Michelangelo's first painting, created when he was 12 or 13

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

by bookofjoe • 6 months ago

372 172 6 months 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• 6 months ago

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

sejje• 6 months ago

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

mcgannon2007• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

Thankyou

basch• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

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

dabluecaboose• 6 months 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• 6 months 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• 6 months 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• 6 months 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• 6 months 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• 6 months 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• 6 months 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).

gwbas1c• 6 months 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.

lotsofpulp2• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

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

andsoitis3• 6 months ago

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

saberience• 6 months ago

How can they possibly know that for sure? It seems massively unlikely. We don't have any really reliable records from that time.

dfxm122• 6 months ago

and also keep in mind, you probably make many sketches before putting brush to canvas...

beloch• 6 months ago

"As a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to the city of Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino.[13][16][d] Michelangelo showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters."

------------------

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo#Early_life_and_ca...

It seems like this painting would be from his time at Urbino's grammar school. His first apprenticeship started when he was 13. You might expect a renaissance artist to do a lot of work on their master's paintings (detail work, etc.) before ever putting their own name to a canvas, but this is, apparently, Michelangelo doing his own thing before ever being apprenticed.

So, while he likely did paint things before this that didn't survive, it's pretty amazing that this is the work of a kid who has yet to be apprenticed and is just pursuing it on his own with nothing more than the advice of people he was hanging out with.

stavros3• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.

stavros3• 6 months ago

How does this answer any part of my question?

zdc1• 6 months ago

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

lawn• 6 months ago

At that 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• 6 months ago

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

fwip2• 6 months ago

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

mxfh• 6 months 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

absurdly well citing reddit comment on the provenance:

https://www.reddit.com/r/museum/comments/x6k3mm/comment/in89...

LegitShady2• 6 months 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.

speff3• 6 months 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.

MontyCarloHall4• 6 months ago

Anyone can do this level of work - they just need to actually learn it.

Sorry, that's like saying with enough math practice, any kid could perform at the level of young Terry Tao (e.g. teaching himself calculus at 8, winning a gold medal at the International Math Olympiad at 12). Some people are just intrinsically talented at certain things, and no amount of hard work in people lacking those intrinsic talents will get them to that level. This is indisputable when it comes to athletic talent; everyone would agree that no matter how much an average tall person practices basketball, they will never play at the level of Michael Jordan, LeBron James, or even the lowest ranked NBA player [0], for that matter. Artistic and intellectual talent is no different.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1oxpng5/til_...

frikskit• 6 months ago

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

pstuart2• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.

Lerc• 6 months ago

I don't think such genius is inhibited so much by distraction as it is by lack of support.

Either that or genius has coincidentally clustered around where the resources have been.

The world could be so much more vibrant if everyone was supported and nurtured.

In such a world, many might find much less need to distract themselves with trivialities.

zppln• 6 months 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• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

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

Movies, video games, music.

lotsofpulp2• 6 months ago

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

adrianN• 6 months 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

somenameforme• 6 months ago

Rather ironic when you consider that Michelangelo, along with many of his contemporaries of the era, are precisely where the term 'Renaissance man' comes from.

elevation• 6 months ago

While working under a master isn't available to everyone, some schools are trying to give students more apprentice type experience.

I met a high school shop teacher who has his class buy, renovate, and sell a house each year. Students plan, use real tools, meet with building inspectors. It's a very real world experience and makes an indelible mark on a nearby neighborhood without committing everyone to a life in the trades.

The feedback I've heard about this class makes me wonder why more of the schooling experience isn't more like this.

postalrat• 6 months ago

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

boelboel• 6 months ago

I'm not educated in painting but will just assume it's similar to music and someone like Mozart. I genuinely believe you wouldn't get as many as you'd imagine. There were few people making music at that time and only a small portion of the population ever had the chance to listen to it (.5-1% around 1750, 5-10% around 1850). We didn't get 10x the number of Mozarts. We got some people who were as talented as him for sure and pushed boundaries and some got famous for it We also got many talented people who wrote very great music which doesn't get played at all anymore, many of those didn't push the boundaries.

