The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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0521551335 c 02 -p 4 CUNY 160 /Joannides 052155 133 1 January 11 , 2007 10 : 54

CATALOGUE 58 COPIES OF LOST OR PARTIALLY LOST DRAWINGS 283

attached to the blank verso of the sheet on which the pen

drawing was made. This means that between the publi-

cation of Robinson’s catalogue in187 0, and Parker’s in

1956 , the sheet must have undergone conservation treat-

ment, probably at the British Museum. At this time, it

waspresumably realised that what Robinson had taken to

be a single piece of paper was in fact a laminate. The two

sheets must then have been detached from one another,

and the sheet bearing the red chalk drawing reattached to

that bearing the pen drawing, but now in its proper sense

with the side of the second sheet that carries the chalk

work exposed to view, so that the red chalk drawing now

appears the right way round, in the opposite direction to

Fisher’s drawing. In this process, the side of the second

sheet on which Robinson had made his inscriptions –

which were not erased – was concealed between the two

layers.

Discussion

Recto

Another version of the recto, in Florence (CB 28 F/

B 213 /Corpus 126 ; pen and ink, 303 × 274 mm, irreg-

ular) includes four studies after the same antique model.

Three are the same size, and arranged in the same order,

as those on the present sheet; the fourth study, not

found here, is of the same torso, seen from the back.

CB 28 , which is by a fairly feeble hand, and surely not by

Bartolommeo Passerotti, to whom it has sometimes been

attributed, includes a further study, of the head of a bald

man, looking down. The identical head, somewhat better

drawn, recurs on a sheet by a different artist, in the Uffizi

( 617 E/B 212 /Corpus 127 ; pen and ink, 149 × 212 mm),

on which is also found what must be a facsimile copy of a

lostconcettobyMichelangelo for the scene of theFloodon

the Sistine ceiling. The bald head is no doubt copied from

a lost drawing by Michelangelo, and Michelangelo’s orig-

inal was probably made after a sculptural model – perhaps

an antique – since other drawings after this head, made

from different angles, are known (see de Tolnay, 1975 ,

p. 102 ). A similar, but not identical, head does occur in

theFlood, and it could be that the originals of both the

head study and the quartet of nude studies on CB 28 F

and the trio on the present sheet were made in prepa-

ration for that fresco, in which several nude women are

represented.

However, on balance, this seems unlikely. The orig-

inals of the nude studies on the present sheet and on

CB 28 Fwere probably made as practice drawings, some-

what before15 0 8– 9. There are close similarities with

female nudes studied on a sheet of drawings in the Mus ́ee

Cond ́e, Chantilly (Lanfranc de Panthou 38 recto/Corpus

24 ; pen and ink, 261 ×38 6mm), which were no doubt

based on the same antique fragment. The figure on the

right of the present sheet, in left profile, is very like

that on the right of that in Chantilly. Another draw-

ing by Michelangelo, probably of c.15 0 5,visible on the

laid-down verso of a sheet in the Musee des Beaux-Art ́

in Rennes (Inv. 794. 1. 2913 /Corpus 632 ; pen and ink,

250 × 138 mm), of the haunches of a female nude from

the rear, shows that Michelangelo continued to study the

female form as represented in the sculpture of classical

antiquity. Michelangelo was later to study a similar antique

fragment in a series of black chalk drawings made in the

early15 2 0s, when he was planning the female allegories

for the New Sacristy. His studies are now divided between

the Casa Buonarroti and the British Museum:

1. W 43 /Corpus 232 ;black chalk, 256 ×18 0mm

2. W 44 /Corpus 233 ;black chalk, 202 × 110 mm

3. CB 16 F/B 69 /Corpus 234 ;black chalk, 147 × 100 mm

4. CB 41 F/B 70 /Corpus 231 ;black chalk, 200 × 147 mm

As Wilde first indicated, all four were no doubt once

parts of a single sheet. Michelangelo referred to the

same torso in a now fragmentary drawing of the same

period (Louvre, Inv. 725 verso/J 23 /Corpus 230 ;black

chalk, 223 × 123 mm).

The attribution of the present drawing to Raffaello da

Montelupo is understandable but unconvincing. It con-

tains a good deal of hatching, which runs from lower right

to upper left, characteristic of a left-handed draughtsman,

but nearly as much hatching conforms to that of a right-

handed artist. In no known drawing does Raffaello copy

so precisely Michelangelo’s graphic style, and he generally

employs for his copies a medium different from that of the

original. Furthermore, he seems to have copied relatively

few drawings from phases of Michelangelo’s work prior

to that of the New Sacristy.

There exists a group of pen drawings made by an artist

working close to Michelangelo, which must date from late

in the fifteenth or early in the sixteenth century. The com-

piler has conjecturally attributed this group to Michelan-

gelo’s friend and assistant Piero d’Argenta, who also seems

to be the most likely candidate for the authorship of the

present recto. The group includes the following:

1. London, British Museum, 1859 - 5 - 14 - 825 ,anude

man, with head and shoulders missing, holding a cup and

a jug; pen and ink, some stylus indentation, 168 × 135 mm

(irregular, maximum dimensions). Currently ascribed

tentatively to Giovanni Antonio Sodoma, this unpub-

lished drawing was part of the Buonarroti purchase of