This  beautiful statue of a slender boy is quite the centre of controversy at the moment. It is recorded that Michelangelo (Caprese, Arezzo 1475-Rome 1564) did sculpt such a marble in Florence in the period before he left his adopted city for a visit to Rome in 1496.
The same statue was sketched by French artist Jean-Robert Ange as he saw it in Rome 1756-73. "Young Archer" first hit our headlines when it was re-discovered standing innocent and ignored in the foyer of the French Consulate in New York a few years ago. It has been restored by the Metropolitan Museum of New York and  was the centrepiece of an exhibition in Florence called "Giovinezza di Michelangelo" (the early years of Michelangelo).
In that exhibition it stood on a high plinth (perhaps too high) between two other early sculptures by Michelangelo, the angel candle bearer from Bologna and his wooden crucifix for Santo Spirito. When I was there, two eminent male art historians in misshapen tweed jackets and bow ties flitted between the angel and the archer, comparing the two. 

The 'Young Archer' was recorded by Aldovrandi in 1556 as a 'Cupid' or an Apollo' executed by Michelangelo circa 1497 for the banker Jacopo Galli. Vasari, Condivi and Varchi all record its existence. It was later in the Borghese collection in Rome from whom the famous Florentine collector Bardini purchased it. When the archer was sold in London at Christie's on the 27th May 1902, it was catalogued as "in the manner of Michelangelo". This catalogue entry was presumed the last known trace of the statue until it was spotted by an art historian in the foyer of the French Consulate in New York where it had been standing in obscurity for decades.

The angel is an accepted work, the archer is not. In fact, it carried the label at the exhibition "attributed to Michelangelo". For one hour they scrutinized every aspect of the archer and verbalized loudly their opinions agitating the guards no end by tracing every line of the boy's body with their fingers dangerously close to the surface. "The face is too flat!" said one, "The proportion of the diaphragm to the abdomen too long!" declared the other until finally the elder academic threw up his hands in extravagant resignation and admitted "It is beautiful though. Very beautiful. I just do not know. "
It seems Michelangelo's little boy will rest in authorship limbo for a while longer.
 

The Florence exhibition was important as it successfully revealed the models Michelangelo's own art took root upon and grew from. Sculptures by Benedetto da Maino, Donatello and Bertoldo di Giovanni a brilliant interpreter of the antique were on display and led up to the group of early works attributed to Michelangelo. In da Maino's 'Saint Sebastian' we saw an obvious prototype for Michelangelo's much later series of famous "prisoners" or "prigioni" now in the Accademia and in an early quattrocento bronze putto we saw the origins of the pose for "Young Archer".
 

However the organizers were naive to think people would leave the Florence exhibition convinced that Michelangelo was no boy prodigy but simply well taught and adept at copying his predecessors. If anything, after gazing upon 'The Manchester Madonna' and his 'Battle of the Centaurs' visitors left thinking that Michelangelo is indeed a rare genius superior to all that came before him.
 
 
 
 

RLG