Mary Magdalene may have been identified among the 300 tangled figures depicted in Michelangelo’s celebrated Sistine Chapel masterpiece after a centuries-long hunt.

Sara Penco, an Italian art restorer, said her research suggested that a blonde woman in The Last Judgment artwork, who is depicted kissing a wooden cross held by a figure said to be Jesus Christ, was the famous female disciple.

“I am firmly convinced that this is Mary Magdalene … the intimacy with the cross, the yellow dress and the blonde hair but also the whole context in which Michelangelo places this figure to underscore her importance,” Ms Penco told a media conference in Rome on Tuesday.

Art experts have long tried to identify the wide-eyed woman, who appears in the far right-hand corner of the fresco on the wall behind the Vatican chapel’s altar.

However, Ms Penco, who specialises in Renaissance and Baroque art, said her research should finally put an end to the mystery.

She said: “The fresco was screaming that something was missing. Michelangelo was an expert painter, he was very cultured, he was someone who knew the dynamics of the church very well, he knew the Gospels and he could not have forgotten her.”