The Artist: Joachim Patinir was born in the southern Lowlands, either in Dinant or Bouvignes (southeastern Belgium). Although the date of his birth is unknown, it was probably around 1480 or 1485. He entered the Antwerp painters’ guild in 1515 and perhaps married for the first time not long afterwards. Documentation of his second marriage is given in Albrecht Dürer’s diary in which the German artist mentions attending the second wedding and associated festivities in August of 1521. By October 5, 1524, Patinir had died, as documents cite his wife as a widow.

Discussed by Albrecht Dürer in his diary as “the good landscape painter,” Patinir is most famous for introducing landscape as a new genre of art in early-sixteenth-century Antwerp. The burgeoning interest in cartography at the time is linked to Patinir’s panoramic views, and his area of origin along the Meuse River near Dinant and Namur may have been responsible for the unique rocky masses that feature in most of his paintings. It is not known where Patinir trained as a painter or with whom. Perhaps Bosch’s works were influential for their high horizon lines and bird’s-eye vantage point. Gerard David, who joined the Antwerp painters’ guild in 1515 (the same year as Patinir), but probably only to be able to sell his paintings in that thriving art market, may also have provided an important example. Both artists were deeply interested in nature and landscape, and often cited is Patinir’s Baptism of Christ (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) that appears to borrow the figures of Saint John the Baptist and Christ from David’s Baptism Triptych (Groeningemuseum, Bruges). He is documented as having collaborated with the Antwerp painter, Quinten Massys, who painted the figures in the Landscape with the Temptation of Saint Anthony (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) and perhaps with Joos van Cleve who may have added the figures of the Virgin and Child in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin). Patinir likely was called upon to add the landscapes for the backgrounds of paintings by these as well as other Antwerp painters.

In a short career lasting from only about 1515 to 1524, there are a limited number of autograph works, by Robert Koch’s count only nineteen. But Patinir’s influence was enormous, and his followers disseminated his brand of landscape painting well into the sixteenth century. Closely following on his particular style were Lucas Gassel, Herri met de Bles, the Master of the Female Half-lengths, and even the next great landscape painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Patinir’s paintings were popular not only in the Burgundian Netherlands, but also were a desirable export product to Spain and Italy.[1]

Given Patinir’s short career, there are difficulties in determining a clear chronology of the works. In this regard, the ground-breaking Patinir exhibition at the Museo del Prado in Madrid in 2007 provided a wealth of new discoveries about the artist’s working methods and prompted a reevaluation of the attributions and chronology of his oeuvre (see Patinir 2007).

The Painting: This triptych—with a well-preserved surface and totally intact in its original, but refinished frame—is a key work by Patinir. It shows on its individual sections, when open, episodes from the lives of three hermit saints whose spirituality was tested and strengthened by long periods spent alone in the wilderness. On the central panel Saint Jerome is shown self-flagellating his chest with a rock as he meditates on the crucifix before him. In the extensive landscape to the right of the rocky outcropping, Jerome pardons two merchants who had stolen a donkey from the monastery on the hill above. The donkey was to have been guarded by Jerome’s pet lion, who redeemed himself by finding the animal and bringing the merchants to justice. These scenes are taken from Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, first compiled between 1259 and 1266, but thereafter translated from the Latin into vernacular languages and widely disseminated throughout Europe in the late fifteenth- and early-sixteenth centuries.[2]

On the left wing are two scenes from the life of Saint John the Baptist, as recounted with differing details in the Gospels: Matthew 3:1–17; Mark 1:4–11; Luke 3: 1–22; and John 1:19–34, 3: 22–36. In the background John preaches to the Jews in the clearing of a forest, while in the foreground he baptizes Christ. God appears in the heavens above, sending forth his blessing through the dove of the Holy Spirit in a radiance of gold, and saying “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). The right wing shows Saint Anthony reading the Holy Scriptures and reciting his rosary while enduring the taunting of satanic monsters, as described in the Golden Legend.[3] Christ on the left wing and Anthony on the right wing both raise their right hands in blessing toward the viewer-worshipper, who would have been positioned in devotion before the altarpiece. The inclusion of these particular hermit saints in the altarpiece must have been dictated by the commission of the triptych, the details of which remain unknown.

