The Temptation of Saint Anthony

The Temptation of Saint Anthony counts among the most beloved subjects in the oeuvre of David Teniers the Younger. In his pioneering catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work (1830; Supplement, 1842), John Smith listed more than twenty such paintings. Numerous others, including the present example, have emerged since. Teniers’s conception of the theme here builds upon the earlier works of Netherlandish artists like Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his son, Jan Brueghel the Elder, each of whom developed a broad visual vocabulary of fantastic beasts, often included in scenes of witches and infernal apparitions.

The basic conventions seen in this painting were first established in Teniers’s somewhat earlier depiction of this subject dated 1635 in a private collection (see M. Klinge, David Teniers the Younger: Paintings, Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Antwerp, 1991, no. 9, illustrated). An elderly, bearded figure of Saint Anthony kneels reading the Bible before a simple stone table. The devil disguised as a woman – young and attractive in the painting of 1635 and older with horns here – approaches with a glass of wine as various demonic beasts encircle the steadfast saint. Several further examples on upright panels, all probably dating to the 1630s or 1640s, are known. These include one in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. SK-A-401) and two others sold in these Rooms: one on 7 July 2010, lot 138 (£97,250) and another on 8 December 2016, lot 1 (£233,000).