London, November 12: Three academics from the Universities of Leipzig and Hamburg believe that most of the Michelangelos held in Britain are copies.

The works constitute about 40 per cent of the world’s Michelangelos.

In a five-volume study, the three academics have questioned how could hundreds of drawings by Michelangelo be circulating worldwide when modern accounts show that the artist had burnt most of them.

They are also publishing evidence that explains how so few drawings by Michelangelo survived after his death. According to them, the documents are so dramatic that one magazine tried to suppress it.

“Scholars try to attribute an enormous amount of drawings to Michelangelo . .. Those people who believe in the large corpus are those active on the market or curators in public collections who have large Michelangelo holdings, ” Times Online quoted Frank Zollner, a professor of Renaissance and Modern art at the University of Leipzig in Germany, as saying.

The findings of the academics cast doubt as to whether or not a number of sheets held by the Royal Collection, including the The Risen Christ, are real.

Dr Thomas Popper, a lecturer in art history at Leipzig, said that the right hand of the figure and its pentimenti indicated that the drawing had been copied.

“The drawing reveals what, for Michelangelo’s draughtsmanship, is a suspicious number of pentimenti, which might in fact be traceable to the copyist, ” he said.

The findings of the academics, who also include Dr Thomas Pöpper, a lecturer in art history at Leipzig, and Christof Thoenes, an honorary professor at the University of Hamburg, will be published by Taschen in Michelangelo: Complete Works, on November 19.

The academics are also doubtful about the genuineness of the Three Labours of Hercules, another sheet in The Royal Collection.

According to Dr. Popper, while the individual scenes have been developed to noticeably different degrees, Michelangelo would not have created such a frieze on a single sheet.

So far as a drawing of the Crucifixion in the British Museum is concerned, he said that it revealed a certain pedantry and a hesitation in the handling of line, which indicated that it was a copy.

He also believes that a sheet with two sketches for The Brazen Serpent in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is a copy of a lost original, a theory that is “supported by aspects of its technique”.

A spokeswoman for the Royal Collection said: “Royal Collection curators have no reason to doubt the widely and generally accepted attributions of these drawings to Michelangelo. ”

Hugo Chapman, the curator of Italian drawings for the British Museum, said: “The Crucifixion drawing is to me one of the most amazing and moving drawings in Western art. ” But he added: “I’m all for a healthy debate. Nothing is written in stone. ”

Timothy Wilson of the Ashmolean Museum said: “The Ashmolean is a university museum and welcomes intelligent and informed debate about all aspects of works of art in its care. ”

The three academics' study will be published by Taschen in Michelangelo: Complete Works on November 19. (ANI)