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Michelangelo painted The Torment of Saint Anthony at age 12
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"The Torment of Saint Anthony" by Michelangelo, age 12
When we think of the great artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), we picture him in the prime of life, attacking a block of marble with hammer and chisel, with all the audacity of the Creator himself. Images of the bearded, muscular man who sculpted the David and painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling come to mind first. But where did that powerful, self-possessed genius come from? How did Michelangelo start?
Now, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until September 7th—and after that at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth Texas—you can see what experts believe is the first painting Michelangelo Buonarroti ever did. He was probably 12 years old at the time.
The year was 1487 or 1488. Columbus had not yet sailed to the Americas and the Jews and Muslims had not yet been exiled from Spain. Michelangelo was a young boy, living in the Santa Croce neighborhood of Florence. His father wanted him to stay in school and become a lawyer, but Michelangelo was interested in art.
He liked to hang around the workshop of painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, where his friend Francesco Granacci was an apprentice. Francesco undoubtedly gave Michelangelo some of his first art materials and showed him the ropes. And it was probably the two boys together who hatched the plot for Michelangelo to paint a wonderful scene on a wood panel to prove to his father and Ghirlandaio that he too had the makings of an artist.
Like many boys then and now, Michelangelo loved monsters. He loved them so much, he made them the stars of his first painting, “The Torment of Saint Anthony,” which he copied from an engraving by Martin Schongauer (1448-14910) the way kids today copy scenes from comic books.
As he painted, Michelangelo labored over the details—one monster’s tufts of mud-brown hair; another’s black spiny back; a set of crimson wings and a scorpion-like tail. He gave one demon the ferocious teeth of a dog and lascivious scarlet lips. On another creature, he painted an anteater’s pink snout and a belly covered with the silvery scales of a fish.
Although the hero of this first painting is nominally the old, white-haired Saint Anthony—who’s getting mauled by the demons—it’s clear what really fascinated the young artist. The Wild Things, of course.
At 12, Michelangelo was just a boy like any other… except not quite. His sense of color was unique, his eye for design superb. In this first effort, he was already making improvements on Schongauer’s composition, although the German artist was considered one of the greats. Schongauer had placed Saint Anthony and the circle of demons in the center of his paper. But Michelangelo moved the group up and painted an outcropping of rocks and a landscape below, to create a sense of depth.
In this first painting and throughout his life, Michelangelo drove himself to get it right. According to his friend and biographer, Ascanio Condivi, who in 1553 wrote about Michelangelo’s “The Torment of Saint Anthony,” the young boy went to a local fish market to observe fish scales before painting them on one of the monsters.
Infrared reflectography tests recently performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art show that the artist made many changes before completing the painting we see today. He redrew shapes, refined elements and even scraped away paint to sharpen lines.
Scholars have known “The Torment of Saint Anthony” since the 1830s. But throughout the years, its provenance has been in fierce dispute. As recently as last July, Sotheby’s in London catalogued it simply as “Workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio” before auctioning it to New York dealer Adam Williams for $2 million. It wasn’t until Williams brought the painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to be studied and cleaned that the case in favor of Michelangelo became compelling.
Keith Christiansen, a curator of European painting at the Met, said he was convinced by the work’s newly-revealed, bright color palate that evokes the Sistine Chapel and by “the kind of emphatic cross-hatching” on the rocks that is typical of Michelangelo’s hand. But one of the strongest arguments is an old one—how closely the painting resembles the descriptions of the work that appear in the biographies by Condivi and Vasari written during Michelangelo’s lifetime.
Standing in the Met, in front of the small 18 x 13-inch wood panel, perusing Saint Anthony and his wild tormentors, I couldn’t help feeling this is exactly what Michelangelo Buonarroti of Florence would have painted when he was a boy. It is not a work of great art, but it displays the qualities that could lead to greatness. And it suggests the tormented personality that was Michelangelo until the day he died.
A mere 12 years later, he would astound Rome by sculpting the ambitious “Pietá,” then quickly conquer Florence with his heroic “David.” With such titanic accomplishments, it’s no wonder we imagine Michelangelo as a mythic, larger-than-life figure—a sort of Greek god, dancing among his own statues.
In truth, he was a short, scruffy, tortured soul who struggled mightily with himself and the world. When creating his greatest art, he was more Beethoven than Mozart. It didn’t flow like water; he had to wrench it out. A portrait of his spirit would probably look more like his “Awakening Slave,” half-trapped in stone, than his sleek and perfectly realized “David.”
Many believe Michelangelo did sculpt his own portrait—as the figure of Nicodemus in the “Florence Pietá.” When he was in his mid-seventies, he began work on this four-figure group that depicts the crucified Christ, the Virgin, Mary Magdalene and a mysterious hooded man with broad, flat features. The hooded figure has the humble face of a peasant, or perhaps a stone mason. He is usually identified as Nicodemus from “The Gospel of Saint John,” but he also looks just like the portraits we have of the artist himself.
Michelangelo hoped this sculpture would mark his own tomb. But, after years of work, he finally despaired and attacked it with a hammer, destroying one of Christ’s legs beyond repair and damaging the sculpture terribly. According to tradition, Michelangelo’s servant rescued the work and repaired it as best he could. Today it sits quietly in the Museo del'Opera del Duomo in Florence, undisturbed by the crowds of tourists who flock to the nearby Accademia to see the glamorous “David.”
Years ago, I unexpectedly came upon this work when wandering through the museums of Florence. Suddenly I turned a corner, and there it was. I found myself alone in a room with Michelangelo’s maimed but profoundly moving “Pietá.” It was like coming face-to-face with the old man himself.
“So,” Michelangelo seemed to say, as he stared gravely into my eyes. “I am an old man now, and I have finally learned a few things. The greatest art is never the most perfect. Please, tell that to the boy from Santa Croce, who once lurked in the doorway of Ghirlandaio’s workshop and begged his friend Francesco to teach him how to mix vermillion red!”
Michelangelo’s First Painting is now on exhibition at:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art – 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, NYC – 212-535-7710
Other art stories by Mona Molarsky:
Night Life: Van Gogh lights up MoMA
The paintings of Alice Neel
Cheers for the Frick Museum
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