The Tempation of St Anthony - Nationalmuseum - 18292

Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 210:
Technical notes: The painting’s support, a slightly
convex oak panel (±0.2–0.3 cm thick), is constructed of a
single board with horizontal grain. The verso of the
panel has been coated with a white ground layer and
painted grey-white. Dendrochronological examination
and analysis have determined a felling date for the tree
between c. 1770 and 1784. The wood originates from the
region of Western Germany/the Netherlands. Under the
assumption of a median of 17 sapwood rings and a minimum
of 2 years of seasoning of the wood, the most plausible
date for the use of the panel would be 1780 or later.
The panel is made of wood cut from the same tree as the
following number. The painting has not undergone conservation
treatment since its acquisition in 1874.
Provenance: Ludvig Manderström, Stockholm, until
1873. Purchased from the estate of Ludvig Manderström
in 1874.
Bibliography: NM Cat. 1883, p. 63 (as David Teniers
I); NM Cat. 1885, p. 56 (as David Teniers I); Göthe
1887, p. 257 (as David Teniers I); Göthe 1893, p. 315 (as
David Teniers I); NM Cat. 1958, p. 195 (as David
Teniers II); NM Cat. 1990, p. 347 (as David Teniers II).
This painting entered the collections in 1874 as a
work of the Antwerp painter David Teniers I. It was
later ascribed to his son, David Teniers II, and was
considered as such until its present reattribution following
a recent dendrochronological examination of
the panel (see Technical Notes). This small painting is
in fact a faithful, probably late 18th-century, copy of a
signed original by David Teniers II, which was on the
Swiss art market in 1996.1 The figures in the present
picture are slightly larger in proportion to the surrounding
rocky landscape than are those in Teniers II’
original composition, which has approximately the
same dimensions as the copy. Comparable in its artistic
conception is the painting of the same subject, of
the 1630s, in Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum).2
Both pictures betray the continuing influence of Adriaen
Brouwer, whose painting of the Temptation of St.
Anthony formerly in Berlin (Kaiser Friedrich Museum),
might have furnished the model, especially for
the grotesque apparitions.3
David Teniers II did not often represent religious
subjects, with the exception of the “Temptation of St.
Anthony”, which he painted repeatedly throughout
his career, probably because it offered him an opportunity
to give full rein to his imagination in creating
fantastical demons to plague the saint.4 Ever since
Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel I the subject
had been popular with the painters of the Netherlands,
who treated it in the manner of a genre theme
in order to convey a pointed Christian moral. Teniers
II depicts St. Anthony as an ascetic hermit at prayer,
untroubled by the approach of the horned old hag and
other demonic apparitions around him, reflecting the
contemporary view of the saint as the embodiment of
a resistance to vice. This is attested by the inscription
on the contemporary etching of c. 1640 by the Antwerp
printmaker Frans van den Wyngaerde after a similar
composition by Teniers: “Beatus vir qui suffert tentationem
quoniam cum probatus fuerit, Accipiet coronam
vitae, quam Repromisit Deus diligentibus” (“Happy
the man who endures temptation, for when he has
been tried he will receive the crown of life which God
has promised to those who love Him”).5
A companion piece to no. 211.
CF
1 Oil on wood, 27.5 x 22.8 cm, signed “D. Teniers”, sale, Galerie Fischer,
Luzern, 18 June 1996, lot 2017; see photograph on file at the RKD, The
Hague. Possibly identical with a painting from the Coll. De Calonne,
London, see Smith 1831, III, p. 340 no. 299.
2 Oil on wood, 51 x 82 cm, signed “D. Teniers. F”. Cologne, Wallraf-
Richartz-Museum, inv. no. WRM 1029; see Cat. 1967, p. 125, fig. 175.
3 Oil on wood, 27.2 x 21 cm, Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Gemäldegalerie, Inv. no. 2026 (on long-term loan from the
Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums-Verein); see Cat. 1996, no. 2026, fig. 106 (as
circle of Adriaen Brouwer).
4 See Trebbin 1994; Davidson 1978, pp. 147–151; Klinge 1991, nos. 9, 41, 90.
5 The etching is inscribed: Fs. vanden wyng[aerde].f./D Teniers in.et
excud. cum privilegio. See Hollstein, vol. 55, pp. 159–161, illus.; and
Karlsruhe 2005, no. 110, illus. A related drawing by Teniers I in Rennes,
Musée des Beaux-Arts, is mentioned in Antwerp 1991, p. 46, under no. 9.
A painted copy of the same composition was sold at Björcks Konsthandel,

Stockholm, in 1937 (oil on wood, 19 x 24 cm). [End] Svenska: Se även beskrivning i den engelska versionen