After years of intense study the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge finally feels it has all the proof it needs to pronounce the praxis of the Adonisistic Rothschild bronzes titled Nude Bacchants Riding On Panthers proves beyond doubt their maker:
Only Michelangelo made abdomens—and wonky toes—like these (theguardian.com).
A four-year research project that included painstaking examination of wonky toes, eight-pack abdomens, bulging thigh muscles and wavy pubic hair has helped to convince academics that Michelangelo is the maker of two works known as the Rothschild bronzes.
With no other Michelangelo bronze works known to have survived and depicting the “handsome, ripped, nude men riding panther-like creatures&rdquo suggesting he was like a cat lover as well as having a profound fondness for his choice of muse. Several factor apparently being a particular giveaway to the art historians:
These included anatomically correct pubic hair, “rather curly, unruly and normal”, and feet that have a short big toe and a long second toe that points outwards, as you would see if the toes had a flip-flop strap between them. That conforms to the way Michelangelo almost aways [sic.] carved, drew and painted toes.
And:
Then there is the fact that the figures have an eight-pack, an anatomical anomaly that again can be repeatedly seen in the work of Michelangelo and suggests that the male model he used had one.
Which may or may not have all been representative of the body perfectionism of the sculpture of Ancient Greece and Rome of which The Renaissance (Wikipedia) was a rebirth of the appreciation of and reminding that body objectification was certainly not born in by 20th Century media nor restricted to female gender despite the shaming of 85% of nudes in museums being females being artistic raison d’être of the Guerrilla Girls (Latest Picks 21st Jul. 2016).
[Professor of clinical anatomy at Warwick Medical School Peter Abrahams] said the male figures were “slightly on steroids, they are pumped up, but if you were a guy lifting masonry stone all your life you would be like that.”
“Slightly on steroids” eight-packs, bushes of unruly pubes and wonky toes in flip-flops certainly bringing the studio of the Italian Renaissance master using the sight-size method to measure things up with his pencil and thumb to life in the minds eye I guess.
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