What do you think of this fact?
Michelangelo is the name you think of when you hear “genius”. But his career got a push from something that today would count as art fraud.
A brand-new antique
In 1496, Michelangelo was 21. As Atlas Obscura puts it, he had the talent but not the name to sell his work at a good price. Many collectors, on the other hand, were far more interested in owning classical sculptures from antiquity. So he carved a marble statue of a sleeping Cupid and made it look old.
How exactly is told in different ways. According to The Art Newspaper, the biographer Paolo Giovio wrote that Michelangelo kept the statue buried in the earth for a while and then dug it up, with stains and deliberate damage. According to Atlas Obscura, Giorgio Vasari tells it differently: in his version, it was the dealer who buried the statue in his vineyard. Either way, the “ancient” Cupid was sold for a high price to Cardinal Raffaele Riario, a collector of Roman antiquities.
Caught, and then hired
The cardinal eventually learned that his antique was brand new. According to Atlas Obscura, his anger was aimed mainly at the dealer, Baldassare del Milanese, who had to give his part of the money back. Michelangelo kept his cut.
And then came the twist: instead of punishing the forger, Riario invited him to Rome. According to The Art Newspaper, the cardinal became Michelangelo’s first patron there and commissioned further works, including the statue of Bacchus that now stands in the Bargello in Florence. The Museum of Hoaxes sums it up: the cardinal was impressed by his talent and didn’t press charges.
Bonus fact: The fake had a glamorous afterlife. It ended up with Isabella d’Este in Mantua, was bought by King Charles I and taken to England in 1631, and was most likely destroyed in a fire at Whitehall Palace in 1698.
So one of the most famous artists in history got his big break by being too good at faking.