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The Metropolitan Museum of Art says:

Now on view at the Met is the marble sculpture Young Archer, attributed to Michelangelo. For decades the fragmentary marble figure of a nude youth was displayed in the entrance hall of a Fifth Avenue mansion that now houses the Cultural Services office of the French Embassy. The sculpture was visible from the sidewalk, but remained unremarked until 1990 when it was observed by Met Curator James David Draper, the first scholar to publish its whereabouts. At that time Draper did not recognize the sculpture as by Michelangelo but believed it to be by a later Florentine sculptor who was familiar with the work of Bertoldo di Giovanni, Michelangelo’s mentor. In 1997 in articles in The Burlington Magazine, New York University professor Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt’s attribution of the marble to the young Michelangelo caused a scholarly stir. Brandt’s attribution to Michelangelo was supported by Draper and endorsed by many scholars, while others disagreed. Come and see for yourself—the sculpture will be on view at the Met for ten years as a special loan from the French Republic, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.

 

Image: Attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (Florence, 1475- Rome, 1564). Young Archer. Lent by the French Republic, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. Photograph Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art