A 'Mike' found in Buffalo? (Michelangelo painting)

www.nypost.com ^ | 11:06 AM, October 11, 2010 | By MELISSA KLEIN

[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

[Red Badger]

They have already done the scientific stuff and verified its age is correct.............

[Red Badger]

Good thing his kids weren’t into baseball...................;^)

[r9etb]

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.

Jesus' anatomy is off. Compare the muscles on his abdomen to that of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel. It certainly doesn't seem like Michelangelo to me, either.... If you ask me, it looks a lot more Spanish ... something about the Mary's pose, and her eyes.

On the other hand....

[Sophia777]

It’s creepy

[Andyman]

I agree. The musculature is very primitive.

[Straight Vermonter]

Michelangelo broke from the conventional imagining of Christ. He portrayed Christ as robust, muscular and without a beard.

Compare his Christ in the "Final Judgment" or in the "Pieta"

to the portrayal by Michelangelo's contemporaries Verrochio and Da Vinci.

Later artists, like Caravaggio, would follow Michelangelo's example and depict Christ as a large man.

I would be very surprised to find that this is a Michelangelo.

[SunkenCiv]

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[TigerClaws]

Agree.

Just keep Dan Brown away from it.

[RnMomof7]

The guy will leave NYS before he cashes in on this if he has any brains

[Red Badger]

True. Move to Florida or Texas........................

[Red Badger]

Air Force Lt. Col. Martin Kober retired in 2003

Yep, he has brains................