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Artist: Hieronymus Bosch
A slow-looking gallery tour of the Lisbon panel attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, built from the supplied evidence and honest about what the record does not yet establish.
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The highest-resolution file we hold, available without payment or an account.2,764 × 1,843 pixels.
Download highest-resolution imageA fox wearing a red mantle and led on a chain trots at the beggar's heels, Bosch's satirical emblem of false piety and deceit.
Round white table set with a metal ewer, glass and scattered morsels that several hands reach for, the still-life center of the demonic feast.
Pale woman in a white gown and gold crown-like headdress reaches toward the table holding a small metal jug, one of the seductive apparitions attending the demonic banquet.
Your gallery guide
A slow-looking gallery tour of the Lisbon panel attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, built from the supplied evidence and honest about what the record does not yet establish.
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Explore the researchThe story About 4 minutes to read
This painting is titled The Temptation of Saint Anthony, and its subject comes from the Christian hagiographic tradition around the hermit Saint Anthony. The panel is attributed to Hieronymus Bosch and described in the supplied photograph record as held at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon.
The temptation is the event to keep in view. In the Christian tradition, Anthony is a hermit whose faith is tested by hostile and seductive forces rather than by ordinary worldly pressures. That means the strangeness you meet across this panel is not decoration. It is the pressure of the trial itself, presented to the eye as a crowded and unstable world.
Because the painting is shown to us through a photograph, our first job is to look carefully without asking the image to tell us more than it can. The photograph records the panel in a museum setting and gives us the painting's title and attribution, but it is not the museum's own catalogue record.
The photograph itself was taken by Dguendel on 26 January 2017. That is the date of the photograph, not the date of the painting. Keeping those two moments separate matters. The uploader is the photographer, not the artist, and the photograph's authorship has no bearing on who painted the panel.
Saint Anthony belongs to the hagiographic tradition: the body of stories told about Christian saints. His temptation was a familiar subject in European religious art because it made visible a spiritual struggle. The hermit's resistance could be shown through the forces set against him.
The attribution to Hieronymus Bosch comes from the description supplied with the photograph, and the museum named there is the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. No institutional catalogue record was supplied to confirm that attribution independently, so it is best treated here as the supplied identification rather than as a settled, fully documented fact.
That gap changes how we should talk about the picture. We can describe the subject with confidence because the title and the hagiographic tradition establish it. We can also say who the attribution names. What we cannot do is supply a date, dimensions, support, inscriptions, provenance or conservation history from the supplied material.
The supplied record also leaves open the possibility of another painting of the same subject attributed to Bosch or his workshop. That is a real caution for a visitor, because similar titles can describe different objects. The identification here rests on the supplied description, not on an object record that would settle every question.
So the useful understanding is this: the painting asks you to watch a saint under trial, with the tradition of Anthony's temptation supplying the story and the Bosch attribution supplying the name. The exact physical history of the panel remains outside what the supplied evidence can tell us, and saying so is part of looking honestly at this work.
Editorial review by Artifact Archive automated publishing.
Historical claims are linked to the records below. Close looking and interpretation are identified in the passage notes.
Attributed to Jacques Le Boucq. Image source · Public domain
About the artist
1450 to 1516
Hieronymus Bosch was a painters in art (1450–1516). Their work is associated with Early Netherlandish painting; Northern Renaissance.
