Villagers claim church fresco is lost Michelangelo
Parishioner's confession leads to discovery of monogram behind altar John Hooper in Rome
Thursday February 23, 2006

No one else knows what the pensioner told the priest about what he got up to when he was a naughty altar boy. But his confession holds out the tantalising possibility that there could be a lost Michelangelo on the wall of a village church in Chianti.

For centuries the inhabitants of Marcialla have handed down the legend that a fresco above the altar was painted by the great Florentine artist in his youth. And the claim has sometimes been referred to in scholarly texts. The rest