Hundreds of years may separate modern conservators from the life of famous Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo, but some may have just held his fingerprint in their own hands.
According to the new season of BBC Two’s “Secrets at the Museum” conservators at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London discovered a previously unnoticed fingerprint on a wax sculpture attributed to Michelangelo.
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This figure’s attribution may be up for debate, said The Times. If the fingerprint is real, it would help clear things up.
During COVID-19 pandemic related lockdowns last year, the sculpture was moved from an upstairs gallery to underground storage where it remained for five months, said the Smithsonian. Employees moved the figure because sunlight in the gallery can impact wax and underground storage provides colder temperatures.
When conservators brought the sculpture – a figurine created sometime between 1516 and 1519 as a model for the larger marble “Young Slave” statue, according to Artnet News – out of hibernation, they noticed a fingerprint on its buttocks.
“Scholars speculate that shifting temperatures and humidity levels sparked changes in the wax’s chemical composition, making the marking more prominent,” the Smithsonian said.
In 1924, parts of the wax sculpture were shattered when a museum-goer fell and kicked it over, said The Telegraph. Its limbs were left in shards, but were restored by experts.
So, how could conservators figure out if the fingerprint is real? Well, there is another existing Michelangelo fingerprint, according to The Florentine. This print, on a circa 1509 terracotta model named Two Wrestlers, could help determine authenticity.
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Michelangelo never completed the larger “Young Slave” statue, which going to be one of 40 sculptures included in a tomb for Pope Julius II the artist was commissioned to create. However, the project was repeatedly scaled back and postponed, resulting in a much smaller final work than originally planned.
Some unfinished sculptures intended to go in the tomb – including “Young Slave” – now live in the “Hall of the Prisoners” at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence.
“It is an exciting prospect that one of Michelangelo’s prints could have survived in the wax,” said Victoria and Albert Museum senior curator Petra Motture in a BBC statement about the museum’s wax figure, which offers a more complete version of the piece. “Such marks would suggest the physical presence of the creative process of an artist. It is where mind and hand somehow come together… A fingerprint would be a direct connection with the artist.”
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