The Temptation of Saint Anthony

For most of the twentieth century this panel sat in storage in Kansas City, filed as the work of a follower, a lesser hand imitating Hieronymus Bosch. In 2016 a team that had spent years examining every Bosch under infrared and by dating the wood decided the underdrawing was the master's own, and it went back on the wall as a real Bosch. It shows Saint Anthony, the hermit who withdrew into the Egyptian desert around the year 300 and was assailed there by demons. Bosch painted that torment around 1500 in the Netherlands, crowding it with the hybrid creatures he is famous for. Heavy overpainting from an old restoration still clouds parts of the surface. Even so, the number of securely accepted Bosch paintings in the world is small, only about 25, and this is now one of them.