The Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch

Among the hundreds of paintings gathered in the National Museum in Lisbon, a few really stood out. For me anyway.
The first one I showed you here by an anonymous painter.

This is the second one. And there was no other like this in the whole building. The level of weirdness this guy managed to achieve in every inch of the painting is unbelievable and very impressive. He created something compared to the results AI currently does. But, oh just so much better!

Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony

Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516)

It is quite a large painting, and the flood of intensive colours and large golden frames - well... it does impress. A lot.

It is away from the wall, so you can see the back of it too, and that was done on purpose. After you stop staring at all the creepy creatures, you can go and admit the outside of the shutters.

Both side panels can be used to "close" the painting, and then only the outer side is visible.
As with many others, the outside part lacks colours. The majority of triptychs in the museum were painted that way. The whole image was done mostly in shades of grey or beige (I will show it in another post with some others). Only a few had a full colour paintings on both sides.

Time for some closeups. I will not describe every detail and creature; there are so many of them that one could write a book, and there are plenty of articles online with interpretations and the meaning of each. It is quite a famous painting.
I will leave a Wikipedia link here.





If you look at the first image close enough, you will notice a super tiny figure of Christ on a cross. It took me a while to notice him, and I did not even shoot him. There is so much going on around him - so many temptations and distractions, that even in the painting, nobody seems to pay attention to him.

Can you see the little devil sneaking? 👆

Ice skating demon messenger? :) Sure, why not?
Its beak holds a cartouche with the word "fat". This could be a reference to the simony scandal.





I could shoot and shoot. Every bit of it is filled with details and symbols.
Oh yes. This painting did put a smile on my face :)
It still does when I look at the photos now.


Here is a fun fact:

Like many of Bosch's paintings, The Temptation of St. Anthony was the subject of a number of copies. A workshop copy is in Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and a later copy is in Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Reduced copy of two wings is in Prado Museum in Madrid. Another version of the central panel is found in MASP in São Paulo, Brazil, first rehearsal Version. Circle of Jheronimus Bosch, Temptation of Saint Anthony central panel copy, (Barnes Foundation), a work by a follower after Bosch can be found in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
_source

Here are the two that can be now admired in Berlin and Brussels 👇

<sub>Temptation of Saint Anthony, WORKSHOP OF BOSCH, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium


Temptation of Saint Anthony, Later Copy, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin</sub>

You can almost play a game to spot as many differences as possible between the original and the copies :)

And if you liked this one as much as I did, go check "The Fall of the Rebel Angels" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Painted roughly in the same time and with same level of weirdness :D

Gotta love Dutch artists!

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Bonus song for today:
A Perfect Circle - Imagine
year 2004

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All photos and text are my own, unless stated otherwise.}