Two lost bronzes by Michelangelo found

03 February 2015 - 02:20 By ©The Daily Telegraph
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Victoria Avery of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, said the project to attribute the bronzes, involving a team of experts from different fields, had been like a Renaissance whodunnit.
Victoria Avery of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, said the project to attribute the bronzes, involving a team of experts from different fields, had been like a Renaissance whodunnit.
Image: Chris Radburn/AP

Two "lost" statues have been identified as original Michelangelo sculptures - and possibly the only surviving bronzes by the master, experts have claimed.

The pair, which show naked young men riding panthers, are described as "phenomenally important" and, if truly by the Renaissance master, would solve one of the great mysteries in art history.

They have been attributed to Michelangelo following a clue in a little-known 500-year-old drawing, which made the link between the bronze figures and an incomplete sketch from the days of the artist's workshop. They could now become the only surviving bronzes attributed to Michelangelo, as experts at the University of Cambridge and the city's Fitzwilliam Museum today publicly declare their find.

The statues, which have been well known as the Rothschild bronzes for years, will go on display at the museum, along with published evidence that the authors claim proves their origins.

Critics, experts and members of the public will now be invited to share their own views on the strength of the claims, before a conference later this year aims to reach a consensus about the creator.

Michelangelo is already known to have made at least two bronze statues - a 2.75m figure of Pope Julius II and a version of David, but both were destroyed. Art critic and author of Michelangelo: His Epic Life Martin Gayford said the bronze statues presented one of the "most intriguing possibilities in art history".

The bronze nudes were once attributed to Michelangelo in the 19th century, before the claim was dismissed at a Paris exhibition in 1878. Since then, they were held in private collections for years before going on display at the Royal Academy in 2012.

Then Prof Paul Joannides, emeritus professor of art history at Cambridge University, spotted that their shape matched a small sketch in a drawing by one of Michelangelo's apprentices, held in the Musée Fabre, in Montpellier, France.

Prof Peter Abrahams, a clinical anatomist who examined the statues, noted the figures' anatomy was so "perfect" as to suggest only Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci could have made them.

Dr Victoria Avery, of the Fitzwilliam Museum, said art historians, conservation scientists and anatomists from all over the world were being consulted to verify the discovery.

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