Nude Bronze Statues May Be Long-Lost Works By Michelangelo
Two bronze sculptures from the Renaissance may actually be the work of legendary Italian artist Michelangelo, a team of researchers claim. If they're right, the works would be the only surviving bronzes by the artist.
More recently they were thought to have been the work of Willem Danielsz Van Tetrode, a Dutch artist who worked in Florence in the mid-16th century.
The discovery came about last fall when Cambridge University art historian Paul Joannides connected the Bronzes to a tiny detail in a 16th-century drawing by a disciple of Michelangelo that resides in the held in the Musee Fabre in Montpellier, France.
From the BBC:
One of Michelangelo's apprentices had copied various slightly earlier lost sketches by his master and in the corner of one was a drawing of a muscular youth riding a panther.
Its pose is very similar to that of one of the bronzes and is drawn with the same style used by Michelangelo in his designs for sculpture.
The bronzes were compared with other works by Michelangelo and found to be very similar in style and anatomy to his works of 1500-1510. The date was confirmed by the preliminary conclusions of initial scientific analysis.
Researchers were able to x-ray the works and determine they were thick-walled and heavy—an indication they dated to the late 15th or early 16th Century. It's believed the master worked on them just after he completed David, and as he was about to start wok on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
“You have to be pretty brave to even contemplate that they could be work by an artist of the magnificence and fame and importance of Michelangelo," says Victoria Avery of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, where the pieces are on view. "We decided to be rather cautious, to be very careful and methodical … nobody wants to be shot down and to look like an idiot.”
The noble married a few years after they met, but Michelangelo remained devoted and dedicated numerous poems and drawings to him.
And the artist's passion for men clearly informed his work: "Michelangelo brought a supremely masculine passion to his sculpture to animate the stone with orgasmic thunder and lightning," wrote queer historian Rictor Norton. "He was a heroic masculinist in all things."
The Rothschild Bronzes are no different: Though one is older and bearded, and the other younger and more supple, both sport chiseled physiques and six packs. “Whoever made them clearly had a profound interest in the male body," says Avery. "The anatomy is perfect.”
