Hacker News Reader

Comment by worldsavior | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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_(...

Thankyou

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?

If you're copying from another painting, you don't paint a figure and then decide to move it a centimeter to the left. But original paintings often have such changes.

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

Of course it's much better, Schongauer was ~25 when he did the engraving. Michelangelo was 12 when he copied it. Likewise, it goes without saying that Haydn's symphonies circa 1765 were much better than Mozart's from the same time, since Haydn was ~30 years old and Mozart was ~10 years old.

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.

You know this isn't the only thing Michelangelo painted, right?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com