How Michelangelo finally got his due

New York

THERE are more than 130 Michelangelo drawings in the exhibition opening next week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer.

They are here on loan from dozens of institutions around the world, and span the artist's long creative life.

But one of the works is a sort-of new arrival: a drawing in black chalk on white paper from about 1530, which the show's curator, Carmen Bambach, has attributed to Michelangelo. The work, which has been in the collection of the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, since the 19th century, is a fragment of a page, with handwriting across the top and a sketch of two figures, one a reclining male nude, at the bottom.

In an interview, Ms Bambach, a curator in the Met's department of drawings and prints, explained how she concluded that the work is in Michelangelo's own…