Even with people like Beethoven who're seen as disruptors and wildly popular by general audiences there were talented disruptors at the time who actually did things he's 'known' for and they don't get played at all. Bach himself had largely fallen into obscurity for +-100 years. There's probably only so many Michelangelos or Mozarts people can be taught about in middle school, high school, university.... I believe it's more about the institutions that basically allowed someone like mozart or michelangelo some kinda 'patronage oligopoly', something which barely exists these days. Free market didn't really exist here well into the 1800s, even then you still had gatekeepers. In the end history picked a few winners very loosely related to their 'musical worth'.

mamonster• 6 months ago

The same as any other century. The whole point of Michelangelo is that he went beyond the limits of his time. To be the Michelangelo of today you need to go beyond the limits/tastes of today, not of Michelangelo's time. And the Michelangelo of today would not be identifiable in any way with Michelangelo given where modern art ended up in terms of style.

It's like that quote about it taking Picasso 4 years to learn to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to learn how to paint like a child.

Or think of it this way: Your average math PhD today is way better at math than Galois, Bernoulli, Gauss, etc. But they are nowhere near them because the field moved into a different stratosphere entirely.

BeetleB• 6 months ago

Do we want more Michelangelos?

stinkbeetle2• 6 months ago

Not many at all. In the past 100 years there have been a staggering number of people alive, vastly more than in the 13th century. Comparatively very few of them had electronic distraction devices. Adding some small faction additional people-without-electronics-hours won't move the needle.

agumonkey2• 6 months ago

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

soupfordummies• 6 months ago

Yeah… was not really expecting that!

GuB-42• 6 months 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.

owlninja2• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

The Caravaggio was incredible too.

owlninja2• 6 months ago

Yes it was! Truly amazing.

chicagojoe• 6 months ago

The Torlonia collection was recently in Chicago and had some truly stunning pieces. The Ostia relief was tucked away in a corner and I nearly missed it. The traveling exhibition is well worth seeing for anyone remotely interested in ancient history.

amarant• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

Fun fact ! Michelangelo hated doing the ceiling thing.

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

phyzix5761• 6 months 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• 6 months 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.

scandox• 6 months ago

St Anthony was alive in the high middle ages. So not a biblical figure. Much closer to the artists own time.

Edit: as below a more famous and earlier St Anthony was indeed much closer to the time of the gospels

smithkl42• 6 months ago

There were two St. Anthony's. The one in this painting is the first St. Anthony. He was celebrated by Athanasius in a widely read biography and was famous for fighting off demons in the Egyptian desert. He lived from ~251-356 AD. (But yes, a post-Biblical figure.)

LegitShady2• 6 months ago

This painting is a masterstudy of Schongauer's engraving "Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons". If you look closely you can see how its a study but not a 1:1 copy, but aside from some color and light all of this "style" was michaelangelo copying Schongauer as he learned.

ojciecczas• 6 months 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.

tummler• 6 months ago

If my 12-year-old painted that, I would call a priest for an exorcism.

hackitup7• 6 months ago

Seriously. Both because of the talent but also because wtf Mikey don't you want to draw a knight in shining armor or a cow or something.

lo_zamoyski2• 6 months ago

I'm willing to bet this was assigned to him as part of his training or something, but I don't know that.

On the subject of the content, in actual seriousness, this was a pre-modern, pre-secularized age before the traditionally religious was privatized and viewed as some kind of optional quirky fantasy for adults, subject to taste, one as good as the other. So, moral instruction would have been more overt and crisp, and the subject matter prominent in public. The challenges and difficulties of the moral life would have been taught and spoken of more openly.

I know the OP is joking, but this would be no cause for alarm, as the image is noble in its content. It depicts St. Anthony's triumph over the demonic. It does not glorify the demonic or debase the good.

