The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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37 0 COPIES AFTER PAINTINGS CATALOGUES 102–103

and provenance, is conjectural. The handling is suffi-

ciently dissimilar as to make uncertain a connection,

which one would otherwise have taken for granted.

Any comment on the authorship or authorships of the

two drawings is hazardous. As Macandrew noted, there

are some similarities with the work of Alessandro Allori,

but the present drawing seems tighter in handling than

anything known by him, and Cat. 93 seems less secure. In

theory, Marcello Venusti is an obvious alternative. He was

an assiduous copyist of theLast Judgement,but he is little

known as a draughtsman – and entirely unknown on this

scale – and those drawings reasonably attributed to him do

not particularly resemble either Cat. 93 or the present one.

Many ambitious and competent young artists must have

made copies of theLast Judgementfor their own use and

others would have been made to prepare the engravings

of the fresco that were published soon after its unveiling –

although, as far as the compiler can see, neither Cat. 93

nor the present drawing was reproduced in an engraving.

At present, the issue of authorship or authorships must

remain unresolved.

History

Filippo Baldinucci; Francis Douce bequest to the Bod-

leian Library, 1834 , transferred to the Ashmolean in

1863.

References

Macandrew, 1980 ,A 25 (Faithful but much damaged, by

an early seventeenth-century Florentine artist in the man-

ner of Alessandro Allori.).

CATALOGUE 103

pellegrino tibaldi(15 2 7–15 9 6)?

Detail from theConversion of Saul

184 6. 115 ;R. 78 ;P.II36 9

Dimensions: 339 ×36 8 mm, irregular, much damaged,

with large areas of loss, notably at upper left, upper right

and lower centre, made up.

Medium

Black chalk underdrawing, with brown wash superim-

posed, and black chalk used again to emphasise the

contours; three unrelated lines in red chalk at lower

right.

Condition

Arestored sheet, otherwise in fragments. There are major

tear repairs, extensive pressed-out creasing and abrasion,

many fractures, and small holes. There is extensive dis-

colouration, with media accretions and stains.

Discussion

There may be some relation of type to two copies after

parts of the first fresco to be painted in the Pauline Chapel,

theConversion of Saul,inthe Royal Collection at Windsor

Castle (PW 504 and 505 ; both black chalk, respectively,

445 × 594 mm and 413 × 330 mm). Both of these are made

up of several separate pieces of paper attached together,

an unusual procedure that may have been caused by the

difficulty of copying a large fresco situated in a narrow

space. The artist was presumably compelled to study the

fresco part by part, perhaps from a mobile ladder or scaf-

folding, and he would then have joined his drawings in

an attempt to make a mosaic of the whole, perhaps with

the intention of using it as a cartoon for a reduced replica.

The style of the Windsor drawings shows some similari-

ties to that of Taddeo Zuccaro, who was deeply interested

in Michelangelo’s last frescoes, and the artist who made

them may have come from his circle. The present drawing

might also have been part of a “mosaic,” but no compan-

ions to it have been identified.

Although this drawing is in ruinous condition, close

examination reveals in it an unusual combination of

strength and delicacy. Even though the forms have a bru-

tality and force that come close to those of the original,

the modelling is achieved by the most refined handling

of wash, in which virtually imperceptible changes of tone

produce precisely graded volumes. The technique and

level of skill seem characteristic of Pellegrino Tibaldi, as

does the ability to match Michelangelo’s strongest effects.

If this attribution is correct, the drawing was probably

made immediately following Michelangelo’s completion

of the Paolina, in155 0or 1551.

The provenance would also support the view that this

drawing is by an artist associated with Daniele da Volterra,

as Pellegrino was for a period, because it seems to have

come from the Cicciaporci Collection. The fact that

Woodburn gave the provenance as Buonarroti and Wicar

is no doubt a slip rather than an attempt to mislead. He

also connected this drawing with theBattle of Cascina

rather than the Pauline Chapel.

History

(The Buonarroti-Wicar provenance first given by

Woodburn and followed by Robinson and by Parker