{"id":246960,"date":"2026-01-16T00:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T00:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/246960\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T00:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T00:10:07","slug":"michelangelo-made-his-first-masterpiece-when-he-was-12-years-old-colossal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/246960\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelangelo Made His First Masterpiece When He Was 12 Years Old \u2014 Colossal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before he was a titan of Renaissance art history, Michelangelo Buonarroti<\/a> (1475\u20131564) was a 12-year-old, although his childhood looked quite a bit different from what we associate with that age today. Already deeply invested in drawing and painting, he studied others\u2019 work<\/a>, such as an engraving titled \u201cSaint Anthony Tormented by Demons,\u201d created by 15th-century German artist Martin Schongauer<\/a>. Unlike most tweens, though, when he set out to recreate the scene in tempera paint on a wood panel, he worked with a particular style that strongly hinted at the young boy\u2019s preternatural talent.<\/p>\n

This is the very first known painting by Michelangelo, titled \u201cThe Torment of Saint Anthony,\u201d which was completed around 1487-88 at the age of 12 or 13. It wasn\u2019t attributed to him until after the painting sold at auction in 2008 and a conservationist at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York removed yellowed varnish and some unskillful overpaint to reveal a unique color palette and attention to depth.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Art historians such as Everett Fahy, a longtime curator at The Met, asserted that the painting had been made by Michelangelo, even though when the work went to auction, it was attributed more generally to the large Florentine workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio<\/a>, with which Michelangelo joined as an apprentice in 1488.<\/p>\n

Fahy\u2019s convictions were bolstered by the unique composition that emerged after its restoration at the hands of conservator Michael Gallagher, backed by art historian and restorer Giorgio Bonsanti\u2019s expert opinion that it was indeed made by Michelangelo.<\/p>\n

With no one else able (at least yet) to provide credible enough evidence that it was not, the work was acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, making it the only painting by the Renaissance master in a public collection in North America.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rare subject is found in the life of Saint Anthony the Great, written by Athanasius of Alexandria in the 4th century, which describes how the Egyptian hermit-saint had a vision that he levitated into the air and was attacked by demons, whose torments he withstood,\u201d says the Kimbell<\/a>, adding that historians like Ascanio Condivi and Giorgio Vasari\u2014Michelangelo\u2019s contemporaries\u2014recounted that \u201cto give the demonic creatures veracity, he studied the colorful scales and other parts of specimens from the fish market.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that the famously exacting Michelangelo wouldn\u2019t have chosen to have his name associated with this \u201camateur\u201d work, which may help explain its attribution to the workshop instead. But for art historians and enthusiasts alike, it\u2019s a wonderful insight into some of the artist\u2019s earliest creative explorations. <\/p>\n

Below, enjoy a video from art historian Erick Giraldo, who runs a channel called Inspiraggio<\/a> on YouTube.<\/p>\n

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Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before he was a titan of Renaissance art history, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475\u20131564) was a 12-year-old, although his childhood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[11991,307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60,63673,4540,2283,8543],"class_list":{"0":"post-246960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art-history","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-michelangelo","18":"tag-museums","19":"tag-painting","20":"tag-renaissance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}