Milan city council has extended the display of a controversial new sculpture by Italy’s most famous living artist, Maurizio Cattelan.

The sculpture – officially titled L.O.V.E. but popularly known as The Middle Finger – will now remain in the Piazza d’Affari outside the Milan stock exchange until the end of a retrospective of Cattelan’s work in the city on 24 October.

Now admirers of the artist’s work are pressing for the piazza to become its permanent home.

But opinions are sharply divided.

Cattelan’s latest creation is a huge hand, beautifully sculpted from Carrara marble – the same material used by Michelangelo and Bernini.

But its middle finger is extended skywards in a very un-Renaissance-like gesture of contempt. That – given its position here just a stone’s throw from the stock exchange – has invited discussion of a possible anti-capitalist message, though the artist himself has denied any such intention.

You can guess who thinks this work “disgusting”.

To me, the work is obvious in its contempt – presumably of corruption and crime. While capitalism doesn’t have the market cornered on either of those commodities [har] one may assume that stock markets and their daily dealings are one of the better sources for such sociological sewage.