Temptation of Saint Anthony

The Temptation of Saint Anthony was one of the most fantastical subjects in the Christian hagiographic tradition, inspiring artists from Hieronymus Bosch to Matthias Grünewald to explore the margins of the imaginable. In the desert contemplative tradition, Anthony's solitary asceticism drew attacks from demons who appeared to him as beautiful women, monstrous creatures, and apocalyptic visions. By Ricci's era the subject had been largely domesticated from Bosch's nightmare imagery into a more manageable drama of seduction versus spiritual resistance. Ricci's version at the Musée des beaux-arts de Mulhouse combines his Venetian facility with a subject that permitted experimentation with light effects, foreshortening, and the kind of semi-supernatural atmosphere his mythological canvases also exploited. The Mulhouse collection, one of Alsace's significant regional museums, holds this as evidence of the broad distribution of Venetian Rococo painting through French collections.

The temptation subject requires contrast between the saint's austere spiritual environment and the intrusive supernatural presence. Ricci would have exploited dramatic chiaroscuro to suggest the otherworldly quality of the demonic apparition, while the saint's figure is rendered with the naturalistic gravity appropriate to sincere devotion. Bright passages of supernatural light create focal tension within the darker devotional setting.