P 1 : KsF
0521551331 c 01 b CUNY 160 /Joannides 052155 133 1 January 11 , 2007 6 : 36
CATALOGUES 21–22 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS 137Epifania. “L’accento di questa composizione pero non` e`
piu quello sacrale del cartone michelangelesco ma pi` u`
intimo e domestico.” Redates panel to15 0 0– 5 .). Mor-
ris and Hopkinson, 1977 ,p. 124 (Similar provenance to
the Liverpool painting. The Ashmolean painting “how-
ever, unlike [Liverpool] 2789 , could be intepreted as
an under-drawing for a painting.”). Joannides, 1981 b,
p. 684 (Maintains date of c. 1515 – 20 suggested to
Lloyd. Remarks “unnerving that this panel shares a
provenance with the similarly sketched-in but qual-
itatively much inferior panel in Liverpool.”). Perrig,
1991 ,pp. 90 – 1 (By Condivi, like the Epifania car-
toon.). Perrig, 1999 ,pp. 239 – 40 (As 1991 ;from Farnese
Collection.).CATALOGUE 22A Sibyl?
184 6. 71 ;R. 30 ;P.II 325 ; Corpus 98
Dimensions: 265 × 199 mmMedium
Pen and ink with some later retouchings, linked to the
repairs and patching to the sheet.Condition
Extensive damage to the primary support by ink burn
has been restored. There is a horizontal pressed-out fold,
other creases, local staining, accretions, considerable dis-
colouration, and bleeding from the ink. The restored sup-
port is inlaid and possibly drummed to the backboard of
the mount; the verso is not visible.Description
It is clear that this drawing was made over a pre-existing
drawing or drawings, also in pen and ink, many lines of
which are visible under the surface. As far as the compiler
can make them out, the lines appear to represent drapery
of some kind; the best suggestion that he can make is that
they indicate the fold structure of a turban. If this is cor-
rect, the most likely possibility is that the underdrawing is
an unfinished copy by Antonio Mini after a lost draw-
ing by Michelangelo, upon which Michelangelo then
imposed the Sibyl. An analogous case is found in a famous
drawing in the Louvre, Inv. 684 recto/J 29 /Corpus 95 ;
pen and ink over red chalk, 275 × 211 mm, although
there Michelangelo superimposed a drawing in pen over
his pupil’s red chalk copy of one of his own chalk
drawings.Discussion
In its loose and rough handling of the pen, this drawing
is comparable to Cat. 23 ,but it is still more forceful. It
is difficult to know if the snake-like forms drawn with
thicker lines at the upper left and upper centre of the
sheet represent some threatening force to which the figure
reacts, or whether her expression of alarm was justified by
the – presumably – retrospective addition of these forms.
That aspect of Michelangelo’s drawing style repre-
sented in the present drawing exerted some influence on
Bandinelli but still more strongly influenced Bartolom-
meo Passerotti and, through him, Agostino Carracci.
Such extreme drawings look even further forward to
aspects of Fuseli and Barry. The wild and grotesque side
of Michelangelo, for which he employs a handling of
pen distinctively different from his early manner, is seen
also in drawings in London (BM W 29 recto/Corpus
97 ; pen and ink, 414 × 281 mm) and Paris (Louvre, Inv.
684 /J 29 /Corpus 95 ; pen over red chalk, 277 × 213 mm).
The pen strokes tend to be thicker, longer, and directed
less to modelling the form than to producing heavy sim-
plifications. Nevertheless, it seems clear, both here and
in other drawings in the Ashmolean and elsewhere, that
Michelangelo was looking back to his own earlier draw-
ings and, to an extent, taking them as a starting point.
Indeed, de Tolnay dated several drawings of this type to
Michelangelo’s early years, and although his views have
not been followed by other scholars, and are unaccept-
able to the compiler, they are nevertheless understand-
able. Perhaps it was the effort of teaching during the
15 2 0s, when Michelangelo seems to have set for Mini
exercises such as he himself had carried out in his youth,
that encouraged Michelangelo to consider and re-work
some of his earlier techniques and motifs: BM W 29 ,
of the same period, as Wilde noted, develops the pose
of the SistineIsaiahof15 0 8– 9 , and the present drawing
recalls, as he also observed, the seatedVirginin Louvre,
Inv. 685 /J 16 /Corpus 26 of c.15 0 5– 6.
The purpose of the present drawing is entirely conjec-
tural. Wilde pointed out its close similarity with W 29 , and
it may be that both were intended as companion figures in
some painted scheme, perhaps in a temporary decorative
structure planned around15 2 0,tobeexecuted by some
other artist to Michelangelo’s designs. That it may have
been made as a gift, or at least that it was given to another
artist, is suggested by its employment some fifty years later.
As Wilde was also first to point out, the figure occurs in
reverse, labelled asSamia,inafresco scheme in the Gal-
leria of Palazzo Sacchetti in the via Giulia in Rome. The
Galleria contains a series of frescoes representing Prophets
and Sibyls in simulated rectangular niches located above