![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Hieronymus Bosch (Jeroen van Aken, ca 1450-1516), Temptation of St. Anthony, central panel (detail). Original, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. Copy, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels.
In the central panel, monstrosities converge upon a ruined tomb in the middle of the painting, where the main scene takes place on a platform before the tomb. A sumptuously dressed couple offer drinks to a group of manlike monsters. Nearby, a noble woman in a large white medieval cap and a blue dressing gown with a long train kneels at a parapet to offer a drinking-bowl to a nun-like figure and a bizarre trunkless male. Kneeling at the parapet beside the woman in blue, St. Anthony focuses the eyes on the viewer, while the blessing gesture of his right hand is pointing at a Christ Chapel inside the tomb, just above the nun’s head.