None of Michelangelo's bronze sculptures were thought to have survived. Now one museum claims to have two
By F.N.
MICHELANGELO is arguably the world's best-known sculptor of marble. He also worked with bronze, yet none of his bronze sculptures are believed to have survived to the present day. Now, experts at the University of Cambridge and the Fitzwilliam Museum (also in Cambridge) are disputing that assumption. They have presented two sculptures of muscular male nudes as being the work of Michelangelo himself. The figures, one young and the other older, both ride on panthers and have raised arms.
If the attribution is endorsed by scholars round the world, the 500-year-old, one-metre-high bronzes would become this century's second-most spectacular Renaissance discovery after Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi". That representation of Christ, with one hand held up in blessing and the other grasping a translucent globe, was included in an exhibition at the National Gallery in London three years ago.
The scholar linking the bronzes to Michelangelo is Paul Joannides, a professor of art history at Cambridge. When he was recently approached by the bronzes' owner for an appraisal, Professor Joannides says, the sculptures reminded him of a drawing by one of the master's apprentices, which he had come across at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier (and which was not widely known or written about). That drawing faithfully reproduced an original Michelangelo sketch and showed a well-built youth on the back of a panther, in a pose that resembled the young bronze riders'. It was also executed in the vigorous style that Michelangelo used when designing for sculpture.
The professor saw other corroborating elements. The Albertina Museum in Vienna had a set of drawings of lions and panthers associated with Michelangelo; he and his circle were known to be interested in large felines in the first decade of the 16th century. The professor concluded that the sculptures were made by Michelangelo as he was just beginning to paint the Sistine Chapel.
"Michelangelo is a dangerous attribution to make," explains Professor Joannides. "Every year or two, somebody comes up with a new painting or sculpture attributed to Michelangelo, and 99.99% of the time, they're fantasy attributions."
What makes him confident of his own? The bronzes are very much in Michelangelo’s style of the first decade of the 16th century, and reflect a knowledge of anatomy that only he and Leonardo da Vinci possessed at the time among leading artists. "There really isn't anyone around who's in any way a plausible alternative candidate," he says.
This is not the first time that the bronzes have been linked to Michelangelo. In the 19th century they were part of the collection of Baron Adolphe de Rothschild, and in 1878 were exhibited as authentic Michelangelo, an attribution that was disputed by a scholar of the time. In the 20th century, the sculptures were attributed to a number of other artists, including the circle of Benvenuto Cellini. In 2002 they were auctioned at Sotheby's (where Professor Joannides first saw them), and in 2012 were displayed as being by the "Circle of Michelangelo" in the "Bronze" exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Other specialists are backing Professor Joannides's assertions. Conservation scientists from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam have determined with neutron X-ray imaging that the casts are thick-walled and heavy, which would date them to the late 15th or early 16th century, and an anatomist from the University of Warwick has ruled that the bronzes are of outstanding anatomical accuracy. The conclusions of all of the experts will be presented at a conference on July 6th.
Professor Joannides says he has so far not consulted any Italian experts about the discovery. The coming months will determine whether the bronzes will indeed turn out to be a groundbreaking discovery—fitting of a major museum exhibition, the way Leonardo's "Salvator Mundi" was—or whether their authenticity will be questioned yet again.
