The painting, that is possible on all sides has been shortened, is a copy after the central group of figures on the main panel of Bosch’s Temptation of St Anthony triptych based on the central panel in the Museo Arte Antiga in Lisbon. Of these, some 25 known Followers.

This painting is a copy after the central group of figures on the central panel of Bosch’s Temptation of St Anthony triptych in Lisbon. There are many known copies after the Lisbon triptych.15 The best one, in Brussels, is signed, and is regarded as the earliest (c. 1520-30) and most faithful. It could thus have served as the model for many of the later copies. Most of them reproduce the center panel alone and have a vertical format. Being horizontal, the Amsterdam version is an exception, as are one or two others. Like the version in Amsterdam, they lack the foreground of the Brussels panel, with the water and the fishing boats.

Much of the present scene was extensively prepared with the aid of a pricked cartoon. The contours accordingly take the form of small dots which were mostly followed in the painted surface. By and large the colours correspond to those in the original, with only the clothing of the figure with the pig’s head and a lute by the table not being dark blue but a very faded blue or yellow. This copy was probably made for the free market some time between c. 1550 and 1570, probably in Antwerp, where there were several workshops that specialised in the mass production of copies.