The three episodes refer to the life of St Anthony Abbot, a fairly ancient and very widespread hagiographic tale. The life of the Saint, who lived somewhere between 250 and 356, is known to us from the biography written by St Athanasius in the fourth century and extended by St Jerome. The popularity of the theme in the figurative arts was assured as result of its promulgation in the fourteenth century in the “Leggenda Aurea” of Jacopo da Varagine. St Anthony was soon considered the patriarch of monasticism, on account of his long association with hermitic life and his capacity to perform miracles.

Well known too are the temptations with which the devil, appearing to him in various guises, tried the Saint during his hermitage. The cycle of Parentino illustrates some important episodes of the life of the Saint.

The first shows the scene of the young Anthony, who, still sumptuously dressed, gives his possessions to the poor, desirous to dedicate himself to a life of solitude and meditation. On the back of the panel can be read the ancient inscription “CDEC. ORA. PRI”, interpreted by Safarik as meaning “Decet oratio principem” (“Prayer is becoming to the prince”). In the second panel is illustrated the meeting of the Saint, already characterized by the monk’s habit and the pilgrim’s stick in the form of “tau”, with the demons: one of these, clearly indicated by the satyr’s ears, attempts to lead him away from the ascetic life by offering him a heap of money.

The third and most disturbing scene shows the Saint being subjected to a beating and ill-treatment by the devils, who appear in the most monstrous forms, with the intention of incarnating the vices, which, under animal disguises, try to attack the virtuous man; one of these is in the act of tearing up a book of prayer and perhaps the Rule of the Anchorite.

Note that in this last scene Parentino makes use of demons like those in a print by Martin Schongauer, master of Dürer, drawing inspiration, therefore, from a well-established iconographic treatment of the theme. The triptych dates to a mature phase of the master, probably to the 1480s, a period in which the artist from Istria is documented as being at the court of Mantova.

In the panels an important link with Mantegna can be noted. In particular the scheme of the battle can be related to another painting by Parentino, portraying a “Battle” (Isolabella, Borromeo Collection), whereas the frieze of putti can be linked to a sarcophagus portrayed in a notebook by an artist of the circle of Squarcione, a model which Parentino may easily have known.

In addition, Bernardo was also author of a series of drawings all’antica, very close to the works of Mantegna and the circle of Squarcione. In spite of the considerable debt to Mantegna, both as concerns the severe and finely drawn physiognomies of the persons and the portrayal of the harsh and minutely described landscape (see the second episode, with the “Temptation of the money”), the language of Parentino also draws on other well-defined stimuli: the “stoniness” of the bodies, made of blocks which seem almost rocky, derives from the contact with the Paduan painting of the circle of Squarcione and, still further back, the local example of Donatello. The feverish spirit of the figures and of the tale and the vein of vivid oneiric fantasy, characteristics not typical of the work of Mantegna, derive instead from the Ferrara examples of Cosmè Tura and Ercole de’ Roberti. To these too is linked the “material” aspect of the painting, with its hues, cold in tracts. The three panels, registered as works of Mantegna in the fidei-commissum catalogue of 1819, were attributed to Parentino by Cavalcaselle (1873).