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Comment by amarant | Hacker News Reader

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 =)

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.)

Fun fact ! Michelangelo hated doing the ceiling thing.

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

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