Fabio Orazzo should have been on his way home to Naples for the weekend. Instead, curiosity kept him in Rome, where he teaches art and history, long enough to jump on a bus to visit a little-known church in the north-east of the Italian capital.<\/p>\n
He came to Sant\u2019Agnese fuori le mura (St Agnes Outside the Walls), built above fourth-century catacombs, to see a marble bust depicting Christ the Saviour. A fixture in the church since 1590, it has been thrust into the spotlight by the bold claim that it could have been sculpted by Michelangelo<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI read about it in the news and decided I must come to see it,\u201d Orazzo said while examining the sculpture on the altar of a side chapel. \u201cI\u2019ve read all the cynical comments and comparisons to Cristo della Minerva, the Michelangelo statue in another Rome church. They say this bust isn\u2019t the artist\u2019s style. But perhaps they were made in different periods of his life and so in my humble opinion, this is a Michelangelo too.\u201d<\/p>\n Orazzo was among a steady stream of visitors to the church since Valentina Salerno, an independent researcher, claimed during a press conference last week that newly discovered documents linked the bust to Michelangelo. The announcement caused a stir in the art world, especially since a sketch<\/a> attributed to the Renaissance master \u2013 but dismissed by some as a copy \u2013 sold for \u00a316.9m at a Christie\u2019s auction in London on 5 February.<\/p>\n Fabio Orazzo, an art and history teacher, takes a picture of the Christ the Saviour sculpture in north-east Rome. Photograph: Victor Sokolowicz\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Salerno, a fiction author and actor, is the first to admit she \u201cis not an art historian\u201d. Neither did she finish university. But, she said, her three years at law school were \u201cvery useful\u201d because they equipped her with the skill and tenacity to \u201cread these notary acts, wills and inventories with a legal eye\u201d.<\/p>\n For more than a decade, she has sifted through records in Italian and Vatican<\/a> state archives in pursuit of details about the final days of Michelangelo\u2019s life in Rome, where he lived for roughly 30 years until his death in 1564.<\/p>\n \u201cI found it impossible to believe that nobody had studied the last days of his life in a deep way,\u201d said Salerno, who published her findings on academia.edu<\/a>, a non-peer reviewed website used by academics. \u201cThere are so many mysteries.\u201d<\/p>\n Salerno said her most revealing discovery was of documents about a secret room, locked with multiple keys, in which the artist had ordered his close associates to stash some of his drawings and sculptures \u2013 apparently including the Christ the Saviour bust. This challenges the long-held theory that Michelangelo had burned his works before he died.<\/p>\n Valentina Salerno has challenged art experts to prove she is wrong in attributing the sculpture to Michelangelo. Photograph: Victor Sokolowicz\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Salerno claims Michelangelo\u2019s goal was to hide his treasures from relatives he detested in Florence and for them to be passed on for future study.<\/p>\n