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A sandstone sculpture of a kneeling man sharpening a knife could be a long forgotten work by Michelangelo, according to an Italian scholar who has rediscovered the statue in a private collection. Measuring 111 centimeters (3.65 feet), the statue is now on display for the first time after more than 120 years at the exhibition, “And There Was Light. The Masters of the Renaissance,” in Göteborg, Sweden.
The powerful sculpture is a copy of a marble statue known as the “Arrotino” (the Blade-Sharpener) on display at the Uffizi gallery in Florence. Representing the Scythian slave who served Apollo and flayed the satyr Marsyas, the Uffizi sculpture is itself a Roman copy from a lost Hellenistic original.
“The sandstone Arrotino lacks of the nose and two left fingers. At a first look, this made me suspicious: Nose-missing statues are often forgeries. This was a known expedient to give a statue an antique look,” Flavia Zisa, archaeologist at the Kore University of Enna, Sicily, told Discovery News.
Believed to be an original Greek sculpture, the Uffizi Arrotino became the subject of innumerable faithful copies, especially in the 17th century.
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