Rare Michelangelo painting found tucked behind a sofa

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Most art lovers would be overjoyed to find a rare, unfinished artwork of Michelangelo’s, but not when they find out that it was tucked behind a sofa for 27 years.
Called The Mike by the Kober clan, the painting remained in the house, wrapped and kept in a corner until Air Force Lt. Col. Martin Kober retired in 2003 and was told by his father to do something about the painting.

Col. Kober found Antonio Forcellino, an Italian art restorer and historian and told him of the tennis ball, and something more horrifying.
“It wasn’t the story that had scared me, but that it had been exposed to heating commonly found inside a middle-class home,” the New York Post quoted Forcellino as writing in his new book, La Pieta Perduta, or The Lost Pieta.
Forcellino assumed it to be a copy but when he saw that it was unfinished, he had his doubts.
“The evidence of unfinished portions demonstrates that this painting never, never, never could be a copy of another painting. No patron pays in the Renaissance for an unfinished copy,” Forcellino said.
A scientific analysis of the painting proved that the Michelangelo claim was not so crazy — infrared and X-ray examinations of the painting show many alterations made by the artist as he changed his mind, and an unfinished portion near the Madonna’s right knee.
—ANI