Michelangelo's First Painting, Created When He Was Only 12 or 13 Years Old

https://www.openculture.com/2026/01/discover-michelangelos-first-painting.html

60•bookofjoe•1h ago

Comments

worldsavior•1h ago

Other than the drawing skill here, it's interesting why a kid thinks about demons attacking god. And why demons look like that for him.

gjm11•1h ago

It looks like the figure they're attacking is meant to be St Anthony, rather than God.

sejje•49m ago

... The painting is titled "The Torment of St Anthony," and the article didn't forget to include that detail.

mcgannon2007•1h ago

It isn't an original work, but actually a painted version of a famous engraving by Martin Schongauer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temptation_of_St_Anthony_(...

maxbaines•58m ago

Thankyou

basch•47m ago

I am by no means an expert art historian but I'm not sure I 100% follow the logic of their conclusion.

"pentimenti, or correction marks, a common indication that “a painting is not a copy, but an original work created with artistic freedom.”"

How often are they analyzing copies made by 12 year old. Is a 12 year old more likely to have made errors or drifted from the source during the process of the copy? Could the corrections be attempts to bring the painting closer to its source, because it wasnt close enough?

BeaverGoose•24m ago

The engraving is much better too. Shame we don't appreciate Schongauer as much as Michelangelo.

dabluecaboose•1h ago

At this point in his life, Michaelangelo was probably apprenticed to Ghirlandaio. This wasn't a freeform doodle, but likely something of a homework assignment. It was common for young artists to be given famous works to copy, or common religious scenes to remake.

lacunary•1h ago

It's just a reflection of his education. Even today, many children are raised with religious education that includes stories of demons attacking people. Kids love scary stuff; monsters, battle, etc.

razakel•1h ago

As the article says, it's based on Schongauer's The Temptation of St. Anthony. There's even a version by Salvador Dali.

Oarch•34m ago

There are many versions, it's a popular theme. I saw 4 or 5 together in the Museum of Western Art in Tokyo recently.

agos•33m ago

there's a cool background to Dali's Temptation of St. Anthony.

In 1946, 11 surrealist painters were asked to submit a painting to be used in a film (Albert Lewin's "The Private Affairs of Bel Ami"). Among the contestants were Max Ernst (who won), Leonora Carrington, Dalì, Stanley Spencer, Dorothea Tanning. Among the judges was Marcel Duchamp. The painting is then shown in color - the only color scene in an otherwise black and white movie.

I think the reason why they specifically wanted the temptation of Saint Anthony had to do with censorship, but sadly I can't remember the details

Maken•1h ago

Demons look like that in Medieval and Renaissance paintings. "Red dude with horns" didn't become the standard depiction of demons until much later.

williamdclt•56m ago

In modern representations, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find red-dude-with-horns. Seems like we shifted towards hot-dude-with-something-off (Lucifer series, Good Omens), when we do see red-dude-with-horns I feel like it's meant to be somewhat ironic/on-the-nose (south park, preacher).

dahart•14m ago

Hehe, not that that hard pressed. IMDB has a whole horned-demon category keyword: https://m.imdb.com/search/title/?keywords=horned-demon&explo.... And those results don’t even include South Park, nor Hellboy. If I Google image search for “Satan” I get nothing but red horned demons for pages.

There have always been wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing stories about The Devil too, it’s just a separate category.

gwbas1c•1h ago

It makes me wonder what his home environment was like where he could put such detail into a painting. Something like that isn't made in an afternoon or weekend; and it definitely requires parents to provide resources and moral support.

lotsofpulp•48m ago

12 years old is pretty old for a kid. I remember trying to reason through my grandparents’ religious beliefs at or before age 9, and they had taught me about lots of different demons, gods, etc.

al_borland•1h ago

Surely this isn’t the first thing he ever painted, but rather the earliest known work that survived?

andsoitis•1h ago

Yes probably first known work. The salient point though is that he did this at 12.

stavros•1h ago

Do they mean that he grabbed a paintbrush one day and painted this out of the blue? Or does "painting" here mean "specifically painted on a canvas" or whatever?

bookofjoe•1h ago

>... it became "the only painting by Michelangelo located anywhere in the Americas, and also just one of four easel paintings attributed to him throughout his entire career," during most of which he disparaged oil painting itself.

stavros•48m ago

How does this answer any part of my question?

andsoitis•39m ago

This is his first known work. The salient point though is that he did this at 12.

stavros•37m ago

Sure, though calling it "first" is misleading. "Earliest known" is the usual term for that.

andsoitis•35m ago

Sure. But it is also obvious that you cannot possibly know that he hadn't painted ANYTHING before that.

All of that misses the forest for the trees, which is he did it at an incredibly young age!

anonymous908213•19m ago

It is less obvious than you think. Obvious to you and me, perhaps. But a significant portion of the population genuinely believes that you are born with the talent to just do this like it's nothing, or born with the talent to be a piano prodigy, etc, and as a result never bother to apply themselves, even though with the wealth of educational resources available today anyone[1] could make paintings of this quality if they were to put in the effort to learn. I think that article headlines that reinforce this popular misconception are rather damaging.

