The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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90 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS CATALOGUE 8

(see the drawing, attributed by the compiler to Piero
d’Argenta, in the Louvre, Inv. 687 /J 44 /Corpus 12 ).
Indeed, although the compiler has not found an exact
source, the movement of the drapery in the present draw-
ing does come close to certain motifs in Federighi’s fig-
ures. But whether or not the drawing is a copy of an
earlier work – and on balance the compiler is inclined to
think it is not – he has, after considerable hesitation, come
to accept the attribution to Michelangelo maintained by
Wilde and Gardner. The handling, while employing a
finer pen and a scratchier line than usually found in his
drapery studies, comes very close to certain passages in
theStanding Draped Woman(formerly at Castle Howard,
Yorkshire; sold at Sotheby’s London, 11 July 2001 , lot 81 ;
pen and ink with white body colour, 260 × 164 mm; see
Ongpin, 2001 )–adrawing famous in the sixteenth cen-
tury – which the compiler is inclined to date c.15 0 6.
Michelangelo seems to have been fascinated at this time
bycomplex organisations of drapery, a fascination that
would be productive when he came to fresco the Sis-
tine vault, and both theStanding Draped Womanand the
present drawing may have been connected with some
painting projected during the six months or so passed by
Michelangelo in Florence in15 0 6.
In any case, whatever is believed about the date and
authorship of the recto, of its startling difference from
the verso there can be no doubt, and no recent stu-
dent has believed both to be by the same hand. The last
to accept the verso as by Michelangelo seems to have
been Berenson. It has subsequently been attributed to
Florentine draughtsmen active in the second half of the
sixteenth century, namely Battista Naldini ( 1535 – 91 ) and
Francesco Morandini, called il Poppi (15 4 5– 97 ), attribu-
tions which – if the recto drawing were accepted as by
Jacopo della Quercia – would entail accepting that a sheet
first used before 1440 subsequently passed into Michelan-
gelo’s hands to be annotated some three-quarters of a
century later, then migrated to one of two artists born
after Michelangelo left Florence permanently, and with
whom he is not known to have had any connection, to be
drawn upon once more, and that still later it returned to
Casa Buonarroti. Such a scenario is improbable. Even to
assume that a sheet passed from Michelangelo to Naldini
or Poppi – and was used by one or the other rather
than preserved as a precious relic – and then returned
to Buonarroti possession strains credulity.
Neither of the proposed attributions of the Faun’s
head – a derivation from some Hellenistic sculptural
model such as the Satyr in the so-calledInvitation to the
Dance–toNaldini and Poppi has been argued in any
detail, and to the compiler neither seems convincing.
Much more is now known about the drawings of both

artists than in 1956 , and neither of them handles chalk in
this manner. Of the two, Poppi’s work comes closest, and
he made many copies after antique and modern heads
and other body parts in red and black chalk. But Poppi’s
drawings of this type are generally arranged half a dozen
or more to a page, are highly self-conscious, and are of
a stony virtuosity of execution. In fact, the chalk style
of the present study, although softer than that employed
byMichelangelo in most of his drawings of comparable
type, is nevertheless not too distant from his: It comes
closest to hisIdeal Head of a Womanin the Louvre (Inv.
12299 /J 28 /Corpus 321 ;red chalk, 313 × 246 mm). Sim-
ilarly, even though the emotion does not seem imme-
diately Michelangelesque, parallels can be found in his
work for such smiling heads, such as the Faun accompa-
nying his 1497 Bacchusand theignudoto the right above
Esaiason the Sistine ceiling, for which a study exists in
the Louvre (Inv. 860 /J 19 /Corpus 143 ;black chalk with
touches of white heightening, 307 × 207 mm). The fact
that so sensitive a critic as Berenson could accept this head
as by Michelangelo is not without significance. It would
obviously be tempting to see it as by a pupil, but it seems
too fine to be by Mini and, furthermore, not in the style
associated with him even at his best. It might, in prin-
ciple, be by Pietro Urbano, according to Vasari – who
presumably got the information from Michelangelo – a
more accomplished pupil, but there is no good reason for
an attribution to him.
In the compiler’s opinion, the drawing is by Baccio
Bandinelli, c. 1516 ,but he would admit that no example
of Bandinelli’s undisputed draughtsmanship is sufficiently
close to prove the attribution. Part of the difficulty rests
on the fact that the present drawing is more subtle and
supple in its modelling, richer in its evocation of sur-
face texture, and more evanescent in its emotion than the
majority of Bandinelli’s comparable studies, which aim
for simplified planes and constructional fixity. However,
such features are more characteristic of his later work
and it is clear from the drawings that he made during
his teens and early twenties that he was then an artist
more sensitive to mobility of form and expression than
is generally supposed. Thus, the present drawing shares
strongly Leonardesque formal qualities with Bandinelli’s
masterly pen and ink copy after Leonardo’s lostAnnunci-
atory Angel(Christie’s, London, 1 July 1969 , lot 119 , pen
and ink, 356 × 265 mm; see Ward, 1988 , Fig. 5 )anda
surface treatment with Bandinelli’s red chalk portrait of
awoman (generally identified as his future wife Jacopa
Doni; Paris, Louvre, Inv. 81 , 243 × 190 mm), in which
the description of the eyes is similar. The shading setting
off the head is a device found frequently in Bandinelli’s
drawings. The sculpturesque simplification of the waves of
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