For years the beautiful, curly haired statue of Cupid attracted little attention in the lobby of a stately Fifth Avenue mansion.
Then last fall the house was brilliantly lighted for an exhibition of French decorative arts, and an expert noticed it while walking by.She and other experts decided the 3-foot-tall marble statue was carved by none other than Michel-angelo.
The house, built between 1902 and 1906, was designed by architect Stanford White for the family of Payne Whitney. It was bought by the French government in the 1950s and today houses the cultural services of the French embassy.
The statue had been attributed to Michelangelo at an auction in London in 1902 and by an Italian scholar, Alessandro Parronchi, in 1968, but his view won no support among art historians at the time, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Last October when the mansion was lighted for the exhibition, Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, an authority on 16th-century Italian art, noticed the statue.
Brandt, who teaches at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, told the Times the statue "reminded me forcefully in its every detail of the earliest works of Michelangelo."
After researching the history of the house and sculpture, Brandt came to believe that the statue was indeed a work by the Italian Renaissance artist. Other experts, including James Draper, curator of European sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum, have come to agree.
The statue's future, however, may present legal and diplomatic problems.
The mansion belongs to the French government, which has not yet sent an expert of its own to examine the statue.