Possible Michelangelo Self-Portrait Found

Discovery Channel ^ | March 18, 2005 | Rossella Lorenzi

[nickcarraway]

The Sculpture of Michelangelo

[annyokie]

How cool! Thanks for posting this.

[Clara Lou]

Fascinating!! Thanks for posting.

[RadioAstronomer]

WOW! Thanks for the post.

[duck duck goose]

How cool thanks for the post.

[Diva Betsy Ross]

Thank you for posting this! How exciting. Michelangelo is one of my favorites. Everyone who enjoys art needs to spend some time in Florence. The people are great, the sites are great. The Art is amazing. What else can I say? :]

[lepton]

cool.

[GSlob]

Twenty to one it is not late Michelangelo: the surface treatment is all "overlicked" - compare it with his "Brutus" or late "Pietas".

[oldvike]

That looks just like him!

[Don Corleone]

Funny...it doesn't look like Charlton Heston! /humor

[RightWhale]

Twenty to one it is not late Michelangelo

It was common for the artist to have students who did the huggermugger work under his guidance.

[GSlob]

"Brutus" was finished - under guidance - by Tiberio Calcagni. Michelangelo himself finished only the more important face part in it. But the whole thing from an enlarged photo in the original article looks like the work of secondary hands like those to whom Michelangelo had to subcontract Julius' tomb (Montelupo, maybe, or that same Perino) - overlicked, and melodramatized, too (which to me is a particularly damning point). Volterra's head portrait is much more restrained; and if anything, such melodrama and overlicking would be more in tune with Bernini circle - and much later dating than 1540s.

[hoosiermama]

FYI! Road trip!

[RightWhale]

Details of art history elude me, I remember only a few salient points from art class. Thanks for detailed post.

[Joe 6-pack]

It looks like an original Alceo Dossena.

[solitas]

ping

[Harpo Speaks]

What do you mean by "overlicking?"

[GSlob]

Excessive polishing of the surface beyond what is necessary to achieve the desired visual/emotional effect, and at the limit detrimental to it. Early Michelangelo's works (like "Pieta" in St. Peter) were tending in that direction - but even there he knew where to stop and put things in balance. In his later sculptures, (and even in his earlier tondos) there is a pronounced movement to aesthetic use of much rougher surfaces, which look as if the piece was not finished [so called "infinito"]. One can see it in the face of "Day" - 1530s (San Lorenzo). In his later works (like the "Brutus" - about 1540, just the time of purported attribution) the whole surface, including the face, is not polished, but the frequent traces of chisel are put to use with advantage. The same applies to most of his later sculpture - he did not completely stop polishing, but used it sparingly.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks solitas. The image does look somewhat like him, but in the two known examples of probable self-portraits, he's just portraying himself as a character within the composition. This image appears a bit idealized, as if from memory, perhaps by one of his assistants, posthumously.

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[visualops]