P 1 : JZP
0521551335 c 02 -p 4 CUNY 160 /Joannides 052155 133 1 January 11 , 2007 10 : 54
290 COPIES OF LOST OR PARTIALLY LOST DRAWINGS CATALOGUE 60edges to the backboard of the mount, and the verso is not
visible.Inscription
Lower right, very faintly in ink:Michel Angelo? No. 55in
graphite.Description
A.A male head in right profile with elaborate locks.
B.A small male head in right profile, tilted down.
C.Immediately below B. A small male head facing right,
turned slightly upward and outward, perhaps related to
the head of Adam in theCreation of Adam.
D.A female head in right profile; probably after an orig-
inal of the15 2 0s.
E.A female head in right profile, with an expansive head-
covering; probably after an original of the15 2 0s; slightly
Pontormesque in flavour.
F. A head copied at the same size as the original from
Michelangelo’s red chalk study of the head of theignudo
left abovePersicaon the verso of his study for Adam in
theCreation of Adamin the British Museum, W 11 /Corpus
134.
G.A head of a man, looking downwards, his face tilted
slightly upwards. Probably after an original of theLast
Judgementperiod.
H.Afemale head with turban seen from front, tilted
upwards; perhaps another view of E. The type is not far
from that of the New SacristyDawn.
I. A male head copied at the same size as the original from
Michelangelo’s red chalk study of the head on a sheet in
the Uffizi 14412 Frecto/B 147 /Corpus37 9, perhaps made
in connection with theLast Judgementbutinanycase of
the early153 0s.
J. A head of a young man in right profile.
K.An old satyr? in right profile.
L.Ayoung satyr in right profile.Discussion
It is certain that two of these heads, and probable that
all of them, are copies after drawings by Michelan-
gelo. F is copied from a Michelangelo drawing in the
British Museum (W 11 /Corpus 134 verso; red chalk,
193 × 259 mm) for the head of theignudoto the left
abovePersica, seated next to Adam in the Creation of
Adam. The figure of the recumbent Adam is studied on
the recto of this sheet. I is copied from a study drawn
byMichelangelo some twenty years later (Uffizi 14412 F
recto/B 147 /Corpus37 9;red chalk and pen and ink,
272 × 282 mm). The head is similar to types devised by
Michelangelo for theLast Judgement,but it does not seemto have been made with that fresco in mind and was prob-
ably drawn a little before the inception of that commis-
sion. Both these copies are the same size as the originals.
The other heads on the present sheet are probably after
lost originals by Michelangelo datable between these two
terms. A, for example, is quite similar in characterisa-
tion to a head by Michelangelo on a sheet in Princeton
(Gibbons, no. 437 ;black chalk, 183 × 124 mm) as well
as, in reverse, to the head drawing by Michelangelo on
Cat. 28 verso.
The heads second from right in the top row, D, and at
the right of the middle row, H, seem to be related to the
head ofDawnin the New Sacristy and may have been
made after preliminary drawings for it. There is some
relation with what was probably once a single sheet of
drawings in black chalk, now divided between Turin (Inv.
15 7 16/ 6 D. C. ; 101 × 60 mm) and the Louvre (Inv. 19 and
19 bis; respectively, 175 × 83 mm and 125 × 94 mm). The
Louvre drawings are given to Allori by Berenson and by
F. Viatte in annotations on the mount; that in Turin was
attributed to Rosso by S. B ́eguin, 1990.
The obvious inference is that the present sheet was
made by an artist with access to a group of drawings
byMichelangelo. Woodburn affirms that W 11 was in
the collections of Jonathan Richardson the Elder and Sir
Joshua Reynolds, which indicates that it had left Italy
bythe end of the seventeenth century, but nothing is
known of its whereabouts in the sixteenth century. Nev-
ertheless the inscription it bears relates it to a group of
drawings by Michelangelo that seems to have been in an
Italian – probably Roman – collection in the late six-
teenth or early seventeenth century and may not have
left Italy much before Richardson acquired it. There is a
sixteenth-century Italian copy of the recto of W 11 in the
Louvre (RF 28961 recto/J 96 ;red chalk, 217 × 291 mm),
and even though this could have been made as early as
1535 ,itisprobable that it was made somewhat later. The
Louvre copy does not have a French provenance, and this
reinforces the view that the British Museum sheet was not
part of Mini’s cache, which would have been in France
from 1532. Uffizi 14412 F, partly torn, and carrying not
particularly attractive drawings, probably never left Italy.
Further support for this view is provided by the fact that
the lost original of E seems to have been copied by Andrea
Commodi on Uffizi 18619 Fverso right side, which indi-
cates that, in all probability, it was in Casa Buonarroti
c.15 8 0.
This sheet of copies could have been made at any time
after Michelangelo drew the head now in the Uffizi, but
the watermark supports an early date, and it was proba-
bly made shortly after153 0in Michelangelo’s workshop,