In this context, Man's fallen state predisposes him toward sin. He is tempted to do things he should not and knows he should not. Add to that the malice and opportunism of the fallen angels - the demons - who, while on a short divine leash, nonetheless can exploit the weaknesses and evil in men to lead them toward their doom. The image would then be received as quite inspiring, perhaps helping to inspire and concentrate the viewer's own efforts to resist temptation, combat evil, and to progress on his own journey of conquering the self.

nwatson• 6 months ago

His painting is based on a prior work, an engraving by Martin Schongauer ... "The Temptation of St Anthony" ... see here https://www.wikiart.org/en/martin-schongauer/the-temptation-... ...

So he was re-rendering a religious folk story.

herbertl• 6 months ago

It's mentioned in the article that this is a (really good!) painted version of The Torment of Saint Anthony, an engraving by Martin Schongauer.

Michelangelo would go on to find his first patron, a Cardinal named Raffaele Riario, by forging a sculpture and artificially aging it (which, back then, was a conventional practice to demonstrate expertise and skill: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-a-forged-sculpture...)

Dishonesty aside, both stories are reminders that there's a power to doing stuff with your own two hands (not genning it), as well as not to let today's emphasis on originality take away from using imitation/transcription to practice your craft: https://herbertlui.net/in-defense-of-copycats/

mythical_39• 6 months ago

Wonder if we replace the demons with the various things which today try to capture our attention?

Or the massive chemical swings we self-induce, and how those might tear at (or help??) our soul?

lo_zamoyski2• 6 months ago

The first presupposition behind this painting is that Man is fallen. That means we have a predisposition to sin, that is to say, to voluntarily choose to do what we should not - in short, sin is an abuse of free will, which can only be licitly used to choose the good. A person might feel the temptation to do something he should not. We are enticed. It seems to promise happiness. "I could have X, if I only did this evil thing Y." Do we give in? Do we indulge? When we do, we have sinned. We have lost the spiritual battle. Ultimately, the smoke evaporates, the mirrors crumble, and we are left with empty hands and the damage done, above all to ourselves.

Then, there is the fallenness of some angels, the demons, immaterial beings of various species of superior intellect and power who - while on a short leash - are still able to act on fallen men in malicious ways to lead them toward self-destruction. This "short leash" should be expanded. If God did not constrain the power of the demons, it is anyone's guess the devastation of the universe they could wreak. But since God is master of all creation, even the demons are pressed into the service of the good, but instrumentally. Even evil is made to further the divine plan. Thus, God permits the demonic assaults on St. Anthony as a kind of spiritual training for him, part of which involves developing a greater surrender of self to God.

Now, someone who doesn't believe in demons won't find demonic activity and role in human sin compelling. I suspect that is the motivation behind your question. Someone who doesn't can at least recognize the struggle with various temptations and the struggle of the moral life. In that sense, if these are the sorts of things you struggle with, then you may find the image you have in mind helpful. But, of course, to know how one should act and choose, one should also know where one is going. St. Anthony knew his destination, and this destination is not arbitrary. That's what he suffered for and a large part of the reason how he came to know how to move in that direction and why he was able to bear it all.

Nifty3929• 6 months ago

If you just want to see the painting without all the ads: https://cdn8.openculture.com/2026/01/14225354/1920px-Michela...

2b3a51• 6 months ago

Also on Wikimedia at various resolutions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Michelangelo_Buonarroti_-...

I've cropped that little blue sailing ship at the bottom of the canvas to make a wallpaper.

ASalazarMX• 6 months ago

Jesus Christ, you can see he was going to be an unusual artist by the way he focused on that gaping demon butthole.

Edit: the butthole is in the original engraving his painting is based on, so not his own vision, fortunately I guess.

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

CGMthrowaway• 6 months ago

That's just typical 12 year old stuff

palmotea• 6 months ago

Jesus Christ, you can see he was going to be an unusual artist by the way he focused on that gaping demon butthole.

You know, that might actually be the demons mouth. There are eyes and whiskers and stuff next to it.