The research & record
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The object this account concerns is a painting titled The Temptation of Saint Anthony, attributed to Hieronymus Bosch and located at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. That title, that attribution wording, and that location are the identification carried by the supplied record; they are a description field entry, not an independent institutional catalogue transcription. The subject is the temptation of Saint Anthony, drawn from the Christian hagiographic tradition concerning the hermit Saint Anthony, so the title and the subject are mutually reinforcing: the painting is named for an episode in the story of a saint rather than for a person, place, or genre. Because the subject belongs to hagiography, the picture participates in a broad European tradition in which Anthony's trial was a recognised religious subject, and the strangeness of such imagery is legible within that tradition as the pressure of the trial made visible. What the supplied record does not carry is equally part of the identification: it does not record the painting's date, dimensions, medium beyond the word painting, support, inscriptions, provenance, exhibition history, condition, or conservation treatment. Distinguishing the object date from catalogue dates is therefore not possible here, because no date for the painting is supplied at all; only the photograph's own date is recorded, and that is a different moment entirely.(Dguendel, 2017, Description field: 'Lisbon, Museum Nacional de Arte Antiga, Hieronymus Bosch, the Temptation of Saint Anthony'; File title)
Interpretation
The identification rests on a supplied description, and that provenance of information shapes how strongly each element can be asserted. The attribution to Hieronymus Bosch comes from the description supplied with the photograph, and the museum named there is the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. No institutional catalogue record was supplied to confirm that attribution independently. The subject, by contrast, can be described with more confidence, because the title names the temptation of Saint Anthony and the hagiographic tradition establishes what that episode is: the testing of a hermit's faith by hostile and seductive forces rather than by ordinary worldly pressures. The supplied record also leaves open the possibility of another painting of the same subject attributed to Bosch or his workshop, which is a real caution, since similar titles can describe different objects. The identification in this archive therefore rests on the supplied description rather than on an object record that would settle every question, and the honest formulation is that the painting's subject is documented through its title and tradition while its attribution is the supplied identification.(Dguendel, 2017, Description field: 'Lisbon, Museum Nacional de Arte Antiga, Hieronymus Bosch, the Temptation of Saint Anthony'; File title)
The work is a painting titled The Temptation of Saint Anthony, attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, and located at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon.(Dguendel, 2017)
The painting's subject is the temptation of Saint Anthony, a subject drawn from the Christian hagiographic tradition concerning the hermit Saint Anthony.(Dguendel, 2017)
The supplied evidence for this painting establishes, first and most consequentially for any account of its condition, what is absent from the record. The sources do not record the painting's date, its dimensions, its medium beyond the single word painting, its support, any inscriptions, its provenance, its exhibition history, its condition, or any conservation treatment. The summary and structured data sections of the Commons file are the basis for this statement, and they describe the file rather than an object record. For a section on condition and conservation, this means there is no dated condition observation, no documented damage, no intervention, no treatment material, no conservation decision and no environmental measure that can be reported for the painting itself. Any such claim would have to be invented, and none is made here. What can be described are the conditions under which the painting was photographed and the terms on which that photograph circulates, since those are the only material facts the evidence supplies.(Dguendel, 2017, Summary and Structured data sections)
Interpretation
Because the supplied sources lack any object record, the safest description of the painting's condition is that it is unknown within this evidence base. The evidence does not say whether the panel is intact, whether it has been transferred, thinned, retouched, revarnished, cradled or reframed, whether losses exist, or whether any environmental controls govern its display. It also does not say whether the current appearance reflects an earlier restoration or the artist's original surface. Any assessment of the painting as seen in the 2017 photograph would therefore describe a photographic image of uncertain relationship to the object it depicts, since colour balance, lighting and lens characteristics of the Canon EOS 1200D are not documented in the evidence as calibrated or controlled. The honest position is that the object's physical history lies outside what these units can establish, and that the absence is itself part of the research account rather than a gap to be filled by assumption.(Dguendel, 2017, Summary and Structured data sections; Date and time of data generation: 13:25, 26 January 2017; Camera location)
The supplied sources do not record the painting's date, dimensions, medium beyond the word painting, support, inscriptions, provenance, exhibition history, condition, or conservation treatment.(Dguendel, 2017)
