Return to Michelangelo's First Painting
Before treatment, the painting was distorted by the presence of a markedly discolored varnish and crude, darkened overpaint that had been generously applied in an earlier restoration campaign to disguise small paint losses.
The tail of the spiny, fishlike demon on the left side was originally drawn swinging out in a broad arc toward the edge of the panel—quite different from the depiction in Schongauer's engraving. In the final, painted version the tail is tucked in close to the head of a lower demon, condensing the swirling circular group and creating a wonderful counterpoint of positive and negative forms in the interplay of tail, ears, and horn.
The firebrand wielded by the same demon was first drawn as a wooden club corresponding almost exactly with the engraving, but at the painting stage its position was changed to a more vertical angle and its details were modified and embellished.
The underdrawing in the landscape is very different in character from the outlining seen in the figure group. In the rocky outcropping on the left, repetitive, densely placed, fine lines of free hatching define the principal masses.
The predominantly warm mixtures of earth tones used for the demons' bodies are contrasted with accents of fiery red, sulfurous yellow, and reptilian green. The color palette employed is derived from typical pigments of the period—a range of earth tones, red lake, vermillion, lead-tin yellow type I, azurite, malachite, copper sulfate, carbon-based black, and lead white—from which a marvelous array of color effects was created.
The panel exhibits an astonishing variety of paint application. Certain details are crusted with gritty pigment, and the medium was pushed to create original effects. Occasionally, this ambitious but inexperienced manipulation and layering of the paint caused drying defects.
Although they are faithful to Schongauer's print, the demons (see also the following two images) have an arresting veracity due to their conscious reference to animals, birds, reptiles, fish, and insects of the actual world. This layering technique is also evidence that the choice of color was not predetermined but rather evolved as the linear engraving was translated into colored form. It was an additive process, as the artist embellished the demons' bodies with pattern and texture to fashion ever more fantastic creations.
Along the back, the gesso ground is visible where the artist scraped away the paint to emphasize the contour. In contrast, the demon's scaled belly has a thick buildup of paint that creates a substantial amount of relief.
Crucially, the particular techniques of incising, scraping, and relief have all been cited as typical of Michelangelo the painter and have been used as evidence for his authorship of two paintings in the National Gallery, London: The Virgin and Child with Saint John and Angels ("The Manchester Madonna") and the Entombment. In both works, the obsessive desire to perfect contour cannot be overstated.