When closed, the outside wings display grisaille figures of Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child and Saint Sebald as fictive sculptures in niches. As Saint Anne was much venerated in Germany and Saint Sebald was the patron saint of Nuremberg, it is likely that the triptych was commissioned by south German patrons, perhaps for a monastery. However, by 1674 it was in the collection of Emperor Leopold I in Vienna, and subsequently in the Benedictine monastery of Kremsmünster (near Linz, Austria), where it remained until 1935 when it was sold to The Met through the art dealer Knoedler.

Certainly the most striking feature of the triptych, and a true novelty for its time, is the “worldview” landscape that extends across all three panels. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, landscape painting began to emerge as an independent genre, and Patinir was at the forefront of this development. On his trip to the Netherlands in 1520–21, Albrecht Dürer referred to Patinir as the "good landscape painter"—an early acknowledgment of the artist’s achievements in this new specialization. The emphasis on landscape—featuring it over the saints who are diminished in size—is especially notable when the triptych is compared, for example, to Joss van Cleve’s The Crucifixion with Saints and a Donor of about 1520 (The Met 41.190.2–a–c) where the holy figures and the Patinir-inspired landscape take up equal space in the composition.

There are unique features of the landscape in Patinir’s development of it. As Gibson observed (1989), there is a certain “indifference to spatial unity” here. The landscape as a whole is seen from above in a bird’s-eye view, while the individually studied components, such as the craggy rocks, buildings, and large trees, are viewed at eye level. A “bold defiance” of atmospheric perspective, allowing the viewer to encounter near and far elements with equal clarity, and a high horizon line unite these disparate views to create an ideal landscape, not a realistic one. Overlapping features of rocks, trees, and hills from the wings to the center piece of the triptych unite the otherwise separate domains of the three saints. As Lynn Jacobs (2012, p. 240) noted, “The linkage communicates the connected nature of their anchorite experiences and unites them as exemplars of virtue and models of the monastic ideal who retreated to the wilderness to escape the sins of the city.”

How these paintings functioned for the devotional practices of the viewer has been addressed by Reindert Falkenburg (1988). The construction of the landscape is marked by a diagonal line that runs from the upper left mountains to the lower right plains, thus separating the highlands from the lowlands. Falkenburg (1988, pp. 85–92, 98–99, 105–12) relates this dichotomy to the writings of Saint Augustine and the contrast between the world of sin (civitas terrena) and the way of salvation to the City of God (civitas Dei). He links this with the so-called pilgrimage of life in which one is constantly striving toward the ultimate goal of the Heavenly Jerusalem. The arduous travel through the rocky highlands represents the challenging road of penitence leading to salvation. The lowlands make no such demands, instead offering the easy route and occasions for succumbing to sinful ways. Long known from the Classical world as the Herculean choice, this is the test of Virtue over Vice, here communicating the human predicament that is replayed through the ages. This extraordinary triptych can be viewed and appreciated on many levels not only as a beautiful landscape view but also as conveying deeper meaning in both religious and philosophical terms.

The Attribution and Date: Max J. Friedländer (1936) was among the first to recognize this triptych as the work of Patinir, a view seconded by Wehle (1936) and thereafter followed by most other scholars (see References). Only Cuttler and Dunbar (1969) considered the triptych lacking the features of handling and execution so appreciated in Patinir’s paintings, finding it “stiff, hard, or fussy…” instead. It is one of only two extant triptychs attributed to Patinir and his workshop, the other being the Triptych of Saints Jerome, John the Baptist, Anthony, and Mary Magdalen of about 1517–24 (Private collection, Switzerland).[4] Perhaps the artist recognized the advantage of painting vast landscapes on one uninterrupted field rather than on three separate panels artificially joined together (Jacobs 2012, p. 238).

Patinir joined the Antwerp painters’ guild in 1515, and thus had a quite short career that extended from about 1515 until his death in 1524. Considering this as well as the extraordinary impact the artist had on the genre of landscape painting, resulting in many contemporary copyists and followers, it is not surprising that there have been challenges in creating a chronology for Patinir’s oeuvre. Previously, The Met’s triptych was considered a mature work and dated to around 1518 (see, for example, Koch 1968)—closer in time to the Landscape with the Baptism of Christ of about 1521–24 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, with which it shares the motif of Saint John baptizing Christ. However, a thorough technical examination of the triptych in preparation for the landmark Patinir exhibition at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, in 2007 offered new evidence about the working techniques and stylistic traits of the triptych (Ainsworth and Thomas 2007; see also Technical Notes). Moreover, it was possible to compare these results with those gathered for other paintings by Patinir studied for the exhibition, leading to the conclusion that The Met triptych is most likely among the earliest works, dating about 1515. This is not disputed by the dendrochronological examination by Peter Klein that establishes a date after 1494 (Klein 2007).

