My mind boggles at the numerous cases where history is fabricated like this, out of people’s desire for finding a ‘lost masterpiece’. If there is a dispute like this, museum/gallery people (i.e. those with a vested interest in the work’s star status) always err on the side of recklessness.

It’s a great image, though, and I intend to enjoy it at the Met without thinking about Michelangelo.

I should mention,though, that my own amazement is not in his accomplishment for that age (though he did create a very complete composition in his interpretation of the drawing), it is more that in a single act of authentication, art history has changed again, however modestly.

We now have a single work by Michelangelo that is simultaneously:
one of only 4 known works on canvas
the only painted work by him in a U.S. collection
one of few works by him that is a direct copy of another artist
his earliest known work.

I personally find both early works and copies of one master’s work by another particularly instructive, as we get to see the artist in the process of learning.

You may also be right about the extension of modern adolescence, though it may be moderated by the fact that our overall lifespan has been extended proportionately.

Thanks, as always, for your thoughtfiul comments.

Other readers can see Daniel van Benthuysen’s online gallery here. Of particular interest to me are the the new entries in his series of shell-themed still life paintings.

It is often the case in these sorts of stories that people remark on the youth of the artist, that this was done when he was a young teen. But during the renaissance and baroque periods, a great many artists’ studios routinely took on apprentices at ages 12 to 14.

A very sensitive silverpoint self-portrait drawing by Durer survives with a notation in his own hand that he was 13 when he did it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Durer-self-portrait-at-the-age-of-thirteen.jpg

A number of biographical entries for Anthony van Dyck comment that he was running the Rubens studio when he was 17. But when one considers that artists wanted to be submitting their own masterpieces for guild acceptance and the establishment of their own studios by 18, this should not be surprising.

I think of all the former Rembrandt paintings downgraded to “circle of Rembrandt” in recent years by the prestigious Rembrandt Research Project. Given that these paintings were done by people in his workshop, then who did them? Well, the answer is they were done by teenagers!

Gerrit Dou was 13 when he apprenticed to Rembrandt, who was a master with his own studio and himself all of 18 years old at the time. Hoogstraten was 13 when he joined Rembrandt as well. Drost was a comparatively old man of 16 when he came on board. And so on.

This is an interesting piece but I don’t think it’s so remarkable that Michelangelo did this as a young teen. I do think it underscores how much we have unnecessarily distended adolescence in the modern era.