Start here
Is this Michelangelo's first painting?
The Kimbell calls The Torment of Saint Anthony his first known painting and says he made it when he was twelve. [1] The Met's account of Schongauer's print, summarising Vasari, gives the age as thirteen. [2] Those are source-specific accounts. The Kimbell's current record dates the painting to 1487. [1]
The scene shows Saint Anthony the Great, the Egyptian hermit. The Kimbell relates it to Athanasius's fourth-century life of the saint, in which Anthony is lifted into the air and endures an attack by demons. [1]
Keep the saint's face in view while looking around the group. The surrounding creatures offer many competing details. Does returning to the face change how you read the assault?
Compare the objects
One design, two objects
Michelangelo’s painting
AP 2009.01 [1]
Schongauer’s engraving
Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons
Martin Schongauer · 1470-74 · Engraving
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Accession: 20.5.2
Sheet: 30 × 21.8 cm
Source: [2]
Image credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public Domain, accession 20.5.2.
The engraving shown is the Met's object 20.5.2. [2] The Met labels the engraving's dimensions as the sheet. [2] The Kimbell's record gives the painting's dimensions as 47 × 34.9 cm. [1] Equal widths on your screen do not mean equal-sized objects.
Choose one claw near Anthony, then trace the fold of his clothing beside it. Look at the open background between the bodies as well as at the bodies themselves. Repeat the route in the other image. What feels tighter, and where does the eye find room to pause?
The Kimbell describes Michelangelo making the group more compact and adjusting the positions and contours of limbs and bodies. It connects those changes with attention to negative space and movement. [1] The images let you test that description through a particular passage instead of taking “copied from a print” to mean that every contour stayed the same.
Look closely
Two changes you can look for
Look closely
Scales along the left demon
Look beneath the long spines on the monster at the left. Rounded scales follow its curved body. Use the whole engraving to find the corresponding creature before returning to this crop.
The Kimbell identifies these scales as an addition absent from Schongauer's engraving. [1] The Met's account of the print describes its creatures as combinations of observed animal surfaces, including scales and fur, with fantastic forms. [2] After comparing the surfaces, ask how each artist makes a fantastic creature feel tangible.
The crop shows painted scales. It cannot identify the fish that may have prompted them, or establish how the artist studied it. For that question, the biographical account below offers a story with its own limits.
Look closely
A setting below the assault
Move down to the cliff and the water. Find the boat, then look across to the trees on the right. Compare this lower passage with the space beneath the group in the engraving.
The Kimbell says the added setting resembles the Arno River Valley around Florence, rather than Egypt, where Anthony lived. [1] That is the museum's reading of the setting. The photograph lets us compare its forms; it does not locate the boat at a documented stretch of river.
Return to the whole painting. Does the small scene below slow your looking after the crowded group above? Try the same journey in the engraving before deciding.
Reading Vasari
Vasari's fish story
In his Life of Michelagnolo Buonarroti, Vasari tells of a copper engraving by “German Martino” showing devils beating Saint Anthony. He says Michelangelo copied it with a pen and then painted the same sheet in colours. [3] The passage is a later biographical account in Gaston du C. De Vere's translation. Its wording should not be turned into an exact description of the surviving panel's support.
Vasari also says Michelangelo bought fish with unusually coloured scales to imitate the strange forms of the devils. [3] The Kimbell connects the fish-study story with the scales at the left and the colour of the demon on the right. [1]
Look again at the scaled body with that story in mind. It gives us a reason to attend to the surface, but it is not a record naming a fish species or documenting a particular visit to a market. A later anecdote and a visible painted detail can be useful together without proving every step between them.
Reported examinations
What the photograph cannot show
The Met's 2009 exhibition account credits Michael Gallagher with cleaning discoloured varnish and overpaint from the panel. Its Technical Observations describe infrared examination of the drawing and alterations to the contours of wings, limbs and drapery. The account also reports overlapping paint, scraping and incisions. [4]
The Kimbell's current record describes an underdrawing closely aligned with Schongauer's print, without compositional pentimenti, and changes refined in the final painting. [1] Its 2009 exhibition listing reports pentimenti, or changes, as evidence of an original work, rather than a copy after another painting. [5]
These descriptions have different wording and scope. “A copy after a print” and “a copy after another painting” are different propositions. The museum accounts should remain visible as dated accounts; the ordinary images here cannot settle the technical terminology or replace the underlying examination.
The Kimbell also reports a separate brush drawing beneath the lower part of the painted surface. It says hyperspectral imaging made the drawing legible in 2015 and identified it with the Birth of the Baptist fresco made by Ghirlandaio's team in the Tornabuoni Chapel at Santa Maria Novella. The museum dates that fresco to autumn 1487 and uses the connection to support the panel's date. [1]
Our lower crop shows the boat and setting on the surface. It does not reveal that hidden drawing. Open the Kimbell's account for the reported finding, then return here to keep the visible and hidden evidence apart.
Object history
Follow the accession as well as the name
The Kimbell's provenance records a 1960 sale entry naming Michelangelo, a 2008 sale as the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, and the painting's purchase for the Kimbell in 2009. [1]
The changing labels are a reason to check which object a source discusses. The current collection record identifies this panel as Michelangelo's The Torment of Saint Anthony, accession AP 2009.01. [1] Older exhibition texts use 1487-88 and describe tempera and oil; the current holding record gives 1487 and tempera on panel. [1][4][5] The facts rail follows that current record.
Check the museum's current display information before travelling.
Common questions
-
What did Michelangelo change from the engraving?
-
Where is the painting now?
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas lists the painting as accession AP 2009.01. [1] Confirm the current listing before visiting.
Prints by Michelangelo are available. View the collection →