Comparable to other paintings by Patinir, there is a very sketchy underdrawing, made in a crumbly drawing material like black chalk. This preliminary sketch defines the main compositional features including the high horizon line, the placement of the essential figures, and the rough indication of prominent landscape and architectural elements. These characteristics of execution are present in other paintings securely attributed to Patinir, such as the Landscape with Saint Jerome about 1516–17 and the Rest on the Flight into Egypt of about 1518–20 (see fig. 1 above; both in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid), and the Landscape with the Martyrdom of Saint Catherine of about 1515 and the Baptism of Christ of about 1521–24 (both in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).[5]

Documentary and technical evidence about Patinir’s oeuvre points to the landscape artist’s collaboration with figural painters, especially Quentin Massys, in some of his paintings such as the Prado Rest on the Flight into Egypt and Landscape with the Temptation of Saint Anthony.[6] In these cases, the prominent figures are painted on top of the preliminary landscape layer. In The Met’s triptych, instead, a very rough reserve is left for the saints in the foreground where there is overlapping of the figures onto the painted landscape background (figs. 2–4). This organic process of back and forth to secure the final painted image strongly suggests that the figures were painted by the same hand, that is, Patinir himself. The monsters surrounding Saint Anthony on the right panel may have been either an afterthought or possibly added by another artist, as there is no reserve for these (fig. 4). For Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child as well as for Saint Sebald on the outside wings there is an extremely loose and sketchy underdrawing that gives only a vague idea of the trompe-l’oeil statues to be painted in grisaille (figs. 5–8).

The landscape painting reveals Patinir’s typical efficient method of covering large areas of the composition with varied forms of rocks, lowlands, rivers, and forests. Beginning with relatively flat tones, and building up areas with lighter colors, Patinir then worked in the details of forms swiftly, sometimes using -in wet brushstrokes (see Technical Notes). Many small details were not planned in the underdrawing but simply painted in at the last stages with minimal brushwork. The working methods evident in The Met’s triptych—as is true elsewhere in his oeuvre—suggests that Patinir made preliminary drawings on paper for his compositions and had at hand many individual studies of motifs that served him well as he worked up the final details of his paintings, judiciously placing them to achieve his idealized presentation of landscape. Although no undisputed drawings on paper by Patinir remain, they surely must have existed.[7]

Maryan W. Ainsworth 2023

[1] For further on the biography of Patinir, see Ludwig Baldass, “Die Niederländische Landschaftsmalerei von PAtinir bis Bruegel,“ Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 34 (1918), pp. 111–57; Max J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. 9, 1931; vol. 9, part 2, 1973, Leiden and Brussels, pp. 99-110; Robert Koch, Joachim Patinir, Princeton, 1968; Patinir, Essays and Critical Catalogue, Alejandro Vergara, ed., exh. Cat. Mjuseo del Prado, Madrid, 2007.
[2] The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, translated from the Latin by Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger, New York, 1969, pp. 587–92.
[3] Ibid., pp. 99–103.
[4] A Rest on the Flight into Egypt Triptych of about 1520 (National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo) by a follower of Patinir shows a featured landscape only in its central panel and not across all three panels.
[5] See Patinir 2007, nos. 20, 5, 16, and 11 for further information on the technical material concerning these paintings.
[6] See Patinir 2007, nos. 5, 14.
[7] See “Patinir’s Draughtsmanship Reconsidered” by Stefaan Hautekeete in Patinir 2007, pp. 135–47.

Support: This triptych was painted on three oak panels; the central panel is comprised of four radially cut, butt-joined boards while the wings were each made of a single, radially cut board. The dimensions of the boards in the central panel are, left to right, 3 1/2 in., 8 1/2 in., 9 5/8 in., and 11 5/8 in., as measured from the front face of the panel, near the bottom. Examination with dendrochronology indicated an earliest possible creation date of 1488 and a more plausible date of 1494 onwards.[1] The wood originated in the Baltic region. The panels remain in their original engaged frames (see Frame section), and each retains its barbe and unpainted wood margins. Excepting some minimal structural repairs on the central panel, the supports are largely intact.

