Provenance

Robert Frank, Ltd.

active 1930s

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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.
Anonymous Artist, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, c. 1550/1575, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.2.19

The Temptation of Saint Anthony

Anonymous Artist · c. 1550/1575 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1952.2.19

Shown from the thighs up, a man with pale, peachy skin looks at us in front of a dark gray background in this vertical portrait painting. His body and head angle to our right so he looks out of the corners of his brown eyes under dark, cocked brows. He has a rounded nose, flushed cheeks, the suggestion of a goatee, and his full, pale pink lips are closed. His face is nestled in a narrow froth of lace that lines the top of the high collar of his pale yellow jerkin. Eight iron-gray buttons line the front of the collar and continue down onto the chest. The jerkin is slashed vertically down the front and both short, cap sleeves. A black belt fits tightly around his narrow waist and a sword hangs from the far hip. The long sleeves under the jerkin are charcoal gray, as are the puffy tops of his pants, His right elbow, to our left, is slightly bent as his arm rests by his side. The backs of his other fingers rest in a loose fist against his far hip. A dark triangular form in the lower left corner of the painting could be the corner of a dark table. An inscription to the left of the man’s head reads “AE.S.20 Ao. 1558.”
Anonymous Artist, Portrait of a Young Man, 1558, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.79

Portrait of a Young Man

Anonymous Artist · 1558 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.79

Bibliography

1935

  • Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles. Cinq Siecles d'Art, (Brussels, 1935): no. 151.