Attributions provide art historians with drama. Changes in the accepted authorship of works of art, whether they are supported by scrupulously marshaled evidence, informed intuition, persuasive or half-baked theories, or a combination of all of these, can be met with enthusiastic acceptance, polite skepticism, or rampant hostility within the academic and museum communities. The fiercest debates are usually between curators and art historians, but sometimes, if the artists involved are famous enough, new opinions about who did what (and occasionally when they did it) are greeted with equal interest by both scholarly publications and the mass media.

If recent evidence is to be trusted, questions of attribution can also become the basis of extremely popular museum ex- hibitions, at least, if the reassignment of authorship is a conspicuous upgrade—audiences don’t usually flock to see works that have been demoted from autograph efforts to “workshop of,” “circle of,” or “follower of.” But as a spate of shows since last June attests, even casual visitors are eager to see newly “discovered” works by luminaries. Last summer at the Metropolitan Museum, for example, surprising numbers of viewers sought out a small, jewel-toned painting based on a Martin Schoengauer engraving, The Torment of Saint Anthony. The complicated little image of the bearded ascetic surrounded by demonic creatures is now believed to be the first painting made by a twelve- or thirteen-year-old Michelangelo Buonarotti. Both the picture and the well-documented fact that the aspiring young artist copied the Schoengauer print while