The Torment of Saint Anthony

Anthony, and the attribute that attacks him

Anthony the Abbot is identified by a T-shaped tau cross, a bell, a pig, and the habit of a hermit. But his most persistent subject supplies a different kind of sign altogether: the demons that torment him in the desert. In this case the identifying element is not an object held but an event suffered, and painters have used it for six centuries as a licence to invent — the more grotesque the assailants, the more certain the identification.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates this panel to 1487 and gives the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, as the collection. Its dimensions are 47 x 35 cm, a small upright. It is filed under Religion, mythological cultural heritage and Fantasy, with Early Renaissance as the style and Italian as the nationality; the measured colour families are green and yellow.

Why Fantasy is the right tag

Of all the entries in this collection, this is the one where the Fantasy category is least arguable. The subject requires creatures that do not exist, assembled from parts that do — wings, claws, scales, faces in wrong places. A catalogue that indexes what a picture contains has no better heading. The saint is named by what surrounds him, which is a rare inversion in a system built on things saints hold.