US art detective claims new Michelangelo find
Lindsay Lohan, followed by her mother Dina, leaves Los Angeles superior court on Wednesday. Judge Keith Schwartz told Lohan
A US art detective says he has proof that a garish terracotta statue found discarded in a mouldy cardboard box in an Italian antiques shop is an original model by Michelangelo for his famous Pieta.
“When I first set eyes on the statue I couldn’t speak for fully 10 minutes, it was so beautiful. Such mastery, it’s impossible to capture in words,” Roy Doliner said in Rome this week as he presented his book on the discovery. “I knew at once it was an original Michelangelo,” he said, a conviction that drove him to challenge Italy’s art experts, who had ascribed the Madonna della Febbre statue of Mary cradling Jesus to Renaissance sculptor Andrea Bregno. Doliner said the young Michelangelo would have made the terracotta model before embarking on the full marble statue. Italian experts say the work was by Bregno but it helped inspired Michelangelo’s far more celebrated 15th-century sculpture. The art detective and writer, who first unveiled his findings in December, won’t disclose the whereabouts of the statue, though it has been seen and photographed by journalists. Doliner was called in by a private collector who had discovered and bought the statue, had restored it and found what he thought were Jewish symbols etched onto the bottom of it which might prove the work was Michelangelo’s.
Rebutted by traditional art historians, the collector turned to self-styled historical consultant Doliner, who specialises in Michelangelo mysteries and has written a book on codes hidden in the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
“When it was found, the statue looked like a kitsch knock-off. It was covered in Scotch tape and had been painted over many times. It took three years to restore,” said Doliner, who divides his time between Rome and New York.
“The restorers did every scientific test imaginable to date it, and narrowed it down to between 1473 and 1496,” he added.
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