There is one old damage to the central panel: an irregularly shaped loss at the bottom right corner, repaired at an unknown date with a wooden insert and retouched in imitation of the original. When viewed from the reverse the damage deceptively extreme, but the loss of panel and of original paint on the recto is not nearly so large, roughly 5.5 x 4.5 cm at the greatest dimension (see fig. 9 above). There are also four recent repairs whereby wedges of aged oak were inserted to mend opening joins.[2]

The central panel has a number of circular illegible ink stamps on the reverse. Near the apex of the curved top are two black ink stamps and on the fragment of cloth near the bottom is one black ink stamp and one red ink stamp (figs. 10–13). There is a red wax seal near the top of the panel that is impressed with the Hapsburg double-headed eagle at its center, a shield with the initial L for Leopold, and 1675 around the top (fig. 14). By 1674 the triptych was in the collection of Emperor Leopold I in Vienna (see Catalogue Entry).

Preparation and Underdrawing: Microscopic examination suggested that the panels were prepared with a whitish ground, likely containing chalk, which was then coated with a thin priming layer. The additional priming layer appears to be white on the central panel and on the interior faces of the wings but may be a pale pinkish-buff color on the exterior grisaille wings. Incised lines demarcating the borders of the scenes were observed in the ground and priming layers in select locations: the perimeter of the
Examination with infrared reflectography revealed a considerable amount of underdrawing executed in a dry medium.[3] Throughout the three panels there is a rough indication of the buildings and landscape features: long wavy lines blocking in the foreground and a loose line describing the horizon from edge to edge (figs. 15, 16). Strikingly, in the central panel, both Saint Jerome and the crucifix on the grassy ground before him were drawn with an apparently shaky hand (fig. 2). A nervous dark line describes the outline of the saint’s head; his eyes, nose, and facial hair; the basic contours of his clothing; and the form of his outstretched arm and clenched fist. The detailed drawing of the crucifix has the same shaky appearance. The medium appears to be the same as that used for the landscape, it is the handling of the lines that are quite different. Conversely, the main figures in the scenes of the Baptism and of Saint Anthony were underdrawn with the smoother, more controlled handling seen in the background, not the jittery lines of Saint Jerome (figs. 3, 4).

The underdrawing for the grisaille figures is quite distinctive. Seemingly quickly worked out, the forms were sketched in using short, searching strokes with particulars such as hands and faces only broadly noted (figs. 5, 6). The figures of the Virgin and Child seated in Saint Anne’s lap are general to the point that the drawing resembles a vague thatch of lines.

When translating the sketchy and quite general underdrawing into the ultimate painted composition, the artist—not surprisingly—did not follow the contours exactly but used them as a general scheme. In one significant departure from the underdrawing, Christ’s immersed legs were drawn in their entirety although only painted to mid-calf, likely due to the painting approach, as discussed below.

Paint Layers: The complex landscapes with their high horizons and deeply receding distances, typical for Patinir, are filled with copious painted details from the utmost foreground to the distant background. The artist seems to have delighted in these minute elements, managing to convey movement and gesture in figures comprised of only a few pink dots for faces and hands and tiny strokes of color for clothing, adding realistic minuscule architectural details to buildings in the remote distance, and embellishing the myriad foliage with diminutive flower blossoms. In the central panel, tiny strawberries grow before the kneeling Saint Jerome and the wispy seeds of a dandelion appear ready to blow away with the next breeze. Tiny figures made of as few as two brushstrokes in the Saint Anthony panel are clearly working on the boats in the harbor and conversing while seated in front of a middle ground church. Clothing on figures in the middle ground of the Baptism panel is detailed enough to show striped pants with matching open-work sleeves. These types of wet-on-dry embellishments are found throughout the panels.

The foliage of the trees on all the panels was also executed using countless small strokes and dots of color. The artist began with an underlying, relatively flat, dark green tone, and then built up lighter colors, layering dots of lighter green and yellow. The result is a low impastoed surface with a shimmering quality.

Grassy areas of the landscape were also built up with layers, usually beginning with a yellowish tone and progressing to bluer tones for darker shades and for more distant portions. The overall sense of perspective is enhanced by this color shift. The grassy areas tend to be blended, painted out with a somewhat large brush, approximately 1/4 in. wide. The detailed millefleurs passages, for example, that surround the grassy glade on which Saint Jerome kneels, were applied with thick dots and strokes of paint, resulting here too in a low impastoed surface.

