Michelangelesque

A portrait of Michelangelo, yes. A portrait by Michelangelo? Let's just say that the art historians quoted are playing it safe: enthusiastic enough to whip up press interest, but not so enthusiastic as to end up out on a limb:

"The work speaks for itself: it is a very high-quality sculpture which depicts Michelangelo. The skilled chiselling on the back makes us think it might be a self portrait," Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Leonardo da Vinci Museo Ideale, told Discovery News. . .

"I first saw the portrait about seven or eight years ago, when the owner brought it to my house in Tuscany. To my eyes then and to my eyes now it is surely a portrait of Michelangelo from the mid-sixteenth century, which itself is very rare, and it is a very fine object," James Beck, professor of art history at Columbia University and the author of "The Three Worlds of Michelangelo," told Discovery News.

"It is the only portrait of Michelangelo in marble and in relief that I am aware of from his lifetime."

According to Beck, the sculpture could also be the work of Niccolò Tribolo or Pierino da Vinci, the nephew of Leonardo who died at only 23. . .

The marble work will be the centrepiece of an exhibition on the image of Michelangelo in the coming months.

Then there's this:

A Roseville man will spend a month in jail for his depiction of a Michelangelo painting. The original "creation of man" is painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Ed Stross' mural outside his art studio features a bare-chested Eve and the word "love."

Posted by David on March 22, 2005 9:27 AM