Narcissus

In the sixteenth century, a statue of Cupid made by Michelangelo around 1490 was recorded in the house of Jacopo Galli in Rome. For a long time, a marble statue in the Victoria & Albert Museum was identified with this work by Michelangelo, that was formerly believed to be lost. New research revealed that the statue in London is an ancient Roman copy of a Hellenistic sculpture representing the Greek mythological figure of Narcissus and that it was significantly reworked in the sixteenth century. In 1905 the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest ordered the plaster cast copy of the statue because it was identified as Michelangelo’s work, and it was exhibited at that time in the Michelangelo Room of the museum. The plaster cast survived in a strongly damaged condition.