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FORT WORTH — In a city full of irreplaceable art treasures, the Kimbell Art Museum has just hung the biggest yet on its signature concrete and travertine walls.
It’s a painting by Michelangelo, an artist so towering and idolized that, like Shakespeare and Mozart, time does not diminish his name recognition.
"We have the only Michelangelo painting in the Western Hemisphere," Kimbell Director Eric M. Lee said. "There are only four known easel paintings that he created. That’s as rare as you can get. A Leonardo [da Vinci] painting would not be as rare."
The piece — an 18-by-13-inch oil painting, The Torment of Saint Anthony, believed to have been Michelangelo’s first— goes on display for the general public today, and the timing couldn’t be better.
Today is the fourth annual Day in the District, an all-day celebration in the Cultural District featuring free museum admission, dance and theater performances, and musical groups.
Virtually everyone in the Fort Worth arts scene is giddy that the Kimbell has acquired a Michelangelo for its legendary permanent collection.
Michelangelo Buonarroti — the Italian sculptor, painter and architect who created David, painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and helped design St. Peter’s Basilica — had been dead for 285 years before Maj. Ripley Arnold set up camp on the Trinity River and named the outpost Fort Worth.
"It gets people interested in art, and it further solidifies Fort Worth’s reputation as an arts destination," said Dustin Van Orne, a spokesman for the Modern Art Museum.
In the spring, on his second day at the Kimbell, Lee, who arrived from an art museum in Cincinnati, found out about the availability of the Michelangelo.
It had been bought in 2008 at a Sotheby’s auction in London, minus the direct Michelangelo credit, and taken to be cleaned at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Experts there examined and researched it and determined that Michelangelo painted it when he was 12 or 13.
The Kimbell bought the painting in May and left it at the Met to be restored and then exhibited for several weeks. Lee said there were lines out the door on some days.
To say he was floored by the opportunity is a mammoth understatement. "I never would have thought you could have acquired a Michelangelo, ever," Lee said. "Seven months ago, I would have laughed at the idea."
Michelangelo, even at such a tender age, was raising the game of Renaissance artists. Art conservators who have spent months looking at the painting under a microscope and infrared are awed by his attention to detail.
"It’s staggering the way his obsession and perfection shows up under magnification," said Claire Barry, the Kimbell’s chief conservator. "It gives us insight into what he thought was important, even at such an early age."
Lee won’t say where the Michelangelo ranks among the museum’s works by, say, Cezanne, Caravaggio and Matisse.
"It’s like picking a favorite child," he said. "It is certainly one of the stars of the collection. I think you could say it will be the most famous in the collection."
By CHRIS VAUGHN |
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