01 Works, RELIGIOUS ART - Interpretation of the Bible! With Footnotes - # 43c

Félicien Rops, (1833–1898)

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1878)

Pastel and gouache on paper

73.8 × 54.3 cm

Cabinet des estampes, Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, Brussels.

Bound to the cross in Saint Anthony’s tempting vision is a visibly voluptuous woman, the word EROS replacing the normal initialism of INRI (Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews) shown above Christ’s head. Christ himself, with full stigmata, has been knocked sideways to accommodate the woman’s naked body. Behind the cross the horned devil wears scarlet robes and pulls faces. Behind him is a pig, Anthony’s attribute. The two daemonic putti are decidedly not references to Bosch. More

Félicien Rops (7 July 1833 – 23 August 1898) was a Belgian artist, known primarily as a printmaker in etching and aquatint. Rops was born in Namur. After his first artistic training at a local academy, he relocated to Brussels at the age of twenty and briefly attended the University of Brussels. He subsequently attended the Académie de Saint-Luc and began creating satirical lithographs which were published in the student magazine Le Crocodile. These and the lithographs brought him early fame as a caricaturist.

His activity as a lithographer ceased about 1865, and he became a restless experimenter with etching techniques. Rops met Charles Baudelaire towards the end of the poet's life in 1864, and Baudelaire left an impression upon him that lasted until the end of his days. Rops created the frontispiece for Baudelaire's Les Épaves, a selection of poems from Les Fleurs du mal that had been censored in France, and which therefore were published in Belgium.

His association with Baudelaire and with the art he represented won his work the admiration of many other writers. He was closely associated with the literary movement of Symbolism and Decadence.

Rops was one of the founding members of Société Libre des Beaux-Arts of Brussels (Free Society of Fine Arts, 1868–1876) and Les XX ("The Twenty", formed 1883). Rops's eyesight began to fail in 1892. He kept up his literary associations until his death.

Félicien Rops was a freemason and a member of the Grand Orient of Belgium. More Félicien Rops 

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