Michelangelo's first painting, created when he was 12 or 13
openculture.com
openculture.com
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...
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
Sure, but not if this is your first painting. Humans can't one-shot art like this
As a comparison, Mozart's compositions when he was 15 years old was unbelievable, unless you put in context he was already composing music at 5 years old
> 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...]
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.
Or perhaps we need more challenging schools. I'd hate to harvest before cultivation has a chance to grow without the constraints of organizational biases
- Marquis de Lafayette was only 19 when he helped the US win independence.
- Alexander began conquering when he was 20, smashed Persia at 25, and "wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer" at 30.
- Pascal and Galois did revolutionary math before 20.
- Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein at 18!
We need more rigorous secondary education and a pathway that lets people with rocket-ship trajectories skip useless tertiary education. I am sick and tired coddling mediocre people by pretending geniuses don't exist. If I ran things, I'd set up magnet schools nation-wide.
People can and do create rigorous private schools, but they're not accessible to the masses and often embody the same anti-talent mentality public ones do.
On the other hand: a disagreement about the actual definition of gifted, based on the existence of thousands of such schools in the US alone. "Gifted" in some jurisdictions simply means something anodyne like "top 10%" which obviously doesn't get close to creating an actually targeted school environment for your Mozarts.
I think that we do NOT want to promote this. We need less of that, not more in fact. In fact, we need to keep people like that far away from power.
I have more. Most average people need less education. No point in putting them through 15+ years of 'education'. They can start working at least part time by the time they are 12 or so. This way they also grow up psychologically very soon.
So with AI we can expect such artistic development to effectively cease, or to be almost always channeled through the averageness-finding-machines.
> 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://www.artrenewal.org/14thARCSalon/Category/DaVinciInit...
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.
- Some use extreme outliers to justify their own failure to get close to their ceiling. "I can't be Einstein, why should I try?"
- Some (parents, coaches, motivational speakers) also use extreme outliers to claim there are no limits/ceilings for others. "If you can dream it you can do it!" (but somehow it doesn't seem to apply to them)
please stop killing my delusions.
Gave me the greatest impulse to explore my creative drive like nothing else before, after spending my 20s lost in a daze. I know you’re joking, but if you aren’t, do not lose hope yet.
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"
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.
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_(...
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.
for someone bad at naming things that gives me an idea! a software named gdb ?
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 =)
https://www.dutchfinepaintings.com/michelangelos-sistine-cha...
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.
Edit: as below a more famous and earlier St Anthony was indeed much closer to the time of the gospels
It is frustrating that the article is so coy about the evidence around the premise of the article! But, this website and the youtube video this article is based around both lean more towards pop than investigative.
I could believe even quite a bit younger, there are some wildly talented children and it's easy to believe Michaelangelo to have been one.
Why? There were other talented people who produced masterful works at an early age. From the same time as this there's a Dürer self-portrait, also aged 12-13:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Portrait_at_the_Age_of_13
> We don't have any really reliable records from that time.
Uh, no. There's no documented attribution of that painting to Michelangelo; that doesn't mean that other things weren't reliably recorded.
Source: know how to draw really well.
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2009/michelan...
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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.
All of that misses the forest for the trees, which is he did it at an incredibly young age!
[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.
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.
HN specifically selects for a population that leans towards a belief that hard work creates results, and yet even here you can find this nonsensical ideology of genetic paintbrush skill as a mainstream part of the discourse. It is 10x worse in the average population, and this garbage, factually incorrect framing of "first painting" rather than "earliest known published" for something that Michalangelo had spent years of his childhood practicing for contributes to that misunderstanding of the world. Rather than making misleading claims and leaving the reader to "assume the obvious", why not just correctly state the obvious in the first place?
As far as I can tell, nobody in this case is claiming that it is or even might be the first, except the headline, which makes the headline misleading.
Still impressive of course, but remember that it's not straightforward to compare how things are today with other time periods.
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/
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
“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.
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.)
The names of these artists are less traditional, however, eg Nano Banana.
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.
So he was re-rendering a religious folk story.
Or the massive chemical swings we self-induce, and how those might tear at (or help??) our soul?
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.
https://www.kasmingallery.com/artworks/4717-walton-ford-fall...
It’s wild that someone could be that good that young.
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...
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temptation_of_St_Anthony_(...
"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?
The remarkable thing about the early painting/symphonies isn't the absolute quality of the work, it's that they showcase the artists' intrinsic baseline talents, which they would then leverage as their skills improved with maturity to become some of the greatest artists of all time.
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
There have always been wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing stories about The Devil too, it’s just a separate category.
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.
We've collectively arrived at point where we could have a post-scarcity society where the arts could be a driving force for so many of us. It's painful to see these possibilities and know that they are out of reach because of the sociopaths who have power over us.
Movies, video games, music.
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.
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'.
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.
Articles like this contribute towards the gatekeeping feeling people get about the arts in my opinion.
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_...
That is, the exact same thing he did when he was 12, which is a master study. He didn't create the design - he copied a previous work and added color to find out what Schongauer's thought process was when making the original piece.
Also please stop implying I said any 12 year old can do this. I didn't. Once again, I said anyone who puts in the time can do what 12-year old Michelangelo did.
I've done ≥weekly life drawing classes for 20+ years, and have observed the distribution of progress people make over time. Based on my observations and conversations with my teachers, I agree with you that a nontrivial fraction of adults starting with zero artistic ability can be trained to an advanced degree. But I disagree that this holds true for "anyone"; a larger fraction cannot be trained beyond a basic level.
>Also please stop implying I said any 12 year old can do this. I didn't.
You literally said: "It's impressive that he did it at 12, but 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." To me, that heavily implies any 12 year old with sufficient training is encompassed by that "anyone."
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.
He was literally getting education in art. It is not like there was no structure.
> As a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to the city of Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. Michelangelo showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters. [0]
You can search other sources and you'll find the same: prior to apprenticeship he was not formally enrolled in any form of art education.
He WAS in schooling and parents sent him to that city literally for education. And then he got into apprenticeship for a vocation that was well paid and supported back then.
He was very much dropped to school and squirmed there to the forced extend. And very much, boys of his age could slack on school work in variety of ways - they did not played videogames, but they did played games in little gangs of theirs, hanging around and generally wasting time to the extend adults allowed it.
Boys and girls who draw well, have talents and spend some freetime doing that exist. They usually learn from youtube (today equivalent of him meddling with artists). They may be put into extracurricular classes, but no one sane will put them into apprenticeship for art - because art is unlikely to feed you.
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.