This original religious sculpture was expertly modelled in 1932 by the Maltese sculptor, Vincent Apap (1909-2003), who enjoyed local as well as international recognition. Manifesting his precocious artistic talents at the young age of 23, Apap represents St Anthony the Abbot, the Christian monk from Egypt who spent most of his life as a hermit and who endured some punishing temptations during his sojourn in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. Standing stiffly and paralysed by an acute state of physical and psychological tension, Apap’s figure of the saint is caught at the instant when diabolical temptation seizes and literally ceases his body. Hints of female heads and figures sensually rising and writhing beneath the monk’s clothing make up the corporeal temptations that St Anthony is afflicted by.
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