The object documented in the supplied records is a painting titled The Temptation of Saint Anthony, attributed to Hieronymus Bosch and described as held at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. That title, attribution and repository come from the description attached to a Wikimedia Commons photograph, not from a museum catalogue record. The same source states explicitly that it does not record the painting's date, dimensions, medium beyond the word painting, support, inscriptions, provenance, exhibition history, condition or conservation treatment. For a provenance account this is a significant constraint: the name of a holding institution is established, but ownership history in the archival sense is not, and everything below concerns the documentation of the photograph and the identification it carries rather than a chain of owners.(Dguendel, 2017, Author: Dguendel; Source: Own work)
The only documented act of creation and custody in the supplied material concerns the photograph, not the panel. The Commons file is a photograph of the painting taken by the uploader Dguendel, recorded as an original creation by that uploader, and the source's own annotation notes that this authorship has no bearing on the painting's authorship. This is a transfer of a different kind from an art-historical provenance: it is an act of image-making whose author is the photographer. Because the uploader is the photographer and not the painter, the Commons attribution field must not be read as evidence about who made the panel, and the photograph's existence is not evidence of any physical movement of the object.(Dguendel, 2017, Author: Dguendel; Source: Own work)
The photograph carries a precise date and technical record. It was captured on 26 January 2017 with a Canon EOS 1200D, with the file's data generation time given as 13:25 on that date, and with camera coordinates of 38 degrees 42 minutes 16.8 seconds North, 9 degrees 09 minutes 41.9 seconds West. Three distinct moments and registers are therefore documented: the making of the painting, whose date the supplied evidence does not give; the making of the photograph on 26 January 2017; and the publication of the file on Commons, whose publication year is given as 2017. The coordinates and the museum setting recorded in the photograph are the strongest supplied indication of where the panel was when the image was made, but they establish a location for the photographic event, not a purchase, loan, transfer or change of owner.(Dguendel, 2017, Date and time of data generation: 13:25, 26 January 2017; Camera location)
The licence under which the file circulates is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, permitting sharing and adaptation with attribution. This governs reuse of the photograph as an image, and it is distinct from the rights status of the painting, which the supplied evidence does not address. It is worth separating these two legal objects carefully, since the licence describes the terms on which Dguendel's photograph may be redistributed and says nothing about the custody, ownership or legal title of the panel at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga.(Dguendel, 2017, Licensing section: CC BY 4.0)
Between the making of the panel and the photographic campaign of 2017 the supplied evidence records no owner, sale, bequest, transfer, inventory number or acquisition date. That absence must be described as an unrecorded interval rather than as an ownership history: nothing in these units shows a change of hands, and nothing shows continuity of hands either. The distinction matters for how the object can be used. A reader who wants a documented provenance for the Temptation of Saint Anthony will not find one here, and the correct statement is that the material supports a present repository and a description, alongside a precisely dated photograph, while leaving every earlier or later movement of the object undocumented.(Dguendel, 2017, Author: Dguendel; Source: Own work; Date and time of data generation: 13:25, 26 January 2017; Camera location; Licensing section: CC BY 4.0)
The supplied Wikimedia Commons file is a photograph of the painting taken by uploader Dguendel, recorded as an original creation by the uploader, with no bearing on the painting's authorship.(Dguendel, 2017)
The Wikimedia Commons photograph was captured on 26 January 2017 with a Canon EOS 1200D, at the geographic coordinates 38 degrees 42 minutes 16.8 seconds North, 9 degrees 09 minutes 41.9 seconds West.(Dguendel, 2017)
The Commons file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, permitting sharing and adaptation with attribution.(Dguendel, 2017)
The object documented here is a painting titled The Temptation of Saint Anthony, attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, and described in the supplied photograph record as held at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, Portugal. That description is the origin of both the attribution and the location used throughout this account, and it comes from a Wikimedia Commons file rather than from an institutional catalogue record. The subject is drawn from the Christian hagiographic tradition concerning the hermit Saint Anthony, whose faith is tested by hostile and seductive forces rather than by ordinary worldly pressures. The title and the hagiographic tradition together establish the subject with some confidence; the attribution names Bosch but is not independently confirmed by any object record supplied here.(Dguendel, 2017, Description field naming the museum)
