and their three sons, Goessen, Jheronimus and Jan all once again followed their father’s profession.

Bosch is mentioned – usually with just his forename Jheronimus or Jeroen – in a number of documents drawn up in ’s-Hertogenbosch between 1474 and 1516. In the earliest of them, dated 5 April 1474, he acted together with his father and brothers as witnesses for his sister Katherijn. The artist used the toponym Bosch to sign a few of his works ‘Jheronimus Bosch’. He probably trained in his father’s workshop.

Between July 1477 and June 1481, Bosch married Aleid van der Meervenne, who was born into quite a well-to-do family in Oirschot, a village south of ’s-Hertogenbosch. In the city they moved into her house, ‘Inden Salvator’ (In the Saviour), but it is not known precisely when. Bosch became prosperous, thanks to his wife, and began moving in the city’s higher social circles, which included the influential Brotherhood of Our Lady. He became an ordinary member in 1486-87, and was elected a sworn brother the following year, 1487-88. That Jheronimus Bosch was quite well off can be deduced from tax returns. Bosch was probably one of the victims of an outbreak of the plague in ’s-Hertogenbosch in the summer of 1516. He was buried in the churchyard of the city’s St Janskerk. His patrons belonged to the circle of the Burgundian Habsburg Court and the wealthy bourgeoisie in Brabant.

Regrettably, the surviving documents contain little information about Bosch’s activities as an artist. The only documented commission for a painting dates from September 1504, when he was asked to paint a Last Judgement for Philip the Handsome, Duke of Brabant, which indicates that he was a recognised artist. Apart from that, only a few minor commissions are recorded, among others for polychroming an altarpiece and for designing a crucifix.

Opinions on the attribution of the paintings differ considerably. None of the paintings are dated, and their chronology is the subject of much discussion. Until 2010, more than 30 paintings were attributed to Bosch, of which nine are signed ‘Jheronimus Bosch’. Between 2010 and 2015 the Dutch Bosch Research and Conservation Project (BRCP) investigated most of them and concluded that whereas 21 are works made by the master himself, four are from his workshop, seven were executed by followers, and two are either made by his workshop or by a follower.²

Eight of these 21 paintings are triptychs: The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych,³ probably commissioned by Engelbert van Nassau (1451-1504), the two versions of The Haywain,⁴ The Last Judgement, signed,⁵ The Last Judgement with Saint James the Apostle and Saint Bavo (or Saint Hippolyte),⁶ The Temptation of St Antony, signed,⁷ Hermits Saints Triptych Sts Jerome, Antony and Giles, signed,⁸ The Adoration of the Magi,⁹ and The Martyrdom of St Wilgefortis, signed ‘Julia’ (?).¹⁰ Three individual panels are also signed: St John on Patmos,¹¹ St Christopher,¹² and Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins.¹³

Although most specialists now agree that other members of the workshop participated in the execution of many of Bosch’s works, Koreny attributed a number of major works, such as The Haywain triptych, the Lissabon triptych and The Last Judgement in Bruges, to his pupils.¹⁴ To complicate matters, several works are known only through copies. Jheronimus Bosch was hugely popular in the second half of the 16th century, and this gave rise to the large number of copies and pastiches executed long after his death that have survived. The latter group (see SK-A-3113, SK-A-1601, SK-A-3240, SK-A-1673, SK-A-4131) consists of new inventions in Bosch’s style using elements or quotations from his paintings.

References
Van Mander 1604, fols. 216v-17r; Cohen in Thieme/Becker IV, 1910, pp. 386-90; Friedländer V, 1927, pp. 70-106; De Tolnay 1937, pp. 75-82; Baldass 1943, pp. 5-82; De Tolnay 1965, pp. 407-08; Gerlach 1967; ENP V, 1969, pp. 45-58; Marijnissen 1987, pp. 11-14; Miedema III, 1996, pp. 48-58; Gibson in Saur XIII, 1996, pp. 160-62; Vandenbroeck in Turner 1996, IV, pp. 445-54; Van Dijck 2001, pp. 139-205; Vink 2001; Silver 2006, pp. 127-59; Huys Janssen 2007; Koreny 2012, pp. 86-113; ’s-Hertogenbosch 2016, pp. 11-12; Schwartz 2016, pp. 36-52; Ilsink et al. 2016, pp. 13-32; Madrid 2016, pp. 17-41; BoschDoc

J. Bogers, 2010
Updated by J.P. Filedt Kok, 2016

Entry

St Antony is seen at half length in the left foreground, sunk in prayer. He is leaning on a rock with an apple and a wooden staff lying on it. On his cloak is the Tau cross of the Antonine monks.¹⁵ A river with a small boat steered by a woman separates the foreground from the actual scene of temptation on the right of the composition. There a nude woman stands inside a house, the upper part of which takes the form of the head of an old woman, who is a bawd, according to Bax.¹⁶ Perched on top of her head is a dovecote, which signified a brothel in the 16th century. In addition to the dovecote, the nude woman, who has sunk up to her knees in the ‘cesspit of vice’, and the swan on the flag also refer to this house of easy virtue. In the middle ages, and later, the swan often adorned the signboards of inns.¹⁷ On top of a pole sticking out of the house is an object that is difficult to identify (possibly a helmet, or a round hat) to which a flock of birds is heading.¹⁸ A monastery is going up in flames in the background to the left of St Antony, with bird-like devils flying around in the clouds of smoke. There is also a flying fish with a devil on its back and an owl, both heading towards the house. This particular owl can be interpreted as a symbol of temptation and seduction.

There are three variants of this scene of The Temptation of St Antony. In addition to a slightly larger version in the Prado in Madrid,¹⁹ which is very similar to the one in the Rijksmuseum, there is another on canvas in the Escorial,²⁰ in which the brothel is replaced by a crucifix.

In the past, these three versions have generally been regarded as copies after a lost work by Bosch.²¹ Bax and Unverfehrt, however, had already pointed out that the structure of the composition of the three versions is hardly typical of Bosch, and they doubt whether they are based on an original by him.²² On the evidence of the dendrochronological dating of the Amsterdam panel it can be assumed that this painting in the manner of Bosch, which the false signature shows must have been marketed as an original, was not painted until the second half of the 16th century.

J. Bogers, 2010
Literature updated by J.P. Filedt Kok, 2016

Literature

Friedländer V, 1927, p. 150, no. 95 (as old copy after Bosch); Glück 1935, p. 151 (as copy after a painting by Bosch that belonged to Margaret of Austria in 1516); De Tolnay 1937, p. 102, no. 42 (as copy after a lost original); Bax 1949, pp. 40, 98; Combe 1958, p. 95, no. 136 (as copy after a lost original); De Tolnay 1965, p. 380, no. 42 (as copy after a lost original); Buzatti/Cipotti 1966, p. 107, no. 47; ’s-Hertogenbosch 1967, p. 70, no. 6 (as copy); Gerlach 1968, p. 378; Lennep 1968, p. 127; ENP V, 1969, p. 86, no. 95 (as probably old copy); Unverfehrt 1975, pp. 144, 146; Unverfehrt 1980, pp. 183-84, 275, no. 101; Muller in Nijmegen 1985, p. 190, no. 64; Vandenbroeck 1989, pp. 109-10; Rotterdam 2001, p. 227, no. 15.2; De Vrij 2012, p. 530, no. D.11.1

Download Bibliography (PDF)

Collection catalogues

1976, p. 136, no. A 3240 (as copy after Bosch)

Citation

J. Bogers, 2010, 'manner of Jheronimus Bosch, The Temptation of St Antony, c. 1550 - c. 1600', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6186

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