Michelangelo may have hidden a
self-portrait in a sketch of an aristocratic woman poetess
friend held in the British Museum, a new study from a Brazilian
university says.
The study by art expert Deivos de Campos of Porto Alegre's
federal university of health science says the Renaissance genius
hid a caricature of himself in the 1525 sketch of Vittoria
Colonna.
The small outline of a man hunched over a painting can be
seen if you carefully scan the ink lines of the folds in the
noblewoman's dress, around the abdomen area, de Campo says.
The expert says the man's shape resembles a self-caricature
the artist sketched in 1509 on the side of a sonnet dedicated to
his friend and fellow artist Giovanni da Pistoia.
In that first sketch Michelangelo showed himself upright,
painting the Sistine Chapel, while in this second sketch he is
shown with his body leaning over at an acute angle, as if
Michelangelo himself were painting the whole portrait.
According to Deivos de Campos, the self-caricature could be a
hidden 'signature' by the artist, and it may furnish precious
evidence about his build and health at that time, when he was
50.
The alleged discovery is another step forward in the treasure
hunt which researchers have pursued over the years to try to
find meaningful hidden drawings and resonant symbols in
Michelangelo's work.
A year ago, it was de Campos' group that found pagan symbols
that allude to the anatomy of the female reproductive system
in the Medici Chapels in Florence.
On that occasion, the researchers said Michelangelo carved
pagan symbols of the female sex organs in the Medici Chapels in
Florence just as he painted them in the Sistine Chapel in the
Vatican.
Skulls, shells and spheres allegedly evoke the shapes of the
uterus and Fallopian tubes, the team led by de Campos said - the
same group that a few months previously found similar allegedly
anatomical symbols in the Sistine Chapel, as alleged tokens of
female power in a Church that held them back.
The Medici Chapel study focused on three symbols carved
beside the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici: skulls of
cattle and rams, spheres connected by cords, and a shell.
According to the Brazilian experts, their shape is a coded
reference to that of the uterus and the Fallopian tubes, organs
of female reproduction.
The Renaissance genius inserted them into his work with the
intention of "representing the capacity for rebirth and
regeneration between life and death," said the team.
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