English: 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]