James Ensor ― The Temptation of Saint Anthony

This engaging volume describes the creation and restoration of the extraordinary large-scale drawing The Temptation of Saint Anthony?a work by late 19th-century Belgian artist James Ensor (1860?1949) that is composed of fifty-one sheets of paper collaged into a hallucinatory social critique and artist's manifesto. Each sheet of the nearly six-foot-high work is reproduced at actual size, revealing Ensor’s remarkable technique and fertile imagination. Here, Saint Anthony is surrounded not with nature?as customary?but with the moral decay of society. Replete with tiny scenes depicting both sexual temptation and spiritual piety, Ensor splices potent imagery from travelogues, popular science, and technology magazines into a Symbolist masterpiece. Susan M. Canning and Kimberly J. Nichols recount the fascinating tale that led to the work’s restoration and first public showing in more than sixty years.

Susan M. Canning is professor of art history at The College of New Rochelle in New York. Kimberly J. Nichols is associate paper conservator in the department of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago. Herwig Todts is conservator of modern art at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.