From 31 March to 28 June 2015, the Museo del Prado will host, as a guest work, the only sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) to be preserved in Spain, a Saint John the Baptist as a Child. A work from the artist's youth (ca.1495-1496), it predates the Vatican Pietà and the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. It was donated in 1537 by Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Florence, to Francisco de los Cobos (1477-1547), secretary to Emperor Charles V, who sent it to the castle of his villa in Sabiote. Exhibited since the last third of the 16th century in the church of El Salvador in Úbeda (Jaén), it was recovered by the artistic bibliography in 1930 as a work by the great Florentine artist. A few years later, in 1936, during the Civil War, it suffered serious damage that reduced it to fragments and burnt pieces. The Ducal House of Medinaceli Foundation commissioned the Opificio delle Pietre-Dure in Florence to restore it. The delicate and complex restoration project began in 1994 and was completed in 2013 using innovative methods such as a virtual 3-D reconstruction of the entire sculpture based on photographs taken shortly before its destruction. After the intervention, the work is now on display at the Prado Museum before returning to Úbeda for good.
