Moving Pictures: The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Joos van Craesbeeck

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2018

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Explore the dark, demonic landscape of a 17th Century Flemish masterpiece - The Temptation of Saint Anthony - by Joos van Craesbeeck (Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe). A giant screaming head dominates the painting; from its mouth pour tiny devils and the forehead has been peeled back to reveal a miniature artist working inside the brain. Cathy FitzGerald takes a closer look at Craesbeeck’s strange critters in the context of the early modern fascination with curiosity cabinets, monsters – and the devil.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello from the BBC World Service and welcome to the latest edition of the
0:05.0	documentary podcast. If you have the time please rate the documentary on your
0:09.6	podcast app and leave us a comment. let us know what you think.
0:14.0	Welcome to Moving Pictures on the BBC World Service.
0:18.0	The series that explores great artworks.
0:21.0	I'm Kathy Fitzgerald and today's painting is a little devilish. The
0:27.2	Temptation of St Anthony painted around 1650 by the Flemish artist Yus van Krasbeak. It comes from the collection of the Stadlisha
0:37.2	Kuntztala Karlsruh in Germany. And if you'd like to see it and follow along as we take a closer look at its demonic temptations,
0:45.7	head to the Moving Pictures page of the BBC World Service website and follow the link to explore the painting.
0:52.5	You'll be taken to a super high resolution image made by Google Arts and Culture.
0:57.5	Click on it to zoom in.
1:00.0	If you dare. When you look at this painting, what kind of agency do you find in it?
1:07.0	The painting is actually full of demonic work.
1:11.0	Demons, devils, ghosts, terror, bewilderment, panic. The world's gone upside down. Things are
1:19.0	awry. Things are not what you would expect them to be.
1:29.0	St. Anthony went into the wilderness to be alone in prayer.
1:35.0	This made the devil so angry. He tormented the saint with hallucinations,
1:40.0	conjuring a dark and hellish landscape.
1:47.2	The devil called forth demons of every shape and size to either terrify the saint or to lure the saint into sins.
1:51.0	Snakes, fire, creepy-crawleys, dangerous things what imagines.
1:58.0	It's an explosion of things demonic.
2:00.0	It is an explosion of things to monic.
	...

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