And if that's the case, it would mean the demon's butthole has teeth.

aruametello• 6 months ago

... gaping demon butthole

for someone bad at naming things that gives me an idea! a software named gdb ?

xerox13ster• 6 months ago

Every single one of those demons is also a chimera and so if you look, there’s a half elephant, half fish in the top left corner. If you look in the top right, there’s like a half fish half horse. So if you look at the gaping demon butthole again, and look at the rest of the features around the gaping opening. You’ll realize that it is the lower half of the creature and it is a sea creature you can see there’s like a coral tentacles thing behind it. It’s just a fish‘s mouth. That does also happen to function as the demon‘s butthole, apparently

Jerry2• 6 months ago

This is just a summary of the the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Torment_of_Saint_Anthony

Fh_• 6 months ago

Must be his earliest work we know, not the first painting he did, because this is too good.

ninalanyon• 6 months ago

Too right! There must have been dozens of works before that one.

luxuryballs• 6 months ago

yeah it’s more like the earliest one that was worth preserving or considering “a finished piece” however that worked back then, the first shippable code

racl101• 6 months ago

That picture was always freaky to me as a kid.

iambateman• 6 months ago

I’m enjoying the thought of seeing this in the state fair art gallery next to the other seventh grade art.

It’s wild that someone could be that good that young.

apetrovic• 6 months ago

I don't want to compare anyone to Michelangelo, but the opening sentence of the aticle is more than flawed. My daughter got some painting classes in that age, and I saw work of some gifted kids. A bit better than "directionless doodles, chaotic comics, and a few unsteady-at-best school projects".

smokel2• 6 months ago

I don't trust this for one bit. For the owners there is quite the incentive to label this as the work of a genius. But in reality, this is just pretty complex for a 12 year-old to produce by yourself.

Edit: as others have pointed out, and if I were to actually read the article carefully before commenting, the composition is not attributed to Michelangelo. So it is just a copy. Quite the achievement, but possible for a twelve-year old.

I once confronted a gallery owner who was proudly presenting a newly discovered work by Mondriaan [1]. An original black and white photo in an old newspaper [2] was shown as proof of authenticity. But many details such as the creases in fabric differ in the original and the new painting. No OpenCV required to see that. Mind you, the picture is already framed with Mondriaan standing next to it. Unlikely that he's still working on it.

Instead of responding, the gallery owner simply turned away.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Cavalini...

[2] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/03/02/nieuwe-werken-mondri...

sltkr• 6 months ago

I don't have an opinion on whether the attribution is correct, but I don't think the complexity of the composition is a strong argument against it considering the artist was copying the engraving by Schongauer exactly (maybe even painting on top of it?) which takes a lot of the complexity out of it.

abdulhaq• 6 months ago

You might be right but the gallery owner has probably learnt that disputing the authenticity of his pieces with walk in punters rarely leads to a fruitful discussion

prox2• 6 months ago

Just to engage with your “12 year old to produce by yourself” , here are some examples of art made by Picasso in his early teens to mid teens.

It’s absolutely possible to be that good. Especially in the middle ages / early renaissance with the work you did for guilds and working for masters as an apprentice.

At eleven years old: https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/work-3939.php

At fourteen at his sisters wedding: https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/work-9.php

At fifteen https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/work-11.php

nextaccountic2• 6 months ago

It’s absolutely possible to be that good.

Sure, but not if this is your first painting. Humans can't one-shot art like this

vilhelm_s• 6 months ago

But he had not been an apprentice before making this, he started the apprenticeship that year, and this is supposed to be the first thing he ever painted.

Michelangelo's biographers—Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) and Ascanio Condivi (1525–1574)—tell us that, aside from some drawings, his first work was a painted copy after a well-known engraving by Martin Schongauer (1448–1491) showing Saint Anthony tormented by demons. Made about 1487–88 under the guidance of his friend and fellow pupil Francesco Granacci, Michelangelo's painting was much admired; it was even said to have incited Ghirlandaio's envy. [https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2009/michelan...]

quotemstr4• 6 months ago

More broadly, we're doing people a disservice today by treating them as juveniles until they graduate college. When someone's that good, we shouldn't waste four years of his life in school he doesn't need, but instead let him be productive immediately out of college.

Christ a-fucking mighty, in some states, the law says that Michelangelo, had he been alive today,would have had to sit on a booster seat at the age at which he made this painting. Absurd.

