Once there was a first of everything. Or: the first. Saint Anthony Abbot was the very first monk in the world. Known to us as Saint Anthony the Abbot, he lived from 251 to 356 AD. He withdrew as a hermit to the eastern desert of Egypt. Saint Anthony chose a life of solitude, far from the inhabited world. However, it was not peaceful there. In the desert he was plagued by demons, devils and even ladies who tried to seduce him. Time and again he resisted all temptations. That must have caused a stir, because over time other Christians joined him and thus formed the first communities of monks in the world.
I find it beautiful that monasteries, which you assume without thinking have always existed, were once invented, once originated as an idea.
What also attracts me in Saint Anthony is that the metaphor ‘the book of nature’ is attributed to him. Even though he was brilliantly immortalized as a wooden sculpture by, among others, master wood carver Tilman Riemenschneider around 1500 that once held a book (hand and book have been lost), this monk of course did not yet know real books. Books are from much later, from 1455. So shortly after the calendar change, people used rolls of parchment on which texts were written. Saint Anthony, however, also saw nature as ‘a book’, which besides the Biblical texts could be read as a source of knowledge of God.
I tried to capture this inspiring story in a sculpture of lime wood. The saint emerges three-dimensionally on the left page of a historical-looking wooden book with a golden clasp. On the other page I carved the relief of the desert, the wind ripples, always moving, always erasing all traces. Because: we forget so much, every generation over and over again. Above the sandy plain an almost blue-black sky of Parisian Blue, also known as Napoleonic Blue. The clasp of the old book is of gold leaf.
