London's V&A claims to have found Michelangelo's fingerprint on a sculpture

According to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, a small wax sculpture in the London museum’s collection, generally believed to be a model for Michelangelo Buonarroti ’s Young Schiavo destined for the tomb of Julius II (and thus attributed to the great Tuscan artist), may bear signs of the genius’ physical presence: afingerprint has in fact been detected on the surface of the wax model, which the museum reports could be Michelangelo’s.

The revelation was made in an episode of the BBC’s Secrets of the Museum program. The discovery, we learn from the broadcast, dates back to last spring, when conservators at the museum moved the work to place it in storage during lockdown: wax is in fact a material that is very sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity. Once the confinement was over, the sculpture went back on display, and during this move the V&A curators noticed the presence of a fingerprint on the sculpture’s buttocks, which had become visible probably because of the alterations suffered by the work’s surface due to changes in temperature and humidity.

“It is exciting to know that one of Michelangelo’s fingerprints may have survived in wax. Such marks would suggest the physical presence of an artist’s creative process. It’s where the mind and the hand somehow come together-he destroyed a lot of wax models himself. And a fingerprint would be a direct connection to the artist.”

Of course, there are many obstacles before we can say that that print is really Michelangelo’s: first, the wax model is only attributed to the artist and there is no certainty that it is his work. And then it is not possible to get a match on the fingerprint, which could therefore be someone else’s. In short: the discovery neither detracts from nor adds to the sculpture.

In the photo: the work attributed to Michelangelo

London's V&A claims to have found Michelangelo's fingerprint on a sculpture

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