The Temptation of St. Anthony (detail) 1515

Matthias Grünewald painted this section of ‘The Temptation of St. Anthony’ in the early 16th century. In it, we see the saint assailed by demons, hybrid creatures assembled from animal parts, all set upon him in a gothic landscape. Grünewald created this image for the Isenheim Altarpiece, a commission for a monastic order which ran a hospital. So, these images were consciously made for a specific institutional context, for a place dedicated to caring for the sick and dying. The nightmarish quality of the demons likely reflects the diseases that ravaged the population at the time. Saint Anthony was the patron saint of those suffering from skin diseases, so the monks of the order dedicated themselves to his healing powers, offering both medical treatment and spiritual care. Looking at the image, we might ask ourselves how art, and the institutions that display and commission it, attempt to make sense of our human condition. To answer this, we can turn to historical documents, medical treatises, and religious texts.