The photograph itself was taken by Dguendel on 26 January 2017 with a Canon EOS 1200D, at geographic coordinates recorded as 38 degrees 42 minutes 16.8 seconds North, 9 degrees 09 minutes 41.9 seconds West, and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, permitting sharing and adaptation with attribution. The uploader is the photographer, not the artist, and the photograph's authorship has no bearing on who painted the panel. Keeping the two moments separate matters: the 2017 date belongs to the photograph, not to the painting, and the museum setting recorded in the image is the setting of the photograph rather than a documented display history. The coordinates and camera data describe the act of photography, not the object's manufacture, provenance or installation.(Dguendel, 2017, Description field naming the museum)
Interpretation
A significant qualification follows from this. The supplied sources do not record the painting's date, dimensions, medium beyond the word painting, support, inscriptions, provenance, exhibition history, condition or conservation treatment, and no institutional catalogue record was supplied to confirm the Bosch attribution independently. The identification therefore rests on the supplied description rather than on a record that would settle every question, and it is best treated here as the supplied identification rather than as a settled, fully documented fact. The record also leaves open the possibility of another painting of the same subject attributed to Bosch or his workshop, a real caution because similar titles can describe different objects. Saying plainly what the evidence cannot establish is part of describing this work honestly rather than a gap to be filled by assumption.(Dguendel, 2017, Description field naming the museum)
This object matters within a larger history of art and material culture precisely because of how it has been transmitted to a wide audience: through a photograph published on Wikimedia Commons, carrying a title, an artist attribution, a museum name, a capture date and an open licence. That channel is what makes the painting legible to readers who have not seen it in Lisbon, but it is also a channel whose conventions of description are not the same as a museum catalogue's conventions of documentation. The gap between the two is instructive. It shows how attribution, location and subject travel as metadata attached to an image, and how those labels can circulate as if self-evident while the physical history of the panel remains outside what the supplied evidence can tell us.(Dguendel, 2017, Description field naming the museum)
The painting is held at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, Portugal, according to the supplied photograph description.(Dguendel, 2017)
Interpretation
The object documented in this account is a painting titled The Temptation of Saint Anthony, attributed to Hieronymus Bosch and reported at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. That identification reaches us through a single supplied record, a Wikimedia Commons photograph file, which describes the work as a painting, names Bosch in its attribution, and places it in the Lisbon museum. The record does not supply the painting's date, dimensions, medium beyond the word painting, support, inscriptions, provenance, exhibition history, condition, or conservation treatment. The subject, the temptation of Saint Anthony, is drawn from the Christian hagiographic tradition concerning the hermit Saint Anthony. Two distinct attributed facts therefore stand: the subject, which the title and that tradition establish, and the attribution to Bosch, which is the supplied identification rather than a settled, fully documented fact, since no institutional catalogue record was supplied to confirm it independently.(Dguendel, 2017)
What we see reaches us through a photograph, not through the object itself. The Commons file is a photograph of the painting taken by uploader Dguendel, recorded as an original creation by the uploader. It was captured on 26 January 2017 with a Canon EOS 1200D, at the geographic coordinates 38 degrees 42 minutes 16.8 seconds North, 9 degrees 09 minutes 41.9 seconds West, and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, permitting sharing and adaptation with attribution. The photograph's authorship has no bearing on the painting's authorship. The uploader is the photographer, not the artist, and the capture date of 2017 is the date of the photograph, not the date of the painting; holding those two moments apart is essential to any honest description of the panel. The photograph records the panel in a museum setting and gives the title and attribution, but it is not the museum's own catalogue record. The supplied record also leaves open the possibility of another painting of the same subject attributed to Bosch or his workshop, a real caution because similar titles can describe different objects.(Dguendel, 2017)
A calculated working insurance estimate places the painting at an estimated value of US$500,000 to US$2,000,000, a working calculation generated on 2026-10-16. The methodology describes a broad working insurance range calculated for manual review only, derived from the confirmed context that the work is a painting attributed to Hieronymus Bosch and reported at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. The range reflects conservative factors supported by the supplied excerpts: a named Early Netherlandish master attribution, a Netherlandish or Brabant cultural origin, a religious subject, and permanent museum collection status. It is deliberately wide and banded at the mid six-figure to low seven-figure level because the supplied sources do not include dimensions, support, date, condition, accession number, provenance, exhibition history, or an institutional catalogue record, and because the attribution is not independently verified. No comparable sales, auction results, or private insurance records were used or accessed. Where any of these variables remain unconfirmed, the range should be narrowed upward or downward only after expert review.(Dguendel, 2017)
