Michelangelo's First Painting
The Torment of Saint Anthony
The soul tries out a thousand cures, in vain;
Since I was taken from my early road,
Vainly it worries how it can return.— Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1522 (translated by Creighton Gilbert)
Michelangelo is universally acknowledged as the towering genius of the Renaissance. He might be known to us as a superlative sculptor but he was an equally influential painter. Michelangelo’s apprenticeship began under the guidance of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494), a leading master in Florence.
His biographers — Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists(1550) and Ascanio Condivi, Michelangelo’s former student, described that his first known painting was created when he was 12 or 13 years of age. Since adulthood, Michelangelo had a knack for arts and it became noticeable when he drew inspiration from a copy of the engraving Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons created by the 15th-century German master Martin Schongauer.
The Torment of Saint Anthony is known to be Michelangelo’s first painting and is well-preserved and acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. It became the first painting by Michelangelo to enter into the American collection.
