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

CATALOGUE 75 STUDIO DRAWINGS AND DRAWINGS OF UNDETERMINED STATUS 323

W 34 (pen and ink, 162 × 145 mm), also with a provenance

from the Lawrence Collection. Wilde noted, however,

that although referring to the same matter, the letter on

the verso of the sheet in London is actually slightly later

than that on the verso of the present sheet. It is itself the

autograph copy of an important letter sent by Michelan-

gelo to Giovanni Spina on 18 October15 2 4. This probably

provides aterminus ante quemfor the drawings because the

drawing on the present sheet and at least one of the two

on that in the British Museum appear to be tracings of

lost drawings by Michelangelo, and tracings would hardly

be made on sheets that already bore dense lines of writing

in ink. It is much more likely that Michelangelo took up

sheets that his pupil had already used to work out or copy

letters dealing with a matter that required clarity and pre-

cision. If this conclusion is correct, Mini’s drawings would

probably have been made around the middle of15 2 4. One

of those on BM W 34 is after a lost drawing by Michelan-

gelo for theHercules and Antaeus,developed from, but

more resolved than, those on Cat. 30 ; the second draw-

ing may – as Wilde suggested – have been “inspired by the

Day”orbyamodel for it and was not necessarily traced