The rocks appearing in all three panels were built up with thin scumbles of color; the initial brushy dark brown tone was applied in one direction and the opaque body color, usually cooler browns and greys, was applied perpendicular to the underlying brushstrokes. Thus, for the rocks in the left foreground of the Baptism panel, the initial brown layer was brushed in horizontally and the scumble layered on top vertically, whereas the rocks on the right were painted in the opposite manner, vertical strokes atop horizontal. This method is seen throughout all three panels. The rocky blue outcroppings in the distant regions have, in general, held up better than the brownish-grey rocks, which are now more transparent due to the aging of the paint medium.

The tree trunk to the left of Saint Jerome in the central panel was created with many layers of textures and colors. The underlying tones were painted wet-in-wet, the colors slightly blended. Smaller brushstrokes in many directions and stippled markings provide the illusion of uneven tree bark, enhanced by the occasional dragging of a dry brush through the wet paint.

These landscape details, with their textural aspects, served to create a vibrant setting for the figures, which were painted with a smoother, more blended technique. The contrast between the detailed surroundings and the enamel-like figures is striking yet not incongruous. The fleshtones of the central figures (Christ, John the Baptist, Saint Jerome, Saint Anthony) were all delicately and seamlessly blended, although the shadows in Saint Anthony’s face are now slightly compromised by condition; they are somewhat rubbed and thinned. Likewise, the clothing was painted wet-in-wet, with smooth transitions between the highlights and shadows of the folds. Details, such as highlights on the hair, were added dry-on-wet.

Technical examination also revealed evidence about the way the panels were painted. In the Baptism panel, the landscape was painted first, leaving rough reserves for the figures. The figures then partially overlapped the landscape, in passages that are now somewhat apparent in visible light and register as dark bands in the infrared reflectogram. See, for example, the edges of the figures’ heads, Christ’s proper right elbow, John the Baptist’s foot, and the edge of his clothing. In the Saint Anthony panel, a relatively smaller reserve was left for the saint’s hands and head, resulting in a more significant overlap of paint over the landscape. These overlaps can be seen under raking light as a distinct step in the paint layers where the paint of the landscape extends underneath the figures, best illustrated on the Saint Anthony panel. Such reserves have not been found in those paintings believed to be collaborations between Patinir and a figure specialist, such as Quentin Massys, in which the figures were painted over entirely completed landscapes (see Catalogue Entry). The presence of these reserves, combined with the appearance of the figures relative to those in collaborative works, suggests that Patinir himself may have painted the figures and the landscape (see Ainsworth and Thomas 2007, p. 10, and Catalogue Entry).

The order of painting had implications for how the figures were integrated with the landscape. From a physical standpoint, it is possible to see the slight lip of paint where the paint of the figures overlapped the landscape. And in the Baptism, where Christ’s legs are submerged in the water, the artist had to alter the conventional approach. While one might expect the artist to have first painted Christ’s legs and then applied translucent paint for the water over the flesh, the opposite is true. Because the body of water was completed before Christ’s figure was begun, it was necessary to paint Christ’s legs with increasing transparency to give the illusion of standing in water (fig. 17).

The painting remains in generally good condition. There are some areas of abrasion and wear, primarily affecting the upper portions of the paint layers and glazes. Most passages executed in dark brown hues have an altered appearance because of increased transparency due to natural aging of the medium, most noticeably the rocky outcroppings in the foreground of all the panels.

Frame: All three panels appear to retain their original, although slightly altered, framing elements. The carved wooden frames, which now have a dark brown stain on the surface and only traces of gold, would have been gilded originally. Along the upper convex curve of the panel of the Temptation of Saint Anthony, fragments of gold leaf are present that apparently lie underneath original paint layers. The location of this gold suggests that the frame was gilded before the painting was finished.

The outer molding of the frame may have been trimmed. The hinges are a combination of original and replacement hardware.

