The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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34 4 COPIES OF SCULPTURES CATALOGUE 83

The technique of the recto copy is certainly reminis-

cent of Rubens’ work, and it may well have been made

byone of the native draughtsmen studied by Rubens

when he was in Italy. To the compiler, it seems to be

byan Italian artist of the mid- to later sixteenth century.

The working up of the underlying black chalk draw-

ing both with fine brushstrokes and broader washes is, in

the compiler’s view, unlikely to be by a different hand:

The absence of modelling in chalk on the body suggests

that the artist always intended to complete the figure in

another medium. Where the chalk is left uncovered, at

the lower right, it describes the form more fully than

elsewhere, and seems to have been planned to offset the

central part of the figure.

Blayney Brown notes that it could have been made

not from Michelangelo’s marble in the New Sacristy,

butfromareduction. Because accurate reductions of the

Times of Dayfrom the New Sacristy were in circulation

from as early as the mid-153 0s, it is generally difficult and

often impossible to be sure whether a copy is direct or

indirect. The present sheet offers contrary indications. On

the recto, the sharp fall of light from the left that brings

out the statue’s volumes, suggests that the copy was made

in situ in the New Sacristy, from an elevated position.

On the other hand, the previously unidentified verso is

a copy of a detail from a now largely destroyed lunette

in room 36 of the Golden House of Nero. This does not

seem to have been engraved nor widely copied – the

single example reproduced by Dacos ( 1969 , fig. 58 )isa

mid-sixteenth century drawing at Windsor (no. 9567 )–

so although the present drawing could have been copied

from another drawing, it may well have been made in

situ. If so, then, rather than conclude that the artist made

studies in Florence and in Rome on the same sheet –

probably a sketchbook page – it would be more econom-

ical to propose that the recto was made after one of the

many reductions of theNightto be found in Rome or

that the verso was made after a drawing to be found in

Florence. Nevertheless, the possibility that the sheet trav-

elled between the two cities should not be ruled out:

Many artists spent long periods in both Florence and

Rome.

The style of the verso drawing is one associated with

Per ino del Vaga and his immediate followers: Perino’s

shop in the15 4 0swas the leading producer of grotesque

frescoes. If the similarity is more than generic, it sug-

gests that the draughtsman moved in Perino’s orbit. A

drawing in the British Museum, catalogued by Pouncey

and Gere as by Perino del Vaga? ( 1962 ,no. 182 ; pen and

ink, brush and wash, 145 × 177 mm) but subsequently