alt Hacker News> It seems massively unlikely.
Why? There were other talented people who produced masterful works at an early age. From the same time as this there's a Dürer self-portrait, also aged 12-13:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Portrait_at_the_Age_of_13
> We don't have any really reliable records from that time.
Uh, no. There's no documented attribution of that painting to Michelangelo; that doesn't mean that other things weren't reliably recorded.
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SoftTalker • yesterday at 7:16 PM
I'm no expert judge but I think there were kids in my middle school who could draw something like that. Certainly in high school.
That is slightly unconvincing. Durer is indeed a similar genius, but the complexity of that drawing is an order of magnitude lower than the painting.
Source: know how to draw really well.