Art historians say "The Mike," as the family dubbed it, may actually be the work of Italian master Michelangelo, a long-lost piece of art worth tens, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars. For years, the Kober family was convinced the painting was a Michelangelo. Now, one of them says he finally has the documentation to prove it.
Art historians say this painting may be a Michelangelo and is possibly worth hundreds of millions of dollars. For eight decades it was in the home of a New York state family, who dubbed the painting "The Mike."
"My great-great-grandfather brought it to the States in 1883," Martin Kober, 53, said today in a phone interview from his home near Buffalo. Antonio Forcellino, a prominent Italian art historian and researcher, says the piece is undoubtedly a Michelangelo, likely "The Pieta With the Two Angels," an image of the Virgin Mary grieving over Jesus at his crucifixion painted in 1545.
"I had assumed it was going to be a copy," Forcellino told the New York Post. But after one visit to Kober's home, Forcellino says he knew right away that the piece was no such thing. "In reality, this painting was even more beautiful than the versions hanging in Rome and Florence. The truth was this painting was much better than the ones they had. I had visions of telling them that there was this crazy guy in America telling everyone he had a Michelangelo at home," he said.
Some are skeptical. William Wallace, a professor of art history at Washington University, says the painting is clearly from the 16th century, but he doesn't think Michelangelo is the artist. "Michelangelo I don't think actually painted this particular panel," Wallace told CNN. "In the Renaissance, anybody looking at this would call it a Michelangelo ... and they wouldn't have cared who painted it. We actually care who put a hand to the brush."
But after further study and an X-ray analysis, Forcellino says he is sure. The piece, he says, was probably painted by Michelangelo in the mid-16th century as a gift to a friend. For the next three centuries or so, Kober says, it was shuffled around among Europe's aristocratic families -- and even sought after by famous cardinals from the Vatican -- until a baroness gave it to the sister-in-law of Kober's great-great-grandfather, who then brought it to the United States.
Although the painting was briefly displayed at art galleries in upstate New York in the early 1900s, Kober, a retired Air Force pilot, said his family never had the time to document its history and prove the piece was one of Michelangelo's. "We went to the museums, the national galleries," Kober said. "They all said, 'We're just not interested because it's just not a Michelangelo.'" So for years, "The Mike" hung above the fireplace in Kober's childhood home near Rochester, where it was prominent only as a piece of family lore.
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"Maybe once a year at Christmastime, sitting around the fireplace, we would say, 'Mom, tell us about The Mike again.' And my mom would tell us that silly story about the famous painting of Jesus and the Virgin Mary that ended up in our house," Kober said. "That was it."Sometime during Kober's childhood, the painting was knocked down by a tennis ball, so for safe keeping, his parents decided to carefully wrap the heirloom and place it behind the living room couch. When he retired in 2003, Kober said, his curiosity about the painting was reignited, and now, "The Mike" is in a bank vault, where it will remain until he can have it sent to Italy to be completely restored and then placed in a museum.
Kober says his years of research on the painting were worth it. "With my chemical makeup as a retired fighter pilot and triathlon athlete, I wasn't going to give up on this. If you quit, you go home with nothing."