Matthys Naiveu (1647 - 1726) "the Temptation Of Saint Anthony" - Dutch School (dutch)

Matthys (or Matthijs) NAIVEULeiden, April 16, 1647 - June 4, 1726, Amsterdam"The Temptation of Saint Anthony"Oil on canvas, 43x53cmSize with frame: 58.5x68.5cmSigned center right "Naiveu"On his canvas and original stretcher. Later frame. Artist biography: Matthys Naiveu was born in 1647 in Leiden, the Netherlands. He studied drawing with Abraham Toorenvliet (1620–1692), a glass painter and drawing teacher, who was also the father of Jacob Toorenvliet. He studied painting with Gérard Dou. He specialized in genre painting. In 1671, he became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke in Leiden. He then settled in Amsterdam, where he worked as a hop controller for the Amsterdam beer brewers. He was a very productive painter. His first known work dates from 1668 and his last from 1721. He died in 1726 in Amsterdam. (wikipedia)Temptation of Saint Anthony: The Temptation of Saint Anthony is the title of many works dealing with the theme of the temptation of Anthony the Great: this saint, withdrawn into the Egyptian desert, suffered the temptation of the Devil in the form of visions of earthly pleasures. Saint Anthony supported Saint Athanasius in his fight against the Arians and the latter wrote after his death a Vita Antonii, which is the starting point of the legend: Saint Athanasius in fact relates the temptations of the Devil who appears himself or sends ferocious animals to the hermit who attack him. In the 13th century, drawing on Saint Athanasius, whom he quotes, Jacques de Voragine summarized his life in The Golden Legend. Many painters were inspired by this story. In the 19th century, Gustave Flaubert wrote three Temptations of Saint Anthony, of which he published only the last in 1874. He moved away from the hagiographic tradition by creating new hallucinations during which Anthony sees the religions and heresies of the first centuries of Christianity appear. In the 1874 version, the hermit regains his serenity by discovering the origin of life, in the form of microscopic beings. The Temptation of Saint Anthony, a fertile theme for Western art: Nowadays, before being a subject for Christians, the Temptation of Saint Anthony is known for the very large number of works of art to which it has provided their title. From the Middle Ages to the 20th century, the theme gave rise to an abundant and varied iconography, in which artists redoubled their imagination. In painting, the most frequently illustrated tradition consists of placing the unfortunate saint in a landscape struggling with a quantity of demonic creatures, most often monstrous, vying with each other in cruelty, torture, and obscenity. Hieronymus Bosch, among some fifteen works he dedicated to the saint, thus left a triptych teeming with monsters and fantastic evocations of the different forms of evil and sin that overwhelm Anthony (c. 1501, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon). Several centuries later, the Surrealists indulged in variations that allowed their fertile imagination to be part of this tradition. Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí, in 1945-1946, produced two versions. In those of Max Ernst (Duisburg, Lehmbruck Museum (de)), the saint is struck down and tortured by various monsters emerging from a nearby lake; Dalí in his Temptation of Saint Anthony, for his part, sets the scene in a desert where Anthony, naked, brandishes the cross to fight against the appearance of four symbols of temptation, carried by animals with immense slender legs which suspend them between earth and sky. In sculpture the theme is much rarer. At the Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Vézelay, a capital shows the saint standing, hieratic, resisting two large grimacing devils who try to remove the cloak he is holding. Auguste Rodin, for his part, limits himself to two figures, arranged horizontally[1]: Saint Anthony, prostrate on the ground, hooded and wrapped in a monastic garment, clings to a cross which he holds firmly against his face. On his back, he supports a voluptuous female nude, leaning backwards, a material manifestation of the temptation that assails him. (Wikipedia)