Mural attributed to Michelangelo for sale after being detached from the wall of a villa in Florence

At the end of last year, 2023, they sold their luxurious home, Villa Michelangelo, on the hills of Settignano. But not that controversial work, a charcoal on plaster mural depicting a satyr (or a triton) which was already detached from a wall of the house in 1979 to be subjected to restoration. The Sernesi family kept that work. In fact, many attribute it to Michelangelo, so much so that when it was sent to the Met for an exhibition it was insured for 24 million. The work would now be on sale.

The former owners of the villa, where Michelangelo lived as a young manwould therefore consider whether to put the large-scale drawing attributed to the master on sale, according to what he says today il New York Timeswhich reminds us that not all critics, however, agree on the authorship of the sketch hung for a long time on the wall of a former kitchen. Over the years the work has traveled around the world, lent to exhibitions, from Japan to Canada, and most recently at the Metropolitan in New York for the 2017 exhibition Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer in whose catalog the curator Carmen C. Bambach, confirming the attribution, defined it as “the only remaining manifestation of Michelangelo’s skills as a large-scale designer”. The rumors of the drawing’s entry onto the market have relaunched the debate which until now had been limited to a small circle of experts.

If Bambach, an authority in the field of Renaissance drawings, has confirmed the authenticity, other scholars are not one hundred percent sure: for Cecile Hollberg, director of the Academy gallery who viewed the drawing on behalf of the Sernesi, “it is very interesting and now it is certainly necessary to proceed with new investigations”. Works by masters of the caliber of Michelangelo still in private hands are very rare and when they appear on the market the prices are dizzying: two years ago a drawing by Michelangelo was sold by Christiès in New York for 23 million euros. Italian prices are significantly lower due to the laws that limit the export of works of art, the gallerist Carlo Orsi, who has offices in Milan and London, explained to the New York Times: “Finding customers in Italy at these prices is practically impossible”.

The Sernesi family did not put a price tag on the drawing, which was insured for $24 million when it flew to New York for an exhibition at the Met. “We think it is a work that deserves to be seen and appreciated,” Ilaria Sernesi, one of the owners, told the Times. In addition to the association with the villa, the paternity of the drawing to Michelangelo is based on Charles de Tolnay’s attribution according to which the master of the Sistine Chapel drew it as a teenager. Comparisons between the Sernesi drawing and a study by Michelangelo at the Ashmolean in Oxford have led other scholars to date the work to the artist’s early twenties.Paul Joannides, however, said he was skeptical about the attributionemeritus of art history at Cambridge, for “the poor quality” of the drawing.

The same goes for Francesco Caglioti of the Normale di Pisa: “If it was by Michelangelo, it wasn’t in great shape that day.” The artist “was a severe judge of himself”, said the scholar, and as an old man he destroyed many early works: “Maybe he forgot about this one”.