The Temptation of Saint Anthony

Follower of Pieter Bruegel the Elder

National Gallery of Art

From high above the earth, we look down onto a view with a densely wooded area to the right, buildings clustered along a rocky ridge at the center, and a river winding back into the far distance to our left in this horizontal landscape painting. The color palette is dominated by pine and deep, emerald greens for the forest, tawny brown for tree trunks and the earth along the foreground, and slate gray and pale blue for the rocks, river, sky, and distant hazy landscape. Closer inspection reveals surprising and surreal details along the riverbanks and in the sky, beginning with a nightmarish hybrid of creatures and goblins in the lower right corner, at the outskirts of the forest. One creature has the body of a person with the head of a white bird, and another resembles a head walking around on two legs without a body. Tucked under a lean-to in the lower right, a man with a long white beard wearing a black hooded robe sits near goblin-like critters. In the foreground on our left, a group of people with peach-colored skin gathers around an oversized fish washed up onshore, which is covered with a black cloth marked with a large white X. A hooded and cloaked person sits atop the fish, holding a bell. Groups of fantastical creatures move in clusters or individually toward or around the buildings clustered on the rocky ridge. Dark brown plumes of smoke billow from a high steeple, probably a church and bell tower, and a bright light, possibly fire, illuminates the structure from behind. To our left, what first looks like a conical structure turns out to have a pink nose and eyes peeking out from what may be an overturned teacup being worn like a hat. More crowds and creatures line the shore of the river that winds away from us, around a peninsula, and into the distant horizon, which comes about halfway up this painting. The surface of the water has a pearly, opalescent sheen. White clouds swirl across a bright blue sky, as if they were waves in the sea. Incongruously, a group of spindly, insect-like creatures gathers in the sky riding fish or boats.