Mattheus van Helmont

Anonymous sale, Cologne, Van Ham, 27 March 1999, lot 1224;
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 6 November 2000, lot 75.

The actual painting is softer and less contrastful in tone than the catalogue illustration suggests. The canvas has a stable relining. The paint surface is a bit flattened, due to the relining, and has grown a bit thin in places, mainly in the darker tones. Otherwise, the paint surface seems to be in good condition. No major damages seem to be apparent. A few slightly crude spots of retouching can be observed in the background centre and upper left, and lower centre left, and in the red drapery of the woman. Minor strengthening is visible in the figures throughout. The paint surface is covered with a slightly dirty layer of varnish. Inspection under ultra violet light confirms the retouchings as mentioned above, and reveals additional retouchings in the monsters on the left and along all edges. Inspection under ultra violet light furthermore reveals that the varnish layer has been unevenly cleaned. Offered in a later plain fruit wood frame with a gilt parcel, in good condition. (MW)
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A similar signed picture by Van Helmont was offered in these Rooms, 12 May 1992, lot. 96. Van Helmont must have been familiar with treatments of the same theme by his fellow countryman, David Teniers the Younger, of whom several depictions of the Temptation of Saint Anthony are known (see for example the one in Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 1079; and the one in Madrid, Museo del Prado, inv. no. 1822). 

From the end of the 15th Century, the Temptation of Saint Anthony had been a very popular theme among artists because of its fantastical elements. Saint Anthony, here kneeling in front of a block of stone resembling an altar on which several religious objects are placed, withstood any temptation or diabolical deceit, and therefore was considered a model for Christians to emulate.¹

In contrast to Teniers, who more or less humanized his witches, apparitions and skeleton animals, both in appearance and behaviour, Van Helmont's infernal monsters and bizarre demonic creatures appear to remain in the 16th Century tradition. Moreover, the temptation in the form of a handsome but decently dressed young woman as she is portrayed by Teniers, offering the ascetic Saint a cup of wine, is replaced in Van Helmont's painting by a highly seductive, brightly illuminated, bare breasted Venus figure who, together with the abundance of roaming apparitions, embodies the ultimate temptation.

1. See for the subject of the Temptation of Saint Anthony M. Klinge, David Teniers, exhibition catalogue, Antwerp 1991, pp. 46, 134, 262, under cat. nos. 9, 41, 90.