Posted on 10/11/2010 10:18:32 AM PDT by Red Badger
This unfinished painting of Jesus and Mary could be a lost Michelangelo, potentially the art find of the century.
But to the upstate family on whose living-room wall it hung for years, it was just "The Mike."
When the kids knocked the painting off its perch with an errant tennis ball sometime in the mid-1970s, the Kober clan wrapped it up and tucked it away behind the sofa.
There it remained for 27 years, until Air Force Lt. Col. Martin Kober retired in 2003 and had some time on his hands. His father gave him a task -- research the family lore that the painting was really a Michelangelo. "Now, with your newfound free time, do something with this!" Kober recalled his father telling him.
Kober, now 53, dug into the history of the painting, contacting auction houses, Renaissance art scholars, European archives, and even meeting museum directors in Italy. He found Antonio Forcellino, an Italian art restorer and historian and told him of the tennis ball, and something more horrifying.
"It wasn't the story that had scared me, but that it had been exposed to heating commonly found inside a middle-class home," Forcellino writes in his new book, "La Pieta Perduta," or "The Lost Pieta," published in Italy and due out in the United States next year.
And he did not believe in the existence of another version of Michelangelo paintings that are hanging in Italian museums.
"I had assumed it was going to be a copy," Forcellino said.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/mike_found_in_buffalo_Or3Ok3NfUR21qEqBxK3u2H#ixzz124SNmOoc
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
You should be glad you didn’t find something worse... *shudder* The things that can end up behind couches....
You’re lucky. I found a headless, mummified mouse, giant tumbleweeds of dog hair, some well-preserved cat vomit, a green Sashquatcahea Dollar, and the cover from “The Greatest American Hero Second Season.”
Amazing story. Up where kids could hit it with tennis balls : )
$300 million.
Lol. I purchased a Wm E. Marshall engraving of Abraham Lincoln for $120. Was not sure if it was original but the frame alone was worth it.
ML/NJ
Hey! You could put all that on a canvas and call it a “lost” Warhol.............
And so early, too ...
I love stories like this. There are still treasures to be discovered.
By the way, Red Badger...what color was that M&M? Wasn’t there a contest a while back that if you had a specially colored one....?
Yeah, that was for “red” M&Ms. They quit making them for a few years until a new food dye was approved that didn’t cause mice to get cancer when they ate 50 lbs a day for 30 years..................
Darks?
What are the two heavily muscled small figures hanging onto each arm supposed to be? .... Children? .... Midgets? IMHO this painting sucks and hidden behind the sofa is a good place for it.
Cherubim................or Munchkins............
Interesting if true.
I’m sure it is 500 or so years old, but, not being an expert or anything, it looks kind of awkward for Michaelangelo. THe composition seems off or something.
Well be wasn’t laying on his back on a 30 foot scaffolding with it 12 inches from his face when he painted it..............
yeah, i’d sell it so fast it would make everyones head spin:)
Mary's right foot (left side) is missing..........
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