The Lost Michelangelos (PDF)

Translated by Lucinda Byatt

This book tells the remarkable story of a rare discovery: the
uncovering of two lost paintings by the great Renaissance artist
Michelangelo.

Like many stories of artistic loss, this one begins in a library in
Italy, where Antonio Forcellino - a distinguished Michelangelo
scholar and restorer - stumbled across some unpublished letters
among the papers of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, son of Isabella
d'Este and an extremely important figure in the Italian
Renaissance. These letters comment on the paintings of Michelangelo
in a way that is completely at odds with what was to become the
dominant critical tradition of Michelangelo scholarship, an
inconsistency that set Forcellino off on a journey that took him to
Dubrovnik, Oxford, New York and Niagara Falls and culminated in the
discovery of two magnificent paintings: Pieta with Mary and Two
Angels, now in a private collection in America, and
Cavalieri Crucifixion, now held by an educational
institution in England. Through a combination of careful historical
research, extensive restoration and meticulous radiographic
analysis, Forcellino shows convincingly that these paintings can be
traced back to the studio of Michelangelo.

This extraordinary story, brilliantly retold, calls into question
the received view of Michelangelo's work and fills in a
missing piece in our understanding of one of the greatest artists
of all time.