A 21-year-old Michelangelo buried a statue to age it artificially
His fake antique got him caught, refunded, and furious — and it's also the scandal that launched his career in Rome.
Around 1496, a 21-year-old sculptor in Florence carved a sleeping cupid and, on the advice of his patron Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, artificially aged it to pass as a genuine Roman antique. Ancient statuary sold for far more than contemporary work, and the plan was straightforward: bury it, chip it, sell it as old.
A dealer named Baldassare del Milanese moved the piece to Cardinal Raffaele Riario in Rome, who paid handsomely for what he believed was a classical treasure. When the truth surfaced, the cardinal demanded his money back. The dealer, who'd pocketed most of the markup, refused to return a cent to the young sculptor, telling him he'd sooner smash the statue into a hundred pieces than hand it over.
Michelangelo kept his cut of the sale and, more importantly, kept the attention it bought him. The forgery scandal is the reason Cardinal Riario first learned his name — and Michelangelo's move to Rome shortly after is where he sculpted the Bacchus and, soon enough, the Pietà.
The cupid itself vanished centuries ago, likely destroyed in a 1698 fire at Whitehall Palace in London. What survived was the lesson underneath the con: sometimes the fastest way to get taken seriously is to convince someone you're already history.