Karen Thomas 2006; adapted by Sophie Scully 2023

[1] Wood identification and dendrochronological analysis completed by Dr. Peter Klein, Universität Hamburg, report dated June 11, 2007. The report can be found in the files of the Department of Paintings Conservation. “The youngest heartwood ring was formed out in the year 1477. Regarding the sapwood statistic of Eastern Europe an earliest felling date can be derived for the year 1486, more plausible is a felling date between 1490..1492….1494+x. With a minimum of 2 years for seasoning an earliest creation of the painting is possible from 1488 upwards. Under the assumption of a median of 15 sapwood rings and 2 years for seasoning, a creation is plausible from 1494 upwards.”
[2] Structural work carried out in 2006 at The Met by George Bisacca.
[3] Infrared reflectography was acquired with a Merlin Indigo InGaAs near-infrared camera fitted with a StingRay macro lens customized for the wavelengths covered by the camera, 0.9 to 1.7 microns, Karen Thomas, 2005.

Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, Vienna (by 1674–sometime in 1680s; probably sold or donated to Kremsmünster); Monastery of Kremsmünster, near Linz (sometime in 1680s–1935); [Knoedler, New York, 1935–36; sold to The Met]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 22, 1998–February 21, 1999, no. 88.

Madrid. Museo Nacional del Prado. "Joachim Patinir and the Invention of Landscape," July 3–October 7, 2007, no. 19.

Max J. Friedländer. Letter (presumably to M. Knoedler & Co.). November 14, 1935, considers it a key work by Patinir in an excellent state of preservation.

Harry B. Wehle. "A Triptych by Patinir." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 31 (April 1936), pp. 80–84, ill., identifies the grisaille figure on the right exterior wing as Saint Sebald, the patron saint of Nuremberg, but scarcely known outside Germany; notes that the subject of the left exterior wing is the "Mutter Anna Selbdritt," a popular German motif in which Saint Anne holds a miniature Virgin and Child in her arms; concludes that the altarpiece was produced for Germany and speculates that Patinir obtained the commission through Albrecht Dürer's intercession.

Max J. Friedländer. Die altniederländische Malerei. Vol. 14, Pieter Bruegel und Nachträge zu den früheren Bänden. Leiden, 1937, pp. 118–19, nachtr. pl. 29, states that both landscape and figures are from the hand of Patinir.

Harry B. Wehle and Margaretta Salinger. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Early Flemish, Dutch and German Paintings. New York, 1947, pp. 115–17, ill., note that the Baptism scene recalls Gerard David's Baptism of about 1508 in Bruges [Groeninge Museum] and that the Temptation of Saint Anthony with its hybrid plant and animal monsters "would be unthinkable without the example of Hieronymus Bosch".

Art Treasures of the Metropolitan: A Selection from the European and Asiatic Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1952, p. 227, no. 100, colorpl. 100.

Erwin Panofsky. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. Cambridge, Mass., 1953, vol. 1, p. 448 n. 6 (to p. 218), mentions this altarpiece among a number of later Netherlandish examples in which the wings are slightly higher than the central panel.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 76.

Maurice W. Brockwell. "A Little Known Landscape Painter: Lucas Gassel's 'Baptism of Christ'." Connoisseur 138 (September 1956), p. 18.

Erik Larsen. Les primitifs flamands au Musée Metropolitain de New York. Utrecht, 1960, pp. 84–85, 127, figs. 27A, B and C.

Robert A. Koch. Joachim Patinir. Princeton, 1968, pp. 11–12, 16–18, 35–36, 42 n. 72, pp. 45, 51, 77, no. 14, figs. 35, 37–38 and frontispiece, calls it Patinir's finest altarpiece and places it in his middle period, between 1515–19; considers it likely to have been commissioned by a South German merchant due to the presence of Saint Sebald on an outer wing; comments on the "half-hidden, enigmatic 'portrait' of a young man" in the Temption of Saint Anthony; identifies the episodes in the legend of Saint Jerome and comments on the surprising degree to which disguised natural symbols occur here, although they had ceased to preoccupy Netherlandish artists after the 1470s; discusses the artist's pictorial method.

Walter S. Gibson. "Herri met de Bles: 'Landscape with St. John the Baptist Preaching'." Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art 55 (March 1968), p. 79, ill.

Gert von der Osten and Horst Vey. Painting and Sculpture in Germany and the Netherlands 1500 to 1600. Baltimore, 1969, p. 154, pl. 145.

Charles D. Cuttler and Burton L. Dunbar. "Robert A. Koch, Joachim Patinir, 1968." Art Quarterly 32, no. 4 (1969), p. 432, reject the attribution to Patinir of this altarpiece and the Saint Jerome in London [National Gallery] calling them "stiff, hard, or fussy, and . . . [lacking] the masterfully applied glazes of paint typical of Patinir's authentic works".

