The Temptation of Saint Anthony

Anthony is named by what attacks him

Anthony the Abbot has quiet attributes — a tau-shaped cross, a bell, a pig, a hermit's habit — and one loud one. His most painted subject is the assault in the desert, and there the identification is not an object held but an event suffered. That inversion is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly: for most saints the sign is a possession, and for Anthony it is a siege. Painters have treated it for six centuries as a licence to invent, since the more grotesque the assailants the more certain the naming.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1832 and gives the Wallace Collection, London, UK as its location. The dimensions are 20 x 16 cm — the second smallest measurement recorded anywhere in this catalogue. It is filed under group portraiture, cultural heritage in both its religious and mythological headings, and Fantasy, with the styles given as Academicism and Romanticism and French as the nationality; the measured colour families are ochre and yellow.

A demon subject in a cabinet

At that size the picture is an object for a table or a small room, which is a long way from the altarpieces where the subject started. 8 titles in this catalogue contain the name, and they do not all name the same man: Anthony of Padua is a different saint with different signs, and one of the entries names him outright.