Overview
- The Vatican confirmed a scientific committee, convened by Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, is formally evaluating Valentina Salerno’s findings as part of Michelangelo’s 550th-birth anniversary initiatives.
- Salerno’s decade-long archival study traces testaments, inventories and notarial acts across state and Vatican repositories, linking at least twenty previously unknown or uncertain works to Michelangelo.
- Her reconstruction contends the artist entrusted materials to close pupils who moved them to a secured “cubicolo” with a multi-key system, a space described in documents as empty for more than 400 years.
- Christie’s sale on February 5 in London of a small Sibyl of Libya foot study for over $27 million included an attribution supported by the auction house’s historians following a provenance trail similar to Salerno’s.
- The committee includes international museum specialists such as William Wallace, Hugo Chapman and Barbara Jatta, and its review has proceeded discreetly, with broader authentication and provenance checks still underway.