Gallery buys Michelangelo’s ‘first painting’

A painting thought to be the first work by Michelangelo, completed when he was just 12 or 13 years old, has been snapped up by a gallery in Fort Worth, Texas. The Kimbell Art Museum purchased the 47cm x 34cm work from the New York art dealer Adam Williams, who bought it last year from an unnamed British collector who had owned it since 1905.
 
That collector must now be kicking him or herself; although it was always thought to be a Michelangelo there were considerable doubts about its provenance and Williams had to pay only £1.3m when he bought it at a Sotheby's auction. Now that the experts are agreed on its origins, it is thought to be worth at least £50m.
 
Neither Williams nor the Kimbell will reveal how much money changed hands. But it is known that the Kimbell received an endowment of $350m in February and, furthermore, that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it was on display and underwent tests, was apparently outbid in the race to purchase it.
 
There are just four stand-alone paintings by Michelangelo in existence. Two hang in London's National Gallery and the other is on display at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The work that's gone to Texas is called The Torment of Saint Anthony and pictures a white-haired saint being teased by demons. It is painted in oil and tempera on a poplar panel.
 
It is clearly a copy of an engraving by the 15th-century German artist Martin Schongauer. But there were arguments over whether the piece was by Michelangelo or another young artist at the studio where he was taught. A detailed study of the style and technique has now persuaded experts that it is by Michelangelo. "If you look at it from a qualitative point of view, it's manifestly Michelangelo," says Keith Christiansen of the Met.
 
The coup is not only good news for the Kimbell, but also its new director Eric McCauley Lee, who joined from the modest Taft gallery in Cincinnati earlier this year. He was seen as having scholarly credentials but lacking the spectacular acquisitions that the Kimbell is known for in America. That has now changed. ·