WORLD CULTURE
NEW ART DISCOVERIES
Michelangelo
Candelabra: A Surprise from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum
The Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, Timothy Clifford, discovered a puzzling drawing in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The drawing had been attributed to Perino del Vaga, a contemporary of Raphael. After one glance Clifford concluded that it was actually the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti. The very recent discovery of this artwork has not allowed other scholars to offer opinions, but, in an unprecedented move, curators have added the drawing to the Michelangelo Exhibit currently at the Chicago Art Institute. Scholars will now have a chance to test Clifford’s attribution.
Putto: A Recent Attribution
The statue of a young cupid, nicknamed the Manhattan Cupid, recently has been dubbed one of Michelangelo’s “forgotten creations.”
Located in the French Embassy in New York City, it was attributed to Michelangelo in 1996 by K. Weil Garris-Brandt, an expert in Italian Renaissance Art from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
While the statue certainly has similarities to Michelangelo’s work, scholars do not agree yet on the artist’s identity. It may have been purposely crafted to look like a Roman sculpture’s work, so it would bring a higher price. Alternatively, earlier scholars thought it was sculpted by the French Renaissance artist Pietro Francavilla. More research is needed in order to find the true creator, but until then, Michelangelo is the best candidate.
David Model: A Question of Authenticity
In his biography of Michelangelo, Giorgio Vasari claimed that the artist had made a wax model of his famous David statue before beginning to carve the full-scale marble work. In 1986, art historian Frederick Hartt, a professor at UVA, was asked to write an “expertise” (a scholarly opinion) on a small stucco statuette that had been found in a bank vault in Switzerland.Hartt recognized it as the model for the David.Arguments exist to support the evidence, however, there are also those who doubt its authenticity. Unfortunately, the model has been locked in the vault and scholars do not have access to it to determine whether or not they agree with Hartt’s evaluation.