David Teniers the Younger Antwerp 1610 - 1690 Brussels

K.J. Müllenmeister, Meer und Land im Licht des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. III, Bremen 1981, p. 74, no. 448, reproduced.

In his numerous representations of this favoured subject, all of which involve an abundance of infernal beings and apparitions, David Teniers the younger follows the lead set over a century earlier by Hieronymous Bosch and later Pieter Brueghel the Elder and his son Jan Brueghel the Elder.  The present iconography is repeated on a number of occasions throughout the artist’s oeuvre: St. Anthony in his blue habit, crouched over a low table, book in hand, the temptress hag behind and a surrounding array of astonishing and unnatural creatures, such as the hideous ecorché dog, barking at the saint in the foreground.  Teniers often depicts the cup of temptation in the hand of the devil disguised as a beautiful woman, at whom the hag is pointing, urging him to taste the wine; here, however, the hag herself is the devil.  The artist chooses the moment at which St. Anthony is surprised from behind, awoken from his book, rather than during the temptation itself (as in the well-known painting in Dresden, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 1079: see M. Klinge, David Teniers the Younger, exhibition catalogue, Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 11 May – 1 September 1991, p. 134, no. 41, reproduced opposite).  Here however, St. Anthony’s hands are clasped in prayer and yet watching the cup, caught in his frightful dilemma.

St. Anthony spent his life as a hermit in upper Egypt, during the second half of the third century, and is considered the founder of monasticism, although he himself retreated from the monastery that he founded to a cave in the cliff-face above it, driven away by the pilgrims who flocked to visit him, drawn by his fame.  Both monastery and cave survive and may be visited today.  Due to his ascetic life in the desert Anthony suffered from startling hallucinations which are depicted in the present work in the cacophonous taunting of a throng of unnatural and infernal creatures tempting him with a glass of wine.  His staunch resistance and failure to succumb, despite his frailty, made him a yet greater celebrity in his own time, and a model ever since for Christians to emulate, one whose resolve and prayer saved him from temptation by seduction and deceit.  This message is made explicit in the legend in an engraving of the subject by Francois de Wyngaerde after a drawing by Teniers, which bears the title, ‘Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for he will be tried and receive the crown of life that God has promised to those that love him’.   

Sold with the certificate of Dr. Walther Bernt, dated 1 April 1975.