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Texas museum acquires disputed Michelangelo

An oil and tempera painting on a wood panel is pictured in an image provided by the Kimbell Art Museum on Wednesday. The Fort Worth, Texas, museum bought the painting, titled The Torment of Saint Anthony, believed to be by Michelangelo. PHOTO: AP

A work of art believed to be Michelangelo’s first painting — completed when he was 12 or 13 years old — has been acquired by a museum in Texas in a move that leaves other big galleries standing.

The Kimbell Art Museum, based in Fort Worth, paid an undisclosed figure for The Torment of Saint Anthony. Though the provenance of the painting has long been disputed, expert opinion has shifted in recent months to the view that it is indeed the earliest known painting by the master. —

The work, oil and tempera on a poplar panel measuring 47cm x 34cm, is dated to 1487 or 1488. At that time, Michelangelo had befriended an assistant in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence and is known to have copied an engraving of St Anthony by German master Martin Schongauer.

The disagreement has focused on whether this painting was created by Michelangelo’s own hand or whether it was produced by other artists in the workshop. If confirmed as the missing Michelangelo, its acquisition by the Kimbell would be an astonishing coup for the museum.

It would make The Torment of St Anthony one of only four known easel paintings to have been created by Michelangelo. Two others are in the National Gallery in London and the fourth is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

It potentially provides clues as to how Michelangelo came to settle on the color palette he used in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.

“This is a painting that will be studied for years and years to come,” Kimbell director Eric Lee said.

The painting depicts a sour-faced, white-haired Saint Anthony being teased and tugged by monsters. It is based on the Schongauer engraving, but differs in ways that many experts now believe prove its provenance.

For instance, among the monsters are fish-like images. A contemporaneous early biographer of the master notes that Michelangelo visited a fishmarket while painting the Torment in order accurately to portray fish scales.

Further evidence that leans toward the Michelangelo interpretation was uncovered in the past year while the painting was restored at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Layers of dirt and grime were removed to reveal the original oils, while modern technologies, including infrared scans and X-rays, revealed the underlying pentimenti — the artist’s changes that were made as the work progressed.

The pentimenti convinced Lee and the Kimbell board that the painting could not have been a copy produced by the workshop but had to be the original article.

It was owned from 1905 until last summer by a British private collector. It was sold by Sotheby’s for US$2 million — a breathtaking bargain if it is the Michelangelo — to a New York art dealer who was convinced of its authenticity.

The Metropolitan, having completed the restoration, was also convinced but unable to find the funds for the purchase price.
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