Several qualifications govern that figure and should be stated as plainly as the number itself. It is a model-generated working range for manual review only, not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result, or sale price. It depends on unverified and incomplete information, including an attribution not confirmed by an institutional catalogue record, no recorded dimensions, date, medium detail, or provenance, and no confirmed condition report. The methodology also notes that values for museum-held works of this type are not ordinarily established by market sale, and it advises consulting a qualified appraiser and the holding institution before relying on any figure for insurance or financial purposes. The relationship between the figure and the object is therefore conditional throughout: the number tracks the confirmed context of attribution, cultural origin, subject, and museum status, not any transaction in the work, and it does not resolve the gaps that keep it wide.(Dguendel, 2017)
Read together, the supplied units show a hierarchy of what can and cannot be said about this object. The title, the attribution to Bosch, and the Lisbon museum location are the identification the record supplies. The photograph's date, camera, coordinates, and license belong to the photographic witness rather than to the painting. The value range belongs to a working calculation that explicitly disclaims official status and depends on the same unverified attribution. The painting's physical history, its date, dimensions, medium detail, support, inscriptions, provenance, condition, and conservation treatment remain outside what the supplied evidence can tell us, and treating the subject with confidence while marking the attribution and the valuation as unconfirmed is the position the evidence actually supports.(Dguendel, 2017)
Working estimate
Calculated working insurance estimate, not a sale price: Estimated value: US$500K to US$2M Recorded date: Working calculation, generated 2026-10-16. Methodology: Broad working insurance range calculated for manual review only, derived from the confirmed context that the work is a painting attributed to Hieronymus Bosch and reported at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. The range reflects conservative factors supported by the supplied excerpts: a named Early Netherlandish master attribution, a Netherlandish or Brabant cultural origin, a religious subject, and permanent museum collection status. The range is deliberately wide and banded at the mid six-figure to low seven-figure level because the supplied sources do not include dimensions, support, date, condition, accession number, provenance, exhibition history, or an institutional catalogue record, and the attribution is not independently verified. No comparable sales, auction results, or private insurance records were used or accessed. Where any of these variables remain unconfirmed, the range should be narrowed upward or downward only after expert review. Qualification: This is a model-generated working range for manual review only. It is not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result, or sale price. The range depends on unverified and incomplete information, including an attribution not confirmed by an institutional catalogue record, no recorded dimensions, date, medium detail, or provenance, and no confirmed condition report. Values for museum-held works of this type are not ordinarily established by market sale. Consult a qualified appraiser and the holding institution before relying on any figure for insurance or financial purposes.(Dguendel, 2017)
Further reading
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Hirmer; Brand: Hirmer Verlag GmbH; Hirmer Verlag GmbH
Recorded title Schrecken und Lust, authored by Michael Philipp, carries subjects Exhibitions, Temptation in art, and Anthony, of egypt, saint. The combination of temptation iconography and the Saint Anthony subject makes this the strongest thematic match to The Temptation of Saint Anthony, though the record associates it with an exhibition rather than confirming it discusses the Bosch painting.
ISBN 9783777439457
Bibliography
References are arranged by author or organisation, with links to the original publications. Where no publication date is recorded, n.d. means no date.
Source notes updated .
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Book
Hieronimus Bosch: The Temptation of Saint Anthony. 1st ed. Exposition Press.
Recorded title Hieronimus Bosch by Anne F. Francis, with subjects Art and Christian saints in art. This is an object-related artist study whose subject headings connect Bosch with Christian saint imagery, offering a plausible art-historical context for the Temptation of Saint Anthony, without confirming any specific chapter or discussion of the work.
Secondary · About this artwork
Wikimedia Commons: The Temptation of Saint Anthony. File:Lisbon, Museum Nacional de Arte Antiga, Hieronymus Bosch, the Temptation of Saint Anthony-6.JPG. Wikimedia Commons.
Wikimedia Commons photograph of the painting attributed to Hieronymus Bosch at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. Supplies the title, artist attribution, museum location, photograph date, camera, coordinates, and licensing. Does not supply the painting's date, dimensions, catalogue record, or curatorial interpretation.
Book
Schrecken und Lust: die Versuchung des heiligen Antonius : von Hieronymus Bosch bis Max Ernst : eine Austellung des Bucerius Kunst Forums, 9. Februar bis 18. Mai 2008. Hirmer; Brand: Hirmer Verlag GmbH; Hirmer Verlag GmbH.
Recorded title Schrecken und Lust, authored by Michael Philipp, carries subjects Exhibitions, Temptation in art, and Anthony, of egypt, saint. The combination of temptation iconography and the Saint Anthony subject makes this the strongest thematic match to The Temptation of Saint Anthony, though the record associates it with an exhibition rather than confirming it discusses the Bosch painting.
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