MASP

Hieronymus Bosch

The Temptations of St. Anthony, Circa 1500

  • Author:
    Hieronymus Bosch
  • Bio:
    s-Hertogenbosch, Holanda, 1450-s-Hertogenbosch, Holanda ,1516
  • Title:
    The Temptations of St. Anthony
  • Date:
    Circa 1500
  • Medium:
    Óleo sobre madeira
  • Dimensions:
    128 x 101 x 2 cm
  • Credit line:
    Doação Assis Chateaubriand, 1954
  • Object type:
    Pintura
  • Inventory number:
    MASP.00179
  • Photography credits:
    João Musa

TEXTS



In the 16th century, Bosch was described as fantastic, absurd, and grotesque by Italian historian Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574). The artist lived near one of the most important port regions of Europe, Antwerp, a financial center and shipping hub for products such as sugar and gold, and where a great economic, social, and political transformation was underway. This context of the rise of the bourgeoisie appears critically in his oeuvre; Bosch looked askance at the new model of society, in which money was the main criterion of social distinction. His paintings portray society through a religious outlook, showing grim punishments against the desires of the flesh, such as gluttony, alcoholism, and sex; the festivities, where pleasure was rampant; laziness, which was considered a symptom of poverty and sickness; and violence. The painting The Temptations of St. Anthony (c. 1500) shows various scenes with fantastic creatures, which resemble astrological illustrations and religious processions. At the center of the image there is a stage with a banquet, referring to the medieval sacred-popular theater. At the back of the stage there is a small chapel, in which Saint Anthony (c. 296-373) appears praying and abstaining from sin. Anthony was a much persecuted theologian who produced essential writings for Orthodox Christianity. MASP’s work is one among at least sixteen versions of the original triptych, currently at the Museu de Arte Antiga de Lisboa.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017





There are at least sixteen known versions of the painting (De Tolnay, Friedländer, Lievens-de-Waegh), all of them believed to be replicas or copies of the triptych The Temptations of St. Anthony, signed by Bosch, in the Museu de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. This is usually dated around 1500: De Tolnay has 1490-1500; Combe c.1500; Baldass and Camesasca 1490-1505; Cutler 1505-1506, and Cinotti 1505-1507. The Lisbon altar was always felt to be entirely the work of the master and the model for the other versions. Among these the Masp panel, together with another in the Barnes Foundation at Merion in the United States, have a special place, having been accepted as works by Bosch in Friedländer’s 1937 compilation of ancient paintings of the Low Countries and in a 1936 commentary, a copy of which is part of the museum’s documentation, together with another study by Robert Eigenberger, a Viennese restorer and Bosch specialist. The two critics believe that the picture may be a first version of the central section of the painting in Lisbon. The authors of the catalogues of Bosch’s work in the first half of this century (De Tolnay 1937, 1965; Baldass 1943, 1959) agree with this view, as do studies by critics as reputable as Longhi and Ragghianti. The São Paulo painting is, on the other hand, ignored by later critics (Mulazzani 1980; Cinotti 1973; Combe 1946) or is downgraded as a lower-quality, later copy (Vallese 1987). For Lievens-De-Waegh (1973/74), whose opinion is shared by Camesasca (1987, p. 62), the panels at Merion and São Paulo represent two consecutive phases in the preparation of the Lisbon altar and the painter had by then completed a lengthy development of the theme. In the opinion of the Belgian critic, the Merion composition, the first of the series, already contains all the basic elements; the next phases show the development of spatial construction and of the effect gained by the lowering and distancing of the vanishing point and of increasing the number of parallel planes. At the same time the initial symmetry is destroyed: the groups in the Merion picture are distributed in a uniform way; in the São Paulo work the groups at the side are gathered further away from the center; in the Lisbon version all symmetry has gone. The size of the main figures gradually increases and there is a greater tendency to find links between the various groups. As well as the formal, there are other, material elements that strengthen the relationship between the works: x-ray examinations carried out on the Lisbon painting in 1949 showed, in several places, the painter’s re-touching of details that had already been completed. The same habit has been recorded by a similar analysis recently carried out on the São Paulo painting, which in many ways differs from the Lisbon one. The same wood, oak, is used in both panels, and also the boards of the Masp altarpiece – joined by dovetail joints, as was the practice in the Low Countries at the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th – confirm the age of the material used in this work. Without necessarily agreeing totally with the reasoning of Lievens-de-Waegh, there are many empirical arguments that make it a persuasive idea. It is, however, still a subjective judgment whether the inclusion or exclusion of details may be explained as an attempt at research into expression that goes beyond that of just a studio copy, as Camesasca claims (1987, p. 62), or if it is really, on the other hand, just evidence of the work of a copyist. As for the iconography, Camesasca emphasizes the relationship of the composition to the scenery designs of medieval religious theater, as does Teixeira Leite, who makes a good point about the analogy between the place where the main scene takes place and the stages erected for enacting mystery plays in the town squares of the time. The painting can be linked to a variety of sources, from the lives of the saints, written by St. Athanasius (c.296-373) and by Jacopo de Vargine (c.1280), to the monsters of the miniatures and decorative medieval sculpture; from the astrological illustrations of Flemish proverbs (Bax, Cutler) to the secret language of alchemists and traditional religious processions and plays.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

Source: Luiz Marques (org.), Catalogue of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo: MASP, 1998. (new edition, 2008).



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