[MSN] London. Spot the difference: one of these Michelangelos is said to be fake

[Museum Security Network Mailing list]

November 12, 2007

Spot the difference: one of these Michelangelos is said to be fake
Images:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_art
s/article2852663.ece


Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent 
They are among the most prized treasures held by the Royal Collection, the
British Museum and the Ashmolean in Oxford. But drawings that are said to
give an unparalleled insight into the creative process of Michelangelo
should no longer be attributed to him, according to new research. 

Three academics from the Universities of Leipzig and Hamburg have written a
five-volume study that casts doubt on the works held in Britain, which are
among up to 40 per cent of the world’s Michelangelos that they believe
should be dismissed as copies. The three academics argue that hundreds of
drawings by Michelangelo cannot be circulating worldwide when contemporary
accounts refer to the artist burning most of them. The three are also
publishing a recently discovered contemporary document that explains how so
few drawings by Michelangelo survived after his death. Its contents are so
dramatic that one journal tried to suppress it, they claim. 

Frank Zöllner, a professor of Renaissance and Modern art at the University
of Leipzig in Germany, said: “Scholars try to attribute an enormous amount
of drawings to Michelangelo . . . Those people who believe in the large
corpus are those active on the market or curators in public collections who
have large Michelangelo holdings.” 

The findings of the academics, who also include Dr Thomas Pöpper, a lecturer
in art history at Leipzig, and Christof Thoenes, an honorary professor at
the University of Hamburg, will be published by Taschen in Michelangelo:
Complete Works, on November 19. 

Their study casts doubt out on a number of sheets in the Royal Collection,
including The Risen Christ. Dr Pöpper commented on the the right hand of the
figure and its pentimenti, the lines that indicate where an artist has
changed their mind. “The drawing reveals what, for Michelangelo’s
draughtsmanship, is a suspicious number of pentimenti, which might in fact
be traceable to the copyist.” 

It pales, Professor Zöllner added, against another study for The Risen
Christ in the British Museum: “I have no doubt about this one. Its lines
were drawn by someone who was drawing from a model or life. The other one
[The Royal Collection] is a drawing after a drawing.” Nor are these
academics convinced by another sheet in The Royal Collection, the Three
Labours of Hercules. Dr Pöpper said that, while the individual scenes have
been developed to noticeably different degrees, Michelangelo would not have
created such a frieze on a single sheet. Turning his attention to a drawing
of the Crucifixion in the British Museum, he said that it reveals a certain
pedantry and a hesitation in the handling of line, arguing “strongly in
favour of a copyist”. He is also unimpressed by a sheet with two sketches
for The Brazen Serpent in the Ashmolean Museum, in Oxford. Dr Pöpper
believes that it is a copy of a lost original, a theory that is “supported
by aspects of its technique”. 

A spokeswoman for the Royal Collection said: “Royal Collection curators have
no reason to doubt the widely and generally accepted attributions of these
drawings to Michelangelo.” 

Hugo Chapman, the curator of Italian drawings for the British Museum, said:
“The Crucifixion drawing is to me one of the most amazing and moving
drawings in Western art.” But he added: “I’m all for a healthy debate.
Nothing is written in stone.” 

Timothy Wilson, of the Ashmolean Museum, said: “The Ashmolean is a
university museum and welcomes intelligent and informed debate about all
aspects of works of art in its care.”