The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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

CATALOGUE 81 COPIES OF SCULPTURES 339

from a depression caused by the death of his first major

patron Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1492. According to

Vasari and Condivi, this statue was not a commission

butwas initiated by Michelangelo, although he may have

carved it intending to present or sell it to Piero de’Medici,

Lorenzo’s son. It was reclaimed by Michelangelo from

the Republican Government in 1495 , which implies that

even though it may have been housed by the Medici, it

had not been purchased by the family (Cagliotti, 2000 ,

pp. 262 – 3 ). The statue was subsequently acquired by the

Strozzi and seems to have been in their possession by15 0 6

(see the comments by M. Hirst in Barocchi, Bramanti, and

Ristori, 1995 ,pp. 323 – 4 ). Exported to France in153 0,it

was sited at Fontainebleau. During the reign of Henri

IV, c. 1600 ,itwas placed on a high pedestal in the Jardin

de l’Etang. It was shown in this position, with protective

bronze drapery added to its evidently vulnerable lower

half, by Israel Silvestre in 1649. TheHerculeswas lost to

sight after the demolition of the Jardin de l’Etang in the

early eighteenth century.

Va r ious proposals for the appearance of Michelangelo’s

statue have been put forward, but that by the compiler is

alone compatible with the figure represented by Silvestre,

whose etching is the single piece of visual evidence indis-

putably connected with the known history of the statue.

If the compiler’s opinion is correct, then it is clear that the