Temptation of Christ

Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen's Temptation of Christ presents the devil's three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, a subject that combined theological drama with the opportunity for fantastic diabolic imagery. Van Oostsanen, Amsterdam's founding painter, brought the late Gothic tradition's taste for expressive supernatural figures to this subject with characteristic imagination. The devil's appearance in various guises — as an aged pilgrim, as a tempter offering worldly kingdoms — gave painters the opportunity to explore the intersection of the grotesque and the sacred. Van Oostsanen's treatment reflects the Amsterdam workshop tradition's combining of northern late Gothic expressivity with emergent Renaissance spatial organization.

The devotional composition is rendered with attention to the expressive and contemplative qualities that served the painting's function as an aid to prayer and meditation.