One of my more heretical beliefs is that tech companies should do more hiring of high brilliant people right out of high school.

vitro• 6 months ago

True, no phones, no distractions, I can see someone who finds their passion early on to get this good.

mbivert2• 6 months ago

Agreeing with the main point; on a tangential note:

At eleven years old: https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/work-3939.php

This one is a copy (Bargue plate − a famous set of plates designed to train students efficiently). And to be fair, it's not _that_ great of a copy.

The paintings really aren't impressive either: compare them to student works from e.g. the Angel Academy[0] (yes, they are older than 15). Incidentally, they also use Bargue plates a little to train students, and are far, far more demanding with themselves than Picasso in terms of accuracy and cleanliness.

Picasso wasn't terrible − he's definitely better than a non-painter − but he's genuinely far from having ever reached the level of his peers.

It's like comparing a food truck with historical French cooks.

[0] https://angelacademyofart.com/student-works/

TheOtherHobbes• 6 months ago

Klimt did the first three when he was 17. There are even earlier works which are not much less sophisticated.

http://art-klimt.com/early_works.html

Some people are just prodigies - very, very few, but it's a real phenomenon. Even with early craft training, which people don't get today, exceptional talent still cuts through.

This is why the common "There's no such thing as talent, it's just hard work" line can't possibly be true. It's soothing to believe that you too could be a genius if only you put the hours in, but it just doesn't work like that.

Ability is set by a talent ceiling, which is on a bell curve. "Most people don't reach their ceiling" and "There are extreme outliers of native ability" can both be true at the same time.

hahahahhaah• 6 months ago

Wow. A great service to us as these are almost a "photo" into that world.

NonHyloMorph• 6 months ago

The part with being an apprentice in a masters workshop is of great importance in regard to that time imho. Neuroplasticity at that age is insane and if you spent all your time on just that, especially if predisposed to a certain way of processing visuals and image, that is a totally different circumstance then a 12 to 13 year old that is also capable of writing, maths, history, different languages, and all the other things we do in the way generalised education at that age is laid out in our modern world.

pizzathyme• 6 months ago

It seems unbelievable that this is the first time the child ever picked up a paintbrush and applied paint to a surface.

It's probably more like: this is the first "published" final painting he ever did, after doing hundreds of other practice paintings/sketches that don't "count"

Thorrez• 6 months ago

Is there a consensus among art historians about whether it's a work by Mondriaan or not? Christies seems to say it is: https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6435483

officehero3• 6 months ago

I'm surprised at how few parents understand what it takes to create a great artist. You need to start when they're 5 (or preferably younger), put them in a workshop with great artists/pedagogues etc. (costly!) where they work full time (forget school), evaluate potential and there is a tiny chance they themselves will become great. Annoyed by parents talking about their 5 year olds as "too young" or when they recommend their teenager to 'pursue their dream' when they don't provide a fraction of above. It's still possible but odds go down dramatically.

roadside_picnic2• 6 months ago

Many of the comments here are expressing disbelief that this could have been created by a 12 year old, but people fail to recognize that, not only did Michelangelo have tremendous natural talent, but grow up in a world where, as a child, he was allowed to spend enormous amounts of his time and energy studying with professional artists.

He wasn't being dropped off a school at 7am, squirming in a chair until 3pm, playing video games before dinner and then doing homework until bed all while squeezing in a bit of time for sketching.

The vast majority of people probably benefit more from our current structure, but it does make it much less likely to have "genius" of the type we see in Michelangelo, Mozart, etc.

watwut4• 6 months ago

at the age of 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio. The next year, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay Michelangelo as an artist, which was rare for someone that young

He was literally getting education in art. It is not like there was no structure.

watwut4• 6 months ago

Contrapoint is that you do not need to pressure kid ever since they are 5 for them to be good artist as adults.

