Renaissance Experts Question ‘Rediscovered’ Michelangelos

ROME (AP) — A marble bust of Jesus in a Roman church is by Michelangelo, an independent researcher claimed Wednesday; this is the last reference to Rome. Renaissance genius He is one of the most imitated artists in the world.

Valentina Salerno’s unverified claim has troubled Renaissance scholars, especially since a sketch of a foot attributed to Michelangelo but disputed by some as a copy recently sold for $27.2 million. Christie’s auction.

Given the risks and Salerno’s suggestion that many other works could be attributed to Michelangelo, based on his documentary research, leading experts declined to comment.

Salerno published his theory on the commercial website academia.edu, a non-peer-reviewed social networking site used by academics, and announced the first “rediscovery” at a press conference Wednesday.

The allegations have likely attracted more attention than they normally would, given that the Vatican was at least initially interested in the matter. Friday marks the 550th anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth, with numerous exhibitions, lectures and commemorations highlighting his genius and legacy.

Priest Franco Bergamin said that the culture ministry was invited to attend Salerno’s press conference, but he did not attend. The Carabinieri’s artistic team declined to comment on the authenticity of the statue, but said it had been preserved and now had a laminated sign on it: “Alarm armed” it reads.

“We hope that this asset of our cultural heritage, regardless of whether it is attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti, will become part of the national heritage that we are responsible for defending,” said Lieutenant Colonel Paolo Salvatori.

Michelangelo Buonarroti, who lived between 1475 and 1564, created some of the most magnificent works of the Renaissance: David in Florence and the Pieta in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and the “Apocalypse” fresco behind the chapel’s altar. Salerno now says he has found another bust: a bust of Jesus in the Basilica of Sant’Agnese fuori le mura, listed anonymously by Italy’s culture ministry as belonging to the 16th-century Roman school.

He’s not the first person to claim this. In 1996, Michelangelo expert William Wallace wrote an article in ArtNews about the well-documented history of misattribution of works to Michelangelo. The 19th-century French writer Stendhal is quoted as writing in the church of Sant’Agnese, “We realized that I must swear that the head of the Savior belongs to Michelangelo.”

“Despite Stendhal’s oath, the head has never been taken seriously, and these days it does not even appear under the heading ‘rejected attributions’ in a catalog raisonné,” Wallace wrote.

Salerno argues that many documents from the first few centuries after Michelangelo’s death correctly attributed the work to the artist, but in 1984 a scholar incorrectly debunked the work in his opinion, and the work has continued to be misattributed ever since.

“I have provided, and will continue to provide, a body of documentary evidence on this matter – hopefully, because the investigation is ongoing,” he said. “There will be experts in the field who will do their own research. Based on the documents so far, we can say that the object is attributed to Michelangelo.”

He suggested that the bust was modeled after Michelangelo’s close friend Tomaso De’ Cavalieriis and was part of the great artistic legacy that Michelangelo left to his friends and students when he died. Salerno said he came to this conclusion by tracking down wills, inventories and notarized documents held in church and state archives and in the archives of the Roman confraternities to which Michelangelo and his students belonged.

Salerno, an actor and fiction writer, does not have a college degree or specialization in art history. He said he fell into this research “by chance” when he set out to write a novel about Michelangelo 10 years ago.

According to his research published on Academia.edu, Salerno uncovered evidence of a secret “indissolubility pact” between some of Michelangelo’s students and their heirs to ensure that Michelangelo’s works would survive his death. He said the deal included the existence of a previously unknown room that could be unlocked with only three keys and was held by three different students.

Salerno’s research caught the attention of Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, who presided over St. Peter’s Basilica. He appointed Salerno and his mentor to a scientific committee formed in 2025 to discuss a possible Vatican exhibition to commemorate the anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth.

No results have emerged from the committee’s work yet. But members downplayed or refused to discuss the significance of Salerno’s work.

Some of them, including Barbara Jatta, director of the Vatican Museums, Hugo Chapman, curator of Italian and French drawings 1400-1800 at the British Museum, and St. He expressed surprise that he was included in a committee consisting of the world’s leading Renaissance and Michelangelo scholars, including Wallace, an art history professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

Jatta distanced himself from the Vatican committee when contacted by The Associated Press.

The British Museum declined to make Chapman available for comment. Gambetti’s office did not respond to the request. Other committee members declined to comment.

Wallace told the AP that Salerno’s methodology is sound and noted that there is a strong tradition of undocumented researchers doing solid work in Europe. He said that he agreed with Michelangelo’s thesis that he did not destroy his works in a fire; this was a common belief at the time that had been disproven by scientists for years. Instead, he agreed with Salerno that Michelangelo entrusted his students to complete their projects on what remained of his work in his final years.

However, he disputes Salerno’s conclusion that a huge treasure belonging to Michelangelo is hidden and therefore ready for new discoveries, and says that Michelangelo did not produce so much in the last years of his life. Michelangelo was overseeing six architectural projects in Rome at the time. The drawings he made were sketches to solve technical problems on the construction site and would probably not survive because they were just “working drawings”.

Wallace agrees that the existence of a secret room that can be opened with only three keys is novel. But an appropriate academic scholarship would require Salerno to transcribe the documents and allow the peer-review process to occur, he said.

Italy is no stranger to claims of new discoveries about ancient artists; forgeries, forgeries, and new “discoveries” by Modiglianis and other artists occur regularly in art historical circles.

“I think I’ve counted 45 references to Michelangelo since 2000, and you can’t remember or mention any of them, but each one came with the headline, ‘The greatest discovery of all time’ (or) ‘It will change everything we think about Michelangelo,'” Wallace said. “And five years later we can’t even remember what it was.”

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