The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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CATALOGUE 66 COPIES OF SURVIVING DRAWINGS 303

to Ferrara in15 2 9,when he promised the Duke the

Leda,probably the first movable painting he had executed

for some years. It seems that Michelangelo responded

strongly to what he saw in Venice and Ferrara: Several of

his Presentation Drawings of the early153 0sseem to have

been conceived in dialogue with contemporary Vene-

tian art.

Raffaello da Montelupo began working with Michel-

angelo in 1533 and had some access to his drawings. The

original bears no signs of stylus indentation, so the present

copy may have been traced from it via a pane of glass. It

wasprobably from this copy that Battista Franco knew of

Michelangelo’s design – well in advance of the publication

of any prints – for he employed the sprawled figure at

lower left for the dead Christ in hisDeposition(Lucca,

Villa Giunigi), datable to c. 1537.

Raffaello was clearly fascinated by Michelangelo’s Pre-

sentation Drawings for, in addition to the present copy,

he made a loose sketch in the Royal Collection, Wind-

sor Castle (PW 787 ;pen and ink,34 0× 238 mm), after

the Fall of Phaeton,the original of which is also in

the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle (PW 430 /Corpus

343 ;black chalk, 413 × 234 mm), another of the draw-

ings given to Tommaso. Raffaello probably intended

to work up more fully the present drawing, like his

two elaborate copies, probably the same size as the lost