The Temptation of Christ

The devil comes to Christ dressed as a hermit. He wears a ragged grey habit, leans on a staff and carries a rosary, yet fangs show under his hood and his feet end in claws. On the ground between them lie the stones he wants turned into bread. Behind them the painter adds the other two temptations in miniature, with small red devils beside a figure on a crag and on top of a domed building. The panel has a recent history of its own. It belonged to the Viennese collector Carl Askonas until 1938, when the Gestapo seized it and handed it to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. It was restituted in 1954, and in the same year the Belvedere bought it from Rosa Askonas, who by then lived in Montreal.