[1] Given the level of pedantry on this site, I suppose I should say "almost anyone", since a small minority of people with severe disabilities may not be able to.

dismantlethesun•8m ago

Cmon, even famous virtuosos still have to go through a period of being children without fine motor control.

I won’t argue about the obviousness as that’s a tarpit of comparing each others social circles, but let say it’s reasonable to assuming this wasn’t his first ever brush stroke to touch canvas.

zdc1•46m ago

I assume by "painting" they mean something akin to "published work" but it very well could just be his earliest "known work".

lawn•29m ago

At this time kids spent their lives training under other masters. By this time he's been painting and assisting full time for many years already.

Still impressive of course, but remember that it's not straightforward to compare how things are today with other time periods.

groundzeros2015•5m ago

No. He was an apprentice to a master which would have shown him tools and techniques.

fwip•1h ago

I'm inclined to agree with the commenter on the article.

mxfh•6m ago

I sure could find some experts for hire to drive up the price of my cultural artifact.

Without anyone wanting to buy this and spend resources on that, finding claims to proof the contrary might be a quite futile task.

The whole board of the Museum is non-experts. Nobody has any interest in devaluing that expense.

In that era even attributing works definively to a single artist and not a school or workshop just feels a bit off.

https://kimbellart.org/content/nuestro-kimbell

LegitShady•1h ago

Not his first painting. Nobody picks up a brush for the first time and paints like that. Not an original work either. Just a practice masterstudy, one of many many many he'd made up to that point I'm sure.

speff•45m ago

It's impressive that he did it at 12, but like you said, he had years of focused practice under his belt before he did this one. Anyone can do this level of work - they just need to actually learn it. It doesn't require someone be born with talent.

Articles like this contribute towards the gatekeeping feeling people get about the arts in my opinion.

frikskit•15m ago

You shouldn’t be getting downvoted. If people would read the article they’d see it’s not an original.

pstuart•1h ago

I wonder how many Michelangelos we'd have today if we didn't have electronic distraction devices and only had old school tech for "entertainment"

TheCycoONE•1h ago

Most of human history we didn't have electronic distraction devices and we have one Michelangelo; the answer is probably not as many as the question implies.

zppln•1h ago

Also consider the tools and materials available today. I don't know much about Michelangelo, but I imagine people's opportunity for sheer iteration (due to availability of qualitys pens, pappers, ink etc) is magnitudes higher (and cheaper) today.

Ekaros•55m ago

I don't think there is that significant amount of artists that do not draw because entertainment. Artist communities online are doing pretty fine. There might not be enough money for all of them, but drawing is still popular enough hobby.

adventured•52m ago

They're making art all around you. Some of them are extraordinarily famous.

Movies, video games, music.

lotsofpulp•51m ago

There are plenty, but the value of Michelangelo’s brand is in its’ scarcity.

adrianN•17m ago

Children today are expected to go to school and get a well rounded education. They don’t start specializing as apprentice to some master at an early age

postalrat•12m ago

They are busy making other stuff. Its OK if you don't appreciate their work.

agumonkey•51m ago

well the man would have loved to have a chat with H.P. Lovecraft it seems

soupfordummies•50m ago

Yeah… was not really expecting that!

GuB-42•2m ago

I also didn't expect that, but then I realized that's the work of a teenage boy with a catholic education!

Teenage boys love badass, edgy stuff. And what's badass and edgy in Catholicism? Demons! As for the art style, it is the style that was popular at the time.

In a sense, it is not so different from today's kids drawing scenes inspired from their favorite comic. Of course, the painting here shows incredible talent, he is Michelangelo after all, but that doesn't make him less of a kid.

owlninja•48m ago

What a crazy coincidence... I had not been to the Kimbell art musesum that is only about 20 minutes away from me in many years. We had a family outing this weekend to go see the Torlonia Collection exhibit there and this painting was just sitting there in their permanent collection! I even got to listen to the guided tour group that happened to be at that painting as I was walking by.

psbp•5m ago

The Caravaggio was incredible too.

amarant•28m ago

Something about this painting is reminiscent of the way I(and I'm sure many others) would paint my comic-book heroes at around that age, albeit perhaps lacking some of Michelangelo's talents and skills.

This painting makes me feel like the bible was pretty much a comic book to the adolescent Michelangelo, and I like that thought. He later went on to paint the ceiling of a huge temple dedicated to his equivalent of Charles Xavier.

I bet that felt pretty cool for him =)

Mouvelie•25m ago

Fun fact ! Michelangelo hated doing the ceiling thing.

https://www.dutchfinepaintings.com/michelangelos-sistine-cha...

phyzix5761•20m ago

He hated painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling because he saw himself primarily as a sculptor. You can read some of the graphic language he used to describe his perspective of having to do it. Also, he was constantly in pain and would go temporarily blind from holding his head in certain positions for hours at a time.

mylons•6m ago

my father made reading The Agony and The Ecstasy a requirement to go to Italy when I was a sophomore in high school. It's a thick tome, but a great read if you're a curious kid.

as the others said Michelangelo hated doing that painting. He's a very tragic, albeit heroic to me, man. I'd recommend that book if you're at all fascinated by him.

ojciecczas•16m ago

One thing is to invent such a picture, the other is to copy it almost 1:1 and add some touch, which was the case.

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