Cenni di Francesco, Coronation of the Virgin Altarpiece: Detail, the temptation of St. Anthony

1390s
Tempera and gold leaf on panel
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

This is the fourth panel in the predella of the altarpiece. In Athanasius of Alexandria's Life of Antony the saint tried to escape from the devil's temptations by leaving his home town for a tomb in the nearby desert. Afraid "that in a short time Antony would fill the desert with the discipline [i.e., monasticism] coming one night with a multitude of demons, he so cut him with stripes that he lay on the ground speechless from the excessive pain." The artist generally follows this account, but instead of a tomb he sets the beating outdoors among rugged mountains, and he places a tidy hermitage and chapel in the background.

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Photographed at the museum by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.