The Vengeance of Hop-Frog

This scene comes straight out of a short story by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. In Hop-Frog, a crippled court jester, humiliated once too often by a cruel king, talks the king and his seven ministers into coming to a masked ball dressed as chained apes. At the height of the party he hooks the eight of them together, hauls them up like a chandelier and sets them alight above the crowd, then slips away. Ensor loved authority made ridiculous, the king, the army, the church, and Poe's tale of a jester's revenge handed him a ready-made version of it. He paints the burning instant itself, the apes ablaze in mid-air over a sea of upturned faces, worked in hot reds and smoky, clotted colour that make the fire feel real.