Art Museum Picks Up Michelangelo's First Painting

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
May 13th 2009 at 2:02PM

At 12 or 13 years old most of us were in basic art classes but Michelangelo was already making masterpieces. The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas has acquired the earliest known Michelangelo painting, "The Torment of Saint Anthony." The museum will be the only U.S. museum to have a Michelangelo painting on display.

The 15th-century oil and tempera painting on a wood panel is one of just four of these types of paintings because most of Michelangelo's paintings. The painting has been kept out of the limelight for years due to questions over its authenticity. It was in a private collection for years but last summer an art dealer bought it for nearly $2 million at a Sotheby's auction and then took it to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where experts in the Met's paintings conservation department cleaned it. When the painting was examined using X-rays and infrared technology, the Met's experts decided that it was done by Michelangelo and represented his earliest work. The painting will be displayed at the Kimbell starting this fall after a summer exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Tags: art, kimbell art museum, KimbellArtMuseum, maserpiece, michelangelo, museum