Scholars Question the Authenticity of Michelangelo Drawings

LONDON—Three academics from the Universities of Leipzig and Hamburg have written a five-volume study casting doubt on the authenticity of 40 percent of the drawings attributed to Michelangelo around the world, the Times (London) reports. The scholars contend that Michelangelo burned most of his drawings, according to accounts of his life, and therefore hundreds of the works cannot be circulating worldwide. The drawings in question include many works in the Royal Collection, the British Museum, and the Ashmolean. “Scholars try to attribute an enormous amount of drawings to Michelangelo," said Frank Zöllner, a professor of Renaissance and Modern art at the University of Leipzig in Germany. "Those people who believe in the large corpus are those active on the market or curators in public collections who have large Michelangelo holdings.”