The only two surviving bronzes by Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo are thought to have been identified with the help of a tiny clue in a 500-year-old sketch, British researchers said on Monday.
The bronzes, "Bacchants Riding On Panthers", date from 1506-08 and show a muscular pair of nude male revellers, arms raised in triumph to the sky, astride snarling panthers.
Michelangelo is thought to have worked on them between his two most famous works - the four-metre marble sculpture "David" and the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.
Their anonymous owner called in Professor Paul Joannides of Britain's Cambridge University, for whom the sculptures triggered a memory of a sketch by one of Michelangelo's students who had copied his master's drawings.
That then sparked off a wave of international research involving art historians, anatomists and conservation scientists.
Cambridge University says that, if the attribution is correct, the bronzes would be the only surviving ones by Michelangelo anywhere in the world.
Experts say that only a sculptor who had practised dissection, as Michelangelo had, would be able to create such anatomically correct bronzes.
Michelangelo often drew inspiration from ancient mythology for his works. Bacchants were followers of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and fertility, who pursued the instinctive, sensual life.
History of misattribution
Records show that Michelangelo made bronzes including a two-thirds size "David" for a French aristocrat and a twice life-size statue of Pope Julius II.
However, the first disappeared during the French Revolution while the second was melted down and the bronze used for artillery three years after it was made.
The "Bacchants Riding on Panthers" were previously attributed to Michelangelo during the 19th century when they were owned by Baron Adolphe de Rothschild of the famous French banking dynasty.
In the 20th century, experts believed they had been made by a range of artists, including followers of Benvenuto Cellini.
The definitive conclusions of the research into their provenance will be presented at a conference in July.
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