Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam Museum in England May Have the Only Bronze Statues Made by Michelangelo Left in the World

On Monday, Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam Museum in England said two bronze statues that had been may in fact be the work of the Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo.

According to Washington Post the three-foot-high bronzes of two naked, muscular men atop panthers are unsigned, and art historians had long doubted their association with Michelangelo, assigning them to various other Renaissance sculptors.

A small detail from one of Michelangelo's student's drawings, however, connects the statues to the painter of the Sistine Chapel, according to the Fitzwilliam Museum.

"If the attribution is correct, they are the only surviving Michelangelo bronzes in the world," the museum said.

Paul Joannides, a professor of art history at the University of Cambridge, discovered the link between the bronzes and a 16th-century drawing held in the Musee Fabre in Montpellier, France. In the sketch, one of Michelangelo's apprentices had copied earlier drawings by his master, including one of a muscular man riding a panther, BBC reports.

The pose in the Musee Fabre sketch is similar and is drawn in a style used by Michelangelo, and when the bronzes were compared with known works of the Renaissance master, produced in the first decade of the 16th century, the similarities in form and anatomy abounded.

Preliminary scientific analysis, meanwhile, indicated the sculptures would have been produced during Michelangelo's lifetime. The casts were thick-walled and heavy, which indicates they date to the late 15th or early 16th century, according to an X-ray exam.

Victoria Avery, keeper of the applied arts department at the Fitzwilliam, no longer doubts the statues, most recently attributed to Dutch sculptor Willem Danielsz Van Tetrode, are Michelangelo's.

"It has been fantastically exciting to have been able to participate in this groundbreaking project, which has involved input from many art historians in the (United Kingdom), Europe and the (United) States, and to draw on evidence from conservation scientists and anatomists," Avery said.

Adding a slice of controversy, though, the Guardian noted its doubts about the quality of the bronzes. The British newspaper was not impressed with "the static and unexciting felines" and accused Michelangelo of "limited interest in the commission."

"Genius that he was, when he was bored he could -- very occasionally -- turn out hack work," the Guardian judged.