ROME, ITALY.- Rab Hatfield, professor of art history at the University of Syracuse in Florence, has published the book titled "The Wealth of Michelangelo." Rab Hatfield, estimated that Michelangelo accumulated a fortune of $47 million dollars. The professor stumbled across two previously unknown bank accounts belonging to the artist. He then tracked Michelangelo’s expenditure on products such as marble and wine, and the income he received from his patrons. According to this new book, Michelangelo was one of the richest artists in history. Rab Hatfield found two undated letters in which Michelangelo referred to money he had deposited at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, an institution that combined banking services with the care of the sick. Hatfield said: "I didn’t really expect to find anything. Leonardo had an account there too, but it had already been published."

Professor Hatfield found a series of financial operations by Michelangelo and another account of the artist at the Balducci bank in Rome. The professor said that when Michelangelo closed these two accounts, he gave these savings to a male lover, the banker Pierfrancesco Borgherini. Michelangelo had written in his poems that art had made him "poor, old and working as a servant of others".