Saint Anthony Abbot

Nikolaus von Hagenau

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The legend of Saint Anthony Abbot, a fourth-century Egyptian hermit, tells of the saint’s heroic resistance to the devil’s torments. Here, he triumphs over the devil, who writhes under his feet. The saint’s staff originally would have impaled the monster’s mouth. Saint Anthony’s order was founded in Europe in the eleventh century and was dedicated to the care of the sick. The Antonites had two hospitals in the Alsace—at Isenheim and Strasbourg—and this intense, expressive, and psychologically charged figure may have been made for one of them. Carved in the round, it may have been carried in procession and placed on an altar shrine or on a bracket against a column. The exceptional carving of the face, beard, and hair suggests the authorship of Nikolaus von Hagenau, one of the most gifted Upper Rhenish sculptors working about 1500.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Metropolitan Museum of Art