Historians argue over Caravaggio art claim

Published on 07/07/2012 00:00

Two Italian art historians claim to have discovered as many as 100 works, most of them drawings, by a young Caravaggio in a collection long attributed to a master Milanese artist he studied under while a boy in the late 1500s.

Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz and Adriana Conconi Fedrigolli claimed to have discovered the pictures on the eve of the publication of two ebooks laying out their case.

However, one expert familiar with the collection said it was unlikely that more than a few at most were done by Caravaggio and that none show the mature hand of the temperamental
artist.

The works were culled from the collection of Simone Peterzano, whose many pupils included Caravaggio from 1584 to 1588. The Peterzano collection, which is kept in Sforzesco Castle, a Milan landmark, contains nearly 1,400 works. Bernardelli said that until now experts had considered the collection to contain only works by Peterzano.

“Evidently no-one entertained the hypothesis that there were works” of his pupils, including Caravaggio, among the drawings, Bernardelli said.