For half a century, the Sernesi family lived in a historic villa overlooking Florence where Renaissance artist Michelangelo grew up and later owned it. The estate comes with several buildings, an orchard and paintings of muscular male nudes carved into the walls of a former kitchen. It is believed that this work was painted by a young Michelangelo, but scholars are not sure.
Last year the Sernesi family sold the villa. Now they want to sell the mural paintings, which were removed from their original location in 1979 to allow for much-needed restoration work. Art historians have identified the figure, carved in charcoal or black chalk on plaster and measuring about 40 by 50 inches, as either a “Triton,” a sea god, or a “Satyr,” a half-man, half-beast figure.
Over the decades, the painting has been on loan to exhibitions in Japan, Canada and China as part of Michelangelo's work, and was most recently included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's blockbuster 2017 show “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer.” The exhibition's catalog entry, written by Carmen C. Bambach, the Met's curator of drawings and prints, describes the exhibition as “the only surviving expression of Michelangelo's skill as a master draftsman.”
News that the painting is hitting the market is likely to expand what has hitherto been a rather low-level academic debate about the authorship of the work, which has in the past remained in private hands and largely out of the public eye. 5th century.
“It’s very exciting,” said Cecilie Hollberg, director of the Accademia Museum in Florence. “Further investigation is now absolutely necessary,” she said. She said she had already gone to see the painting at the request of the Cernesi family.
A few years ago, Culture Ministry officials declared the project a nationally important project, meaning it cannot leave Italy except to rent. In the event of a sale, the Ministry of Culture reserves the right of first refusal to purchase a work for the Italian state up to the sale price.
If the state decides to exercise this option, the Hallbury Museum, which houses some of Michelangelo's most famous sculptures (such as the David), would be a good fit. Either way, Italy's strict heritage laws can have a huge impact on sales by limiting both the number of potential buyers and the selling price.
Works by Renaissance masters like Michelangelo rarely come to market, and when they do, they can sell for exorbitant prices. At the 2022 Christie's auction in New York, a sketch by Michelangelo was sold for over 23 million euros.
But in Italy, such works typically sell for a fraction of what their owners would get if they sold internationally, said Carlo Orsi, an art dealer who runs galleries in Milan and London. He and other experts said Italy's export laws are depressing the market.
He added that there are wealthy Italian collectors, but “they're not that forward-thinking.” “It’s virtually impossible to find customers who will buy these items at those prices.”
At the same time, overseas buyers may think twice about buying works they can't take home, said Francesco Salamone, a lawyer specializing in cultural heritage law. “So it cuts off overseas markets and makes this work less attractive from a financial perspective,” he added.
The family declined to put a price tag on the work, but one of its owners, Ilaria Sernesi, pointed out that the work was insured for nearly $24 million when it was delivered to the Met show. (Experts say insurance prices don't always reflect sales value.)
But the Cernesi family said it's not about the money.
“We think this is a work of art worth seeing, appreciating and loving,” said Ilaria Sernesi, a retired biologist whose family bought the villa in the 1970s.
In the late 19th century, Michelangelo's descendants sold the property to a French count, who passed it through several hands before purchasing it and leaving it to his Italian heirs, who then sold it to the Cernesi family. The previous owner didn't seem to have put much thought into the work. “When we arrived it was completely abandoned.” It was covered with cardboard sheets, Sernesi recalled.
In 1979, the painting was removed from the wall so that it could be restored at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, one of Italy's leading restoration laboratories. When it returned to the Sernesi home, it hung in the villa's vaulted dining room until the family decided it was best to keep it in a safer location. The painting was moved to a protected warehouse outside Florence.
Sernesis traces the painting's attribution to Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo's contemporary biographer. He writes that the young artist honed his skills by drawing on “paper and walls,” but Vasari does not give the exact location. Some visitors to the villa over the centuries have recorded seeing Michelangelo's graffiti there.
When the painting first began circulating in exhibitions, several catalog entries attributing the work to Michelangelo were written by Italian Renaissance expert Giorgio Bonsanti, who also oversaw the 1979 restoration. “I can’t imagine anyone else coming into Michelangelo’s house and painting on his kitchen walls,” he said.
Bonsanti was a disciple of Charles de Tolnay, a Hungarian-born, naturalized American who wrote a five-volume study of Michelangelo, and says the artist painted the murals as a teenager. Comparison of Cernesi's painting with a study of Michelangelo's Bearded Man, now housed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, has led some scholars to date the work to Michelangelo's mid-20s.
Met curator Bambach referred to this work as “Michelangelo’s neglected work” in a 2013 paper. She declined a request to be interviewed for this article, citing the museum's policy not to comment on works for sale. However, she confirmed that she supports the article and her own attribution.
A footnote in Bambach's article provides a detailed analysis of the “long history of attribution” between those who supported Michelangelo's work, those who opposed it, and those who were undecided.
Paul Joannides, a Michelangelo expert and professor emeritus of art history at the University of Cambridge, said there was “a lot of approval” for Michelangelo's work. “But,” he wrote in an email. “As for its value, personally I have never been sure about it. In my opinion, the work is clunky, poorly foreshortened, expressive, poorly expressed, and generally of low quality. “It’s hard to believe that even a very young Michelangelo could paint so poorly.”
Francesco Cagliotti, a Renaissance expert who teaches at the Scuola Normale in Pisa, Italy, said that if the work had been by Michelangelo, he would not have been in the best condition. He added that the artist was “a very strict judge of himself” and destroyed many of his early works towards the end of his life. “Maybe he forgot this,” Caglioti said.
Sernesis did not contact dealers, antique collectors or auction houses to assist with the sale, but attorney Salamone said “it is extremely rare for an important work of art to be sold without an intermediary.” Number of potential customers.
“These are details we will deal with and we have not decided anything yet,” said Ilaria Sernesi, one of six families who own the work.
She said she knew the export ban would affect sales. “It’s clear that people are trying to lower prices,” she said. But it is also true that there are limits we cannot exceed.”