Le tentazioni di sant'Antonio (Hieronymus Bosch, San Paolo)

Around 1500, in the Low Countries, Saint Anthony was the saint you prayed to against a terrifying disease people called Saint Anthony's fire, ergotism, a poisoning from mould on rye bread that brought burning limbs and waking hallucinations. The monks of his order ran hospitals for its sufferers. Look at Bosch's hermit besieged by creatures that are half animal, half machine, and that context sharpens the picture. These are not only moral temptations but the shapes of a mind coming apart. This panel in Sao Paulo is one of more than a dozen versions of the subject tied to Bosch's workshop, and scholars read it as an early working-out of his great Temptation altarpiece now in Lisbon. Anthony kneels at the centre, unmoved, while the swarm does its worst around him.