The Temptations of Saint Anthony the Abbot

When the monks of El Escorial drew up an inventory of their pictures in 1574, they wrote down something museums usually have to guess at. The figures, they noted, were by the hand of Master Coyntin, and the landscape by Master Joachim. Coyntin is Quinten Massys, the leading figure painter of Antwerp, and Joachim is Patinir, who signed the panel at the lower right and left the whole middle distance and the wide estuary to himself. So the group on the grass is Massys. Saint Anthony sits pinned between three well-dressed young women who are offering him an apple, while a grinning old woman crowns him with a wreath. Behind them the devils are busy in a way that belongs to Patinir's world, tiny figures around a burning building. Philip II bought the panel and sent it to El Escorial, where it hung in the old church.