The controversial art of Michelangelo

Alexander Pereg is a well-known but controversial art historian. He studied Michelangelo's drawings all his life, and his attribution criteria are much stricter than those of all other experts. When you put these lines under a magnifying glass, you can see they were put together with a series of small strokes. These contours aren't original, they're copied. The British Museum, together with Italian and French museums, own the biggest collections of Michelangelo's drawings. Their experts reckon there are about 600 drawings by the Renaissance master around. According to the Swiss art historian, only 100 are genuine. According to this catalogue, the Louvre has 43 drawings by Michelangelo, supposedly all original, but I think only four are authentic. The hand of the master. The dispute over the attribution of Michelangelo's work started right after his death. At the end of his life, the painter of the Sistine Chapel destroyed many of his drawings. All those he thought weren't perfect enough to survive him. But how do you know his hand from that of other painters active in his circle? I think very few artists were able to quickly sketch whole groups of people like he did. Perig concentrates above all on the lines, the stroke, the strength of the contour, how dynamic the lines feel, and compares all these elements. This shadowing strip covers details along the limbs, something that Michelangelo never used to do. The Albertina Museum in Vienna hosted a very large exhibition of Michelangelo's work. 350,000 visitors paid to see 120 drawings. The Austrian Museum actually owns eight of these drawings. Perig writes six of them off. A kind of indoctrination of the audience is going on. All the drawings are declared to be authentic, with no distinction made. As if this authenticity was proved a long time ago, but people aren't given any analytical explanation why. The curator of the exhibition respects the Swiss colleague, but has doubts about his very strict attribution methods. He was an artist, active for 70 years, and therefore his spectrum was very broad. And his style changed, developed with time. Instead of concentrating so much on the small graphic details, he changed his notions about structure, on how figures were formed, how they moved, typical elements of an artist's style. A very important sketch by Michelangelo is kept in the British Museum. The Resurrection of Christ. Nobody doubts it's authentic, except Alexander Perig. You can see the outline varies a lot. The stroke is suddenly very different, thicker, and the lines become much darker in places for no reason. They don't have any real function. At the British Museum, nobody wants to comment on Perig's opinion. There, as well as in other art institutions, the Swiss art historian is known as Michelangelo's Terminator. And nobody is too keen on being told the drawings in their collection may be worth nothing instead of millions.