The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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0521551335 c 04 -p 5 CUNY 160 /Joannides 052155 133 1 January 11 , 2007 11 : 34

31 4 STUDIO DRAWINGS AND DRAWINGS OF UNDETERMINED STATUS CATALOGUES 71–72

no. 374 (Not by Michelangelo, but an original drawing,

not a copy.). Dussler, 1959 ,no. 602 (Second half sixteenth

century.). Berenson, 1961 ,no.155 4b (As 1903 / 1938 .).

Hartt, 1971 ,p. 390 (Rejected.). De Tolnay, 1975 ,

Corpus I, no. 129 (Michelangelo, c. 1515 – 17 ?. Mistakenly

says accepted as an original by Parker.). Østermark-

Johansen, 1998 ,pp. 87 , 91 , fig. 13 (Michelangelo.).

CATALOGUE 72

Golgotha

184 6- 122 ;R. 38 ;P.II37 6

Dimensions: 264 ×18 0mm

Medium

Red chalk.

Condition

There are several areas of tissue repairs and infills and

major tear repairs. There is a skinned patch, local staining,

foxing and uneven discolouration. The primary support

is drummed by its four edges to the backboard, so the

versoisnot visible.

Discussion

This drawing studies in detail a section of a Golgotha

composition of which a fuller rendering survives in the

Louvre (Inv. 839 /J 79 ;red chalk, 186 × 142 mm). The

Louvre sheet is smaller than the present one, and the

forms common to both are less precisely described than

here. The Paris version, which entered the Louvre with

Jabach’s sale of 1671 , displays more signs of creativity, with

a small, unrelated figure sketched at the top right of the

sheet and subsequently covered. However, in the present

drawing, there are also signs of thought, if of a rather dull

kind: The feet and lower part of the drapery of the col-

lapsed Virgin is repeated at the bottom of the sheet, and