Artwork · 1946 · Religious painting

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Dali)

1946 · Oil on Canvas
Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels
★ 6.3 editorial score

Saint Anthony kneels and thrusts up a makeshift cross to ward off a procession of temptations borne across the desert plain by a rearing horse and a file of elephants on impossibly long, spindly insect legs - each carrying obelisks, a tower, and a nude woman. Salvador Dali makes the saint's spiritual trial a parade of fragile, towering apparitions. Now in Brussels, the Temptation of Saint Anthony is among his most striking religious fantasies - desire, power, and faith staged as a mirage of weightless, leggy monsters looming over a tiny, resisting holy man.

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