About Famous Artists

The Manchester Madonna is an unfinished panel painting attributed to Michelangelo. There are only three known panel paintings which have survived and this one is dated c.1495-1497, Michelangelo’s first period in Rome. The painting depicts the child Jesus with his mother Mary meeting his cousin, Saint John the Baptist, on the family’s return from Egypt. Mary has one breast exposed as if she has just fed the child, a theme common in medieval paintings of the Virgin. Mary holds a book just out of the holy child’s grasp while two angels stand in the background reading from a scroll. Another pair of angels remain unfinished with just the green pigment …..

Following a sale in 2008 and a cleaning at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, scientific investigation has left many scholars now believing that the painting known as The Torment of St. Anthony, is the first known painting by the Italian master, Michelangelo.  The oil and tempera painting on a wood panel, which was created between 1487 and 1488, depicts Saint Anthony in midair being beaten and tormented by demons.  If Michelangelo is indeed the artist behind the painting he would have been a boy of only 12 or 13 years at the time he painted it.  The Torment of St. Anthony is one of only 4 easel, or free-standing, …..