The Temptation of St Benedict

The Temptation of Saint Benedict, completed in 1587 for the Fitzwilliam Museum's collection, is one of Allori's major religious narrative works from his mature period. Saint Benedict of Nursia, the sixth-century founder of Western monasticism, was famously tempted by a vision of a beautiful woman, which tradition held he overcame by throwing himself into a thornbush. The scene's combination of the erotic and the penitential made it a complex subject for any Mannerist painter: female beauty was a standard display subject, but here it must be simultaneously present and condemned. Allori's Mannerist training — with its emphasis on the idealized nude and sophisticated figure composition — made him well suited to the challenge. By 1587 the Counter-Reformation church was closely attentive to how saints' temptations were depicted, requiring painters to resolve the tension between sensuous display and moral instruction. The Fitzwilliam work has been noted for the ambivalence with which it navigates this tension.

Painted in oil on canvas, the work uses Allori's polished surface technique to render both the saint's weathered asceticism and the temptress's smooth idealized skin within the same pictorial space. The tonal contrast between figures articulates the moral opposition the subject demands.