Michelangelo’s portrait exhibited at the National Gallery of London may be fake

We previously wrote about an unusual exhibition at the National Gallery of London (National Gallery), designed to highlight the creative partnership of the great Michelangelo (Michelangelo) and his student, Sebastiano del Piombo (Sebastiano del Piombo). The exposition caused a lot of controversy, and recently there was also a scandal. So, last week, an article was published in The Times by Charles Hope, a former director of the Warburg Institute at the University of London, in which the author stated that the portrait of Michelangelo presented at the exhibition and attributed to the brush of Sebastiano (approximately 1518-20), is actually a fake of the 1950s.

Let’s try to weigh the pros and cons of this version.

First, consider a number of indisputable facts:

1. The portrait depicts Michelangelo.

2. He holds in his hands a book with drawings, which are a guide to the study of human anatomy. These drawings today correspond to the Bartolomeo Passarotti treatise, located in the Fitzwilliam Museum, and in turn, is an exact copy of the lost original study of the anatomy of Michelangelo himself. We see the spread of the book, containing two drawings that are completely consistent in their composition, location and orientation on the sheet by Passarotti.

3. At the time of its sale at the Dorotheum auction in Vienna in 2001, the work was attributed to the brush of Passarotti.

4. X-rays showed that the painting was painted on top of the work of Madonna and Child with John the Baptistby by Andrea del Sarto in 1518. The original work is now in the Borghese Gallery in Rome and is much larger in size than Michelangelo’s portrait.

5. The pose of the artist in the picture is almost identical to the portrait of Francesco Arsilli, painted by Sebastiano around 1522.

6. On the back of the panel there is a wax seal, allowing the export of paintings from the papal state, obligatory for works of art in the second half of the 17th century and dated no earlier than 1646.

7. The condition of the portrait was not perfect; part of it was restored and repainted.

Now we give arguments that indirectly confirm the theory of fake

1. The picture appeared only in 1960. There is no information about where she was previously.

2. Hope claims that it would be "unthinkable" if Sebastiano painted over the work of a very famous contemporary.

3. The original wax seal, allowing you to export the picture, according to logic, should have belonged rather to the work of del Sarto, probably being a copy of a larger picture depicting the Madonna. Hope believes that it would be strange to take out somewhere a portrait of the already famous Michelangelo, which everyone already knew "in person". Thus, it is likely that the counterfeiter acquired for his fake an old panel belonging to the period he needed.

4. The position of the body and hands of Michelangelo in the portrait completely coincides with the position in the little-known portrait of Arsilli. And this suggests that the pose was simply copied. Agree, it is difficult to assume that Sebastiano, portraying a teacher, copied his pose from his other portrait.

5. The collar in the portrait, theoretically, does not match the type of clothing worn in the middle of the 16th century.

The authenticity of the picture has not yet been established, however, based on the research, we can say that the composition of the pigments used to create the portrait is fully consistent with the dating of 1518, and the technique of applying paints is typical for Sebastiano.

It would be possible to explain the fact of creating a work on top of a work by Andrea del Sarto, assuming that the painting was not liked by the patroness of both Andrea and Sebastiano, Pierfrancesco Borgherini. She could well have asked Sebastiano to rewrite the composition in accordance with the sketch of Michelangelo, made by him for another Madonna del Piombo. Then Sebastiano could very well paint over the work of his "Florentine rival."

As for the collar of Michelangelo, perhaps this part of the portrait was retouched and in any case, it is too small to draw global conclusions about the authenticity of the picture, based on this detail.

Thus, if the portrait of Michelangelo is falsification, then the artist who performed it took great care to make this difficult to prove.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru