The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

P 1 : KsF
0521551331 c 01 b CUNY 160 /Joannides 052155 133 1 January 11 , 2007 6 : 36

128 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS CATALOGUE 19

and made of good thread, and being so good and thick as

said make some more and let me have it on Saturday as you

promised and make it excellent and I shall cause the money

to be paid to you through Donato there or to any one here

as you will advise.

Discussion

It is universally recognised that the present draw-

ing is intimately connected with one in the British

Museum, acquired from the Buonarroti Collection in

1859 (W 24 /Corpus 521 ; pen and ink, 146 × 171 mm).

It is unclear when the present sheet was cut apart and

reassembled, and it is also uncertain whether or not this

sheet once formed a single whole with that in the British

Museum. If not, they probably formed successive pages

of a sketchbook that Michelangelo used both for draw-

ings and for rough draughts of letters. The draught of the

letter was written by Michelangelo when he was in Ser-

ravezza and concerned obtaining strong ropes for hauling

marble. It is datable, as established by Wilde, to 10 – 12

August 1518 (although it seems to have been intended for

Crocco Pizzicagnolo in Pisa rather than Francesco Peri,

as Wilde thought), and although the letter does not prove

that the recto drawings are contemporary (cf. Cat. 24 ),

this date seems plausible.

Wilde suggested that the drawings planned a pair of

ambior pulpits, and this seems correct. The placing of the

candlesticks on the edge of the parapet is similar to that

found in many pulpits. The idea was criticised by Kurz,

buthewas mistaken in assuming that paired pulpits were

no longer current in Michelangelo’s time. Those incor-

porated into the choir screen in the Frari, constructed in

the 1470 s, which Michelangelo would have seen when he

wasinVenice in 1494 , and those by Donatello, sculpted

in the 1460 sbut erected in San Lorenzo only in the sec-

ond decade of the cinquecento, are sufficient to refute

this opinion.

A plausible project was identified by Morselli. In 1517 ,

the Opera del Duomo was interested in rebuilding the

choir, and even though there is no direct documentary

evidence that Michelangelo was consulted, it is hardly

credible that he would not have been, given that he had

been allocated the commission for the statues of Apostles

to be placed in the Duomo only a dozen years ear-

lier. The rather simplified and linear style of the draw-

ings is similar to that which he employed in studies that

are usually dated at about the same time and are associ-

ated with drawings by Michelangelo generally identified

as projects for the articulation of the drum of the same

church.

It seems unlikely that theambis were intended to

have integral figural decoration, such as reliefs, but the

small figure sketch, A, might be a first idea for a

cherub to be executed in bronze, like thespiritelliby

Donatello (Paris, Musee Jacquemart-Andr ́ e), which were ́