Michelangelo painted this at twelve, copying Martin Schongauer’s engraving of Saint Anthony assailed by demons — his earliest known work, made around 1487 in Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Florence workshop. He tightened Schongauer’s composition and swapped Egypt for the Arno Valley landscape he actually knew; Vasari says he studied fish scales at the market to render the demons’ skin. Tempera on a panel just 18½ by 13¾ inches, it’s one of only four easel paintings attributed to Michelangelo, and the only one in the Americas.
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