Max J. Friedländer et al. Early Netherlandish Painting. Vol. 9, part 2, Joos van Cleve, Jan Provost, Joachim Patenier. New York, 1973, pp. 125–26, Supp. 266, pls. 250–51.

A. de Bosque. Quentin Metsys. Brussels, 1975, pp. 189, fig. 229 (exterior wings).

Howard Hibbard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1980, pp. 200–201, fig. 365.

Maurice Pons and André Barret. Patinir ou l'harmonie du monde. Paris, 1980, pp. 70, 90–91, 96, 104, 123, figs. 80, 83, 85, 87, 89 (overall and details).

Walter S. Gibson. "In Detail: Pieter Bruegel's 'The Harvesters'." Portfolio (May/June 1981), pp. 42–43, ill.

Luc Serck. "'Isaac bénissant Jacob': Un paysage d'Henri Bles au Musée d'Innsbruck." Kunsthistorisches Jahrbuch Graz 18 (1982), pp. 186–87, 192 n. 7, fig. 15 (central panel).

Reindert L. Falkenburg. "Joachim Patinir: Het landschap als beeld van de levenspelgrimage." PhD diss., Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1985, pp. 10, 73–74, 84–85, fig. 8.

Introduction by James Snyder in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Renaissance in the North. New York, 1987, pp. 12, 54–57, ill. (color, overall and details).

Jacques Hendrick. La peinture au pays de Liège: XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Liège, 1987, p. 32, ill. (color).

Reindert L. Falkenburg. Joachim Patinir: Landscape as an Image of the Pilgrimage of Life. Amsterdam, 1988, pp. 6–7, 52–57, fig. 8, sees Patinir's landscapes with large saints in the foreground, including the present work, as deriving from the compositional type of the "Andachtsbild" combined with the tradition of supplementary vignettes (present in certain works of Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling); believes Patinir's pictures of this type were intended as visual aids for meditation, providing a visual rather than a literal pilgrimage, and contends that this interpretation is consistent with what is known of contemporary devotional practice; places our triptych in a group of works from Patinir's earliest development of this compositional type.

Walter S. Gibson. "Mirror of the Earth": The World Landscape in Sixteenth-century Flemish Painting. Princeton, 1989, pp. 4, 7–8, 10, fig. 1.8, in discussing this picture, comments on the artist's "indifference to spatial unity" (including the unnaturally high horizon, the land and bodies of water seen from above, and the vertical elements—architecture, trees, and mountains—seen straight on); also comments on Patinir's "bold defiance" of the laws of atmospheric perspective, which permits us to see the near and the far with almost equal clarity; discusses the artist's pictorial method in general and his role in the history of Netherlandish landscape painting.

Robert A. Koch, Selected by Guy C. Bauman, and Walter A. Liedtke, Introduction by Walter A. Liedtke in Flemish Paintings in America: A Survey of Early Netherlandish and Flemish Paintings in the Public Collections of North America. Antwerp, 1992, pp. 108–111, ill. in color (overall and detail), as representing a mature phase in Patinir's stylistic development, about 1518.

Larry Silver. "Kith and Kin: A Rediscovered Sacred Image by Massys." Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive. Ed. Cynthia P. Schneider et al. Cambridge, Mass., 1995, p. 234.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 271, ill.

Véronique Sintobin in From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Maryan W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1998, pp. vii, 70, 74, 257, 270, 323, 335–42, 379, 386, no. 88, ill. (color, overall and details) and frontispiece (color), dates it about 1518.

Arianne Faber Kolb. "Varieties of Repetition: 'Trend' versus 'Brand' in Landscape Paintings by Joachim Patinir and His Workshop." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (Winter 1998), pp. 170, 172, states that Patinir's Baptism of Christ (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) was "imitated" in the left wing our triptych, which she places in his middle period, or 1515–19.

Peter Humfrey and Mauro Lucco. Dosso Dossi: Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara. Ed. Andrea Bayer. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1998, p. 196, ill.

John Oliver Hand. "New York. From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Burlington Magazine 140 (December 1998), p. 856, ill.

