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0521551331 c 01 -p 3 a CUNY 160 /Joannides 052155 133 1 January 11 , 2007 10 : 18
CATALOGUE 56 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS 273Many efforts have been made to interpret this page
since it was first revealed in 1953. Morrogh’s is the most
elaborate, most closely observed, and, to the compiler,
byfar the most convincing, but it needs to be modified
in one or two particulars. And, furthermore, of the six
separable studies on this page – ignoring single lines – it
seems clear that not all were made for the same project.
The two plans, drawn first on a small scale and then on
a larger one, are the only ones that we have by Michelan-
gelo’s own hand for the Conservatori and they fully sup-
port Morrogh’s late dating of the final project. Because
they present a solution so very different from the project
as executed, and because they are obviously late drawings,
this demonstrates that the final version was a realisation of
the close of the artist’s life. They alone should have pro-
vided a warning against Ackerman’s chronology. Drawn
first, at the left, is a sequence of rectangles, each separated
from the next by two circles. There is a total of seven rect-
angles and six groups of two circles. Although there are a
few irregularities, with one circle seeming to stray inside
arectangle, these seem to represent the plans of individual
compartments separated from one another by architraves
or beams that are carried by paired columns. Thus, in
embryo, the cell-like construction principle of the Con-
servatori, which has a seven-bay fac ̧ade, is defined.
This plan was then tried again, more fully worked out,
and on a larger scale, to the right. The sheet, which prob-
ably has not been cut down substantially, was never tall
enough to show all seven bays on the enlarged scale, but
because the system was repetitive, there was no need to do
so. Michelangelo has here drawn three rectangular com-
partments and half of a fourth. Each is again separated
from the next by paired columns. All the elements are
more precisely defined. The columns are now shown to
stand on paired rectangular bases in a graphic formula like
that seen in Cat. 54 verso. The compartments now seem
to have windows or doors at the right side with strongly
accentuated corners, and they may themselves be subdi-
vided, with a small atrium area, if the apertures are doors,
or a window-seat area, if they are windows, plus the main
compartment. At the left, where Michelangelo has writ-
tenporta, they open into, presumably, the undescribed rear
of the building. The formula is, as De Angelis d’Ossat so
shrewdly realised, very like that sketched some thirty years
earlier by Michelangelo in a drawing in Florence (CB 42 A
recto/B 78 /Corpus 541 ; pen and black chalk, 209 × 294
mm). This famous drawing, which Wittkower – followed
bymany other scholars – believed to be for the interior of
the Laurentian Library reading room, was rightly identi-
fied by De Angelis d’Ossat as a design for the exterior of
a structure. It was suggested by the compiler ( 1981 b) that
it is, in fact, a project of c.15 2 4for the exterior of theLaurentian Library, when it was considered briefly as a
high two-storey structure, set in parallel with the church,
debouching eastwards into the Piazza di San Lorenzo,
from the north-east corner of the cloister. Such a structure
would have required an imposing exterior fac ̧ade cross-
ing the Piazza di San Lorenzo. Although this hypothesis
was queried by Salmon, 1990 , the compiler is inclined to
retain it.
In any case, there can be little doubt of the closeness of
CB 42 Arecto/Corpus 541 to the project for the Palazzo
dei Conservatori as seen in the plans on the present page,
and the link confirms that Michelangelo took as his start-
ing point discarded designs for the Laurentian Library.
Like CB 42 Arecto/Corpus 541 ,inwhich the upper and
lower storey of the building were continuous, the fac ̧ade
of the Conservatori as represented in the present plan
would have been flat with no passage beneath an over-
hanging upper storey. Something of this is carried over
into the fac ̧ade as built, in which, instead of the inviting
arcade of the traditional cloister, like the piazza of Santis-
sima Annunziata, also in Michelangelo’s mind when plan-
ning the Capitoline Hill, there is a tense contrast between
wall and space.
It is difficult to work out in any detail what the ele-
vation corresponding to the plan on this page would
have looked like, but, once again, CB 42 A/Corpus 541
is probably the best guide. It is clear that at this moment,
Michelangelo did not envisage the giant pilasters that
now imbue the building with so powerful a combina-
tion of compactness, energy, and grandeur but thought
of a lower storey articulated by embedded columns and
wide pilaster strips, and, probably, a double cornice, again
like CB 42 A/Corpus 541.
The two plans run down the sheet. De Tolnay inter-
preted the free-hand line just to the right of the upper plan
and the loosely ruled line just behind the paired columns
of the larger plan, which converge slightly towards the top
of the page, as marking the edges of the ribs of a dome
(that of St. Peter’s) with some coffering indicated. In the
compiler’s view, the convergence, which is very slight, is
not intentional and has no function.
When we focus on the horizontal, a different situation
presents itself. There are three clusters of parallel lines
ruled, not very precisely, across the whole width of the
sheet: at the top, some 85 mm below the top, and again
some 95 mm below that. They were drawn before the
plans just described. These clusters, which are not identi-
cal in their make-up, cut across the paired columns in the
large plan and might at first sight be thought to represent
the beams that the columns support. But because they
run all the way across the sheet, they cannot represent this
solely. And indeed, Michelangelo seems to have regarded