Michelangelo found in maid's room

Drawing may be worth $12 million

This sketch, believed to be a Michelangelo, was found in a former maid's room at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A rare, unsigned chalk drawing by Michelangelo, worth $10 million to $12 million, has been discovered at a New York museum where it had been stored for 60 years -- without anyone realizing it had been drawn by the Renaissance master.

The drawing was found in April by a Scottish art scholar, Sir Timothy Clifford, while he was on sabbatical at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution.

It was found on the fourth floor of the museum in what was once a maid's room, Cooper-Hewitt Director Paul Thompson told Reuters.

The Michelangelo drawing was part of a group of five drawings and assorted prints purchased by the museum for $60 in 1942, Dr. Sarah Lawrence, director of the museum's masters program in decorative art history, told CNN.

Even after five centuries, the drawing of black chalk on lined cream paper, measuring 10 by 17 inches, is in pristine condition. It appears to be a plan for building an elaborate candelabra, six to nine feet high, Lawrence said.

In April, Clifford, director of the National Galleries of Scotland, found the drawing while sifting through a box in the museum's Drawings and Prints Department containing drawings of light fixtures by unknown artists.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO A drawing by Michelangelo worth millions was discovered in a New York museum where it had languished in a box for over 60 years. CNN's Martha Graham reports (July 10) Play video

"I think there's no question that he knew quite quickly what it was," she said. "We have a lot of stuff with attributions that are often changing. This is part of why it's exciting to be an art historian is that there are discoveries that are constantly being made."

Four experts in Italian Renaissance art have since verified the drawing was indeed the work of Michelangelo. Lawrence said it was also compared to a known Michelangelo decorative arts drawing in the British Museum, and the construction was similar.

Clifford's theory is that Michelangelo's drawing was a plan for erecting a Jewish menorah, possibly part of a commission relating to the Medici tombs project in Italy.

Based on prior sales of Michelangelo drawings, Cooper-Hewitt estimates that the drawing is worth $10 million to $12 million. But Lawrence said despite the windfall, there are no plans to sell it.

"We're looking forward to putting it on display and keeping it as one of the treasures of the Smithsonian," she said.

The last known discovery of a Michelangelo drawing in the United States was in 1976, when one was found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Cooper-Hewitt is one of just six public institutions in the United States to have a Michelangelo work, and very few of his drawings are known to reside in private collections, according to the museum.