Luc Serck in Autour de Henri Blés. Ed. Jacques Toussaint. Exh. cat., Musée des Arts Anciens du Namurois. [Namur], 2000, pp. 154–56, 234, 246, ill. (overall and detail), catalogues and reproduces a triptych by a follower of Patinir with Saints Jerome, John the Baptist and Anthony (private collection) which appears to have elements in common with our triptych; also reproduces two works by Herri met de Bles which he believes derive from the central panel of our triptych.

Boudewijn Bakker. Landschap en Wereldbeeld: Van Van Eyck tot Rembrandt. PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Bussum, The Netherlands, 2004, pp. 123, 198, fig. 28, compares the bird's eye view to Jan de Hervy's 1501 map of the Zwin river in Bruges (fig. 45).

Larry Silver. Hieronymus Bosch. New York, 2006, p. 366, colorpl. 287.

Maryan W. Ainsworth and Karen E. Thomas et al. in Patinir: Essays and Critical Catalogue. Ed. Alejandro Vergara. Exh. cat., Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid, 2007, p. 29 n. 25, pp. 30–31, 36–37, 59, 78, 84, 223, 277, 282–91, 294, 376, no. 19, ill. in color (overall and details), and infrared reflectograms of details, based on Klein's [Ref. 2007] dendrochronological analysis, give a most plausible date of execution of 1494; tentatively conclude the larger figures in our panel and in the Prado's Landscape with Saint Jerome were painted by Patinir himself, judging from the extremely rough reserve left for them in the landscape.

Peter Klein. Letter. June 11, 2007, gives an earliest creation date for this painting of 1488 upward, and a most plausible creation date of 1494 upward.

Cécile Scailliérez and Alejandro Vergara in Patinir: Essays and Critical Catalogue. Ed. Alejandro Vergara. Exh. cat., Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid, 2007, p. 332, compare the large figures in our triptych with those in Patinir's "Landscape with Saint Jerome" (Louvre, Paris) and "Charon Crossing the River Styx," (Prado, Madrid), finding them "close in style to the work of Gerard David, if slightly less skilfully rendered"; observe that these figures "may be the work of Patinir at an advanced stage in his development as an artist, when his figure painting had reached a more than acceptable level, especially in areas such as the folds of the draperies".

Leopoldine Prosperetti. "Crafting Repose: Aesthetic and Cultural Aspects of the Hermitage Landscape by Jan Brueghel the Elder." Image and Imagination of the Religious Self in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Ed. Reindert Falkenburg et al. Turnhout, Belgium, 2007, pp. 363, 366, fig. 120, erroneously as in the Cloisters.

Lynn F. Jacobs. Opening Doors: The Early Netherlandish Triptych Reinterpreted. University Park, Pa., 2012, pp. ix, xiv, 221, 238–42, 331 n. 11, colorpl. 35, fig. 117 (exterior).

Michel Weemans. Herri met de Bles: les ruses du paysage au temps de Bruegel et d'Érasme. Paris, 2013, pp. 200–201, fig. 137 (color).

Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, pp. 274, 278, no. 175, ill. pp. 178–79, 274 (color, overall and detail).

Patricia Phagan. Past Time: Geology in European and American Art. Exh. cat., Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College. London, 2018, p. 15.

Rafael Cornudella. "From Patinir's Workshop to the Monastery of Pedralbes: A Virgin and Child in a Landscape." Locus Amœnus 16 (2018), p. 45.

Old Masters Evening Sale. Sotheby's, London. July 4, 2018, pp. 48, 54, under no. 9.

Sandrine Vézilier in Crazy About Dymphna: The Story of a Girl who Drove a Medieval City Mad. Ed. Sven van Dorst. Exh. cat., Niguliste Museum. Veurne, 2020, ill. pp. 204–5 (color).

Old Masters. Sotheby's, London. July 7, 2021, p. 12, under no. 2.

According to an old note in the departmental archives, this picture is illustrated in the catalogue of the Abbey of Kremsmünster, and described in the catalogue, p. 54, as follows: "On the principal wall there are very important works of art. In the middle of that wall is hanging the very precious altarpiece by Patenier which is the most important item of our collection. It shows . . . [follows description of the painting] . . . In this picture Patenier, the artist whom Dürer admired so much, made a most marvelous landscape." It has not been possible to locate a copy of the catalogue, or to find its exact title or date of publication.

An entry reported to be in the archives of Kremsmünster states that the triptych was given to the monastery in 1674 by Emperor Leopold I (Wehle and Salinger 1947).