And the second point ... why should parents to do that with their random kid before that kid even shown interest? It is not like art represented some kind of career or lifetime security or even happiness in life.

wellthisisgreat• 6 months ago

Can you recommend any reading for that methodology ? Sounds intuitively correct, but would love to get more context

officehero3• 6 months ago

Don't have a book but here's some quick thoughts: 1. Biographies on, e.g., Chinese pianist Lang Lang. When he was ~9 he 'retired' (it's an extreme case but telling, can recommend). 2. If you want formal/mathematical/CS perspective, study Reinforcement Learning (e.g. Rick Sutton).

lazyasciiart3• 6 months ago

This sounds like a strongly held opinion with no evidence.

officehero3• 6 months ago

Burden of proof is on the other party. In one sentence the opinion can be summarized as "if you want increased probability of child becoming a great artist you need great commitment." That's a null hypothesis.

jihadjihad• 6 months ago

The interesting thing in Michelangelo's case is that he viewed himself primarily as a sculptor. He was more or less forced against his will to paint the Sistine Chapel. And yet he was a master of the medium.

doctorhandshake• 6 months ago

This visually resembles Falling Bough by Walton Ford

https://www.kasmingallery.com/artworks/4717-walton-ford-fall...

throwpoaster• 6 months ago

Press X to Doubt.

BiraIgnacio• 6 months ago

ada1981• 6 months ago

This is my all time favorite motif!

St. Anthony is a fascinating figure. Father of wilderness monasticism, left Egypt to hear god, spent the night in a cave fighting the devil and won; the patron saint of psychedelics or at least Ergotism, the affliction of entire towns when the grain was infected with ergot fungus, which would later by synthesized into LSD.

I am actually in the process of curating a museum quality coffee table book in collaboration with Getty of at least 117 of the variations on this theme from Dali to Bosch to Michelangelo.

(1/17 is St. Anthony's day, and my birthday, and my name is Anthony - coincidentally).

Shoot me an email if you'd like to collaborate or would like an update when the project officially launches! a+st@175g.com

taco_emoji• 6 months ago

that's metal as hell

owenversteeg• 6 months ago

Comments here are interesting. Of course it’s a copy, he was 12. For pretty much of all of human history, to make art you would first consume large amounts of it to develop taste and then make many copies to develop skill and style. The average modern-day artist (writer, painter, poet, etc) does this far less than ever before, to the point where we have forgotten that’s how learning works.

turbonaut• 6 months ago

A certain type of modern day artist voraciously consumes art in order to develop its taste, skill and style. More so than ever in history.

The names of these artists are less traditional, however, eg Nano Banana.

bigbuppo• 6 months ago

I would say they still do this... it's just called "fan art" now.

sebmellen• 6 months ago

I've seen this painting a couple of times a week for the past few years, since I live within walking distance of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, where it's held. It's super tiny in person, but it's very cool to see it.

“Fort Worth” probably doesn't conjure to mind a very lively art scene, but in the museum district here we have the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum, the Kimbell Art Museum, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, all within walking distance of each other. Each one is worth a visit.

OhMeadhbh• 6 months ago

Ft Worth hits above it's weight WRT high art. The Kimbell, the Modern, the Amon Carter... all world class. (And if you're an architecture nut, the main Kimbell building was designed by Louis I. Kahn and is a delight to wander around in.) The local symphony is better than you would expect, given the city's size.

I have too many memories of dead friends and family to want to live in Fort Worth, but if you get a job offer in Tarrant County, it's not just pickup-trucks, guns and C&W clones trying to be extras on Landman. (And pickup-trucks and C&W clones aren't as bad as you might think. And I lived there for decades and was, surprisingly, shot when visiting a different city.)

nephihaha• 6 months ago

Teenagers still love drawing demons and monsters so I suppose it fits!

debbiedowner• 6 months ago

Checkout the movie "The Lost Leonardo" for a glimpse into the weird world of art attribution. tl;dw is that there are big financial incentives to attributing one way or another.

leiaru13• 6 months ago

Interesting if true. This painting seems like it's largely in the style of Northern Renaissance painters and has been considered to be the work of Martin Schongauer. Allegedly, he was initially trained as an engraver and made 100+ prints, so it is possible that the painting got misattributed due to the original print: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Sc...

Michelangelo's first painting, created when he was 12 or 13

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