It is impossible to stay focused when a faun is pulling you by the hair and beating you with a stick, and you want to cling to the cross and stand firm when there appears before you – you, who have taken a vow of chastity – a naked beauty in the midst of a circus gone mad with droll and monstrous creatures...

On an empty stomach, Antonio the Anchorite often fell into a delirium, dreaming not only about meat (the barbecued type, to be clear), but also of "all sorts of horrible beasts [...]: the Tragelaphus, half-stag, half-ox; the Myrmecoleo, a lion in front, an ant behind, whose genitals are turned backwards; the python, Aksar, of sixty cubits, who frightened Moses; the great weasel, Pastinaca, which kills trees by its odour; the Presteros, which renders idiotic those who touch it; the Mirag, a horned hare dwelling in the islands of the sea.", as Gustave Flaubert would have imagined a few centuries later*. Nothing but tests to be overcome, at his hermitage in the Pispir desert! In the middle of the 17th Century, in Tuscany, Jacques Callot of Lorraine put such fantasies into print, inspired by the variegated bestiary created by Hieronymus Bosch, as the painter of 's-Hertogenbosch (Ducal Forest) Jeroen Anthoniszoon van Aken liked to call himself. His tempted Saint Anthony is paired with a festive Scene of witchcraft, depicting a victim in the middle of a circle of fire, surrounded by a carousel of deformed dwarfs. Paintings to be shown only within the most intimate circle, at a time when witches ended up at the stake. Perhaps to be kept inside a refined Wunderkammer, alongside narwhal horns, inlaid elephant tusks, Moluccas nautilus shells mounted on claw-like silver legs forged by Bavarian goldsmiths, and natural curiosities under formalin, such as «the Senad, a bear with three heads, [who] tears its little ones with its mouth».



These two delightful paintings will be unveiled by Aste Bolaffi on the occasion of the sale dedicated to furnishings and ancient paintings, in Turin, 22 September 2020, together with other important paintings selected from prestigious private collections. (by Marco Riccomini)

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*«Et toutes sortes de bêtes effroyables surgissent: Le Tragelaphus, moitié cerf et moitié bœuf; le Myrmecoleo, lion par devant, fourmi par derrière, et dont les génitoires sont à rebours; le python Aksar, de soixante coudées, qui épouvanta Moïse; la grande belette Pastinaca, qui tue les arbres par son odeur; le Presteros, qui rend imbécile par son contact; le Mirag, lièvre cornu, habitant des îles de la mer ... le Senad, ours à trois têtes, déchire ses petits avec sa langue» (Gustave Flaubert, La tentation de saint Antoine, ed. Charpentier et Cie, Paris 1874, p. 291).