The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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70 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS CATALOGUE 3

the15 2 0s. There is certainly some similarity in the angular

gesturing, but three arguments may be advanced against

Wilde’s view. First, the present figure is isolated on the

paper with no trace of others around it: Nothing suggests

that it was intended as part of a crowd scene. Second,

the structure of this figure and those in W 32 are unalike:

They are thin and geometrical because they are merely

blocked-out; this is thin and geometrical because

Michelangelo envisaged the figure thus. Third, Michelan-

gelo does not seem to have made many drawings of this

concettotype in pen in the15 2 0s, and those that exist display

more elastic outlines than this drawing. The apparently

squarish chest is in fact created by the fall of drapery, anal-

ogous to that of the unfinished statue ofSaint Matthew.

In the compiler’s view, this drawing was most prob-

ably made for a statue, more likely niched than free-

standing. The figure as first drawn, with its reminiscence

of Michelanglo’s lostHercules,strongly suggests sculp-

ture, and even though the raised right arm and the ges-

ture might seem less appropriate to marble, they would

of course be perfectly plausible to any sculptor who

had studied Hellenistic work or, for that matter, Andrea

Sansovino’sSaint John the Baptistof15 0 4.Perhaps the

drawing was made to prepare one or more of the statues

of Apostles, commissioned for Santa Maria dei Fiore, the

cathedral of Florence, in15 0 4.Only one was executed,

the compactSaint Matthew,but autograph sketches exist

for at least two other figures (and copies survive in the

Louvre after what were probably more developed studies

for two further figures: Inv. 858 /J 64 ;black chalk over sty-

lus indications, 295 × 134 mm, and Inv. 702 /J 47 ;pen and

ink, 401 ×15 2mm). The pen work of the present draw-

ing is closely similar to that of theconcettoof a standing

nude male supported by a lectern at the lower left of a

sheet in Florence (Uffizi 233 F/B 1 /Corpus 37 ;pen and

ink and black chalk, 272 × 263 mm), whose dimensions

are virtually identical with those of the present figure and

which was no doubt drawn for another of the Apostles.

The first idea in the present palimpsest might have been

for Saint James the Greater, holding the club with which

he was martyred; the version with raised arms for Saint

Andrew holding his X-shaped Cross.

History

Casa Buonarroti; Jean-Baptiste Wicar?; William Young

Ottley (his sale?, 11 April 1804 ,etc., part of lot 270 ,

“Five – various pen studies of figures and architecture –

some of his writing on the back of three – from the

Bonarroti collection.”); Sir Thomas Lawrence (L. 2445 );

Samuel Woodburn.

References

Ottley sale?, 11 April 1804 ,part of lot 270 (Five – vari-

ous pen studies of figures and architecture – some of his