P 1 :JZP
0521551335 c 06 CUNY 160 /Joannides 052155 133 1 January 11 , 2007 11 : 50
CATALOGUE 86 COPIES AFTER PAINTINGS 34 9Medium
Penand ink with wash and oxidised white body colour
overcompass and stylus work.Condition
The sheet is lined; it is uncomfortably undulating. All cor-
ners have small toned infilled and/or in-drawn diagonal
losses. There are some repaired edge losses and tears, abra-
sions, some fibrous accretions, a shiny flat pressed “waxy”
accretion, and widespread local staining and uneven dis-
colouration. The primary support is drummed by the
four edges to the backboard of the mount, so the verso is
not visible.Discussion
This incomplete copy after Michelangelo’s vault fresco
in the Sistine Chapel, like a very similar if much larger
one executed on four separate sheets at Windsor Castle
(Royal Collection, PW 465 – 468 ;pen and ink and brush
and wash, respectively, 410 × 563 mm, 420 × 556 mm,
263 ×37 2mm, 268 ×37 2mm), includes all the main
individual figures (the Windsor drawing omitsEzechiel)
butonly three of the histories (The Flood,The Creation
of Eve,andThe Spirit Moving Across the Waters). These
copies were not made directly after the frescoes. All the
Prophets and Sibyls seem to derive from the engravings
first issued c.155 0,byAdamo Scultori or, in some cases,
from the drawings that presumably prepared them. To
the Prophets and Sibyls have been added the figures of
ancestors from the same series of engravings. There are
frequent errors in the subsidiary figures, in particular the
telamonputti,which suggests that they were added from
memory or were merely invented. The settings of the fig-
ures are also greatly simplified. In the present drawing, the
Delphicais erroneously labelledTiburtina,asinAdamo’s
engraving.
These two survey drawings are, in turn, closely related
to four series of copies after the separate figures, or, in
some cases, sections extracted from the narrative fres-
coes, of Michelangelo’s ceiling. One, comprising four-
teen drawings, is also in the Royal Collection at Windsor
Castle; the second and third series are in the Louvre,
comprising, respectively, nine drawings (Inv. 754 – 762 /
J 231 etc.; pen and ink and brown wash on yellow
washed paper, 278 – 280 × 203 – 205 mm), and thirty-six
of the thirty-eight drawings in an album once owned
byAnne-Marie de Bruyn (RF 6917 /J 191 etc.; pen and
ink and brown wash on brown washed paper, page size
generally 420 × 275 mm, with varying image sizes),
while a fourth, comprising sixty-eight items, is in the
Teyler Museum, Haarlem (Inv. N 1 ∗–N 68 ∗/VT 71 ). TheWindsor series includes twelve of theignudi(it may origi-
nally have included the full twenty; PW 469 – 480 ;pen and
ink and brown wash partly over black chalk, the dimen-
sions varying between 241 – 253 × 162 – 170 mm) and two
copies on a slightly larger scale after parts of theFlood(PW
481 – 482 ;pen and ink and brown wash partly over black
chalk, respectively, 257 × 197 mm and 252 × 182 mm).
These drawings show some signs of preparatory work, and
all theignudiare squared. The Windsorignudiweretaken
byWilde to be preparations for the series of engravings
after the ceiling issued by Adamo Ghisi (Adamo Scultori),
and he adduced in support of this view the fact that one
of them (PW 474 )was drawn over a figure ofHercules,
which corresponds with the engraving after a design by
Giulio Romano also generally attributed to Adamo (The
Illustrated Bartsch 31 ,no. 15 ( 167 )[XV, 422 ]). However, it
seems to the compiler that the Windsorignudiweremade
after the engravings, or – in the case of the two sections
of theFlood,not known in engraved form – after draw-
ings made in the same atelier, and it may be that they and
the first Louvre series (Inv. 754 – 762 /J 231 etc.), which
includes solely Prophets and Sibyls originally formed a
single sequence. Such a view would be reinforced by the
de Bruyn Album (RF 6917 /J 191 ,etc.), which seems to
depend on both the Louvre and the Windsor drawings.
It is worth remarking that the only two drawings in this
album not after Michelangelo are copies of engravings by
Adamo Ghisi after compositions by Giulio Romano.
In any case it seems quite clear that the present gen-
eral copy, and that in Windsor, plus the various sets of
details, were produced in close proximity, perhaps by the
same hand, in a mid-sixteenth-century Italian workshop,
which was probably that of Adamo himself. That these
drawings could be those by Leonardo Cungi referred to
byVasari, which were apparently owned by Perino del
Vaga and were sold by his heirs after his death in15 4 7,
can be ruled out. Cungi’s graphic manner is completely
different; such close stylistic links with Giulio Romano
would be inappropriate for a Tuscan artist, and the water-
marks found in the de Bruyn album suggest a date after
155 0.
D.Cordellier (personal communication) has suggested
that the draughtsman responsible for these drawings might
be French. Giorgio Ghisi worked in France and might
well have brought French assistants with him when he
returned to Italy; but if the draughtsman were French,
he was certainly working in Italy since the tight web of
connections with the work of Adamo Scultori would be
improbable for an artist outside Adamo’s studio.
The third (or fourth) set, the sixty-eight copies after
individual figures from the Sistine ceiling in the Teyler