Two statues of virile naked men riding on ferocious panthers will on Monday be unveiled as, probably, the only surviving bronze sculptures by the Renaissance giant Michelangelo.
The artist behind the metre-high statues has long been a matter of speculation.
The statues of two men, each holding an arm aloft in a gesture of salute, were attributed to the 16th-century Italian Renaissance artist based in part on a tiny detail from one of his students’ drawings, the museum said.
Last year Professor Paul Joannides, emeritus professor of art history at the University of Cambridge, connected the bronzes to a drawing by one of Michelangelo’s apprentices now in the Musee Fabre in Montpellier, France.
The apprentice’s copy of some of Michelangelo’s lost sketches includes a composition of a muscular youth riding a panther, which the museum said was very similar in pose to the bronzes.
It was also “drawn in the abrupt, forceful manner that Michelangelo employed in designs for sculpture. This suggests that Michelangelo was working up this very unusual theme for a work in three dimensions,” the museum said.
The statues will go on public display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge from Tuesday. Victoria Avery, keeper of applied arts at the museum, said the attribution project, involving an international team of experts from different fields, had been like “a Renaissance whodunnitâ€. She said: “It has been a huge privilege to be involved, very exciting and great fun.â€