One of the things that you’re taught when you decide to
start a blog is that you need to have thematic days. Something for every day of
the week. I have never been good at that. This week I’m changing things up.
Mondays will forever be known (until I give up or run out of art!) as Museum Mondays. Most museums aren’t open on Mondays, but it’s the perfect day to write about them, mostly because of the alliterativeness of it! What I’ll be doing on Museum Mondays is featuring a work of art I decided to take a picture of and give you, the reader, my thoughts on this art. Sometimes these thoughts will be serious, but mostly they will be fun and a bit silly.
Here goes…
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| The Torment of Saint Anthony, 1487- Michelangelo |
Last Friday I was attending Global Gallery Night, where high
school students teach about a particular art piece within the museum, held
annually at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. One of my favorite works of
art there is The Torment of Saint Anthony
(1487) by Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Yes, that Michelangelo. We have one in Fort Worth!
Anyway…this painting is one of the earliest works by
Michelangelo, painted when he was just a young teen. You can tell. The demons are
fantastical. Their faces are comical. They have oversized organs (I mean, not
to get gross, but the anus of that red demon on the bottom right is somewhat ridiculously
large). Saint Anthony, though, looks like you would expect a Saint to look in a Renaissance
painting. Then add the boy factor, and you have what could, according
to a friend of mine when we were looking at the painting Friday, be an overlaid work of art with demons added by a modern artist.
If you ever get the chance to see this painting in person,
either at The Kimbell, or at another museum when it is out touring the world,
just remember…A thirteen-year-old boy painted this painting, which is pretty
amazing in itself.