The painting Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness (c.1510, Metropolitan museum of Art) has long been attributed to the workshop of Italian artist Francesco Granacci. But Everett Fahy, former head of the museum's European paintings department, now believe the painting may have been created by Michelangelo. Fahy says he is aware the critics will throw 'brickbats' at him, but is adamant in his view stating 'I am confident that the only artist capable of making this splendid painting was Michelangelo.' Granacci and Michelangelo were good friends in their time. The Met bought the painting in the 1970s for $150,000.
'The second panel is so superior to the companion panel,' Fahy says. 'I believe Michelangelo painted it in 1506, two years before he started on the Sistine ceiling. It was already in my brain in 1971, the year after it was bought. When the Metropolitan showed it in 1971, I wrote for an exhibition called 'Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries' that the second panel recalled the figures in the Sistine Chapel. As years went by, it firmed up. I had long believed it to be by Michelangelo, but exactly when I don't know. There wasn't a moment when I suddenly said, 'This is absolutely by Michelangelo.' It was a gradual recognition.'
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