The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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0521551331 c 01 b CUNY 160 /Joannides 052155 133 1 January 11 , 2007 6 : 36

15 0 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS CATALOGUE 25

and area of the project, as Wilde first established. The

death of the Medici Pope LeoX–Michelangelo’s exact

contemporary – in December15 2 1,slowed work on the

New Sacristy, and even though components were deliv-

ered throughout the period, it seems that no work was

done on the tombs and sculpture until after the elec-

tion of Leo’s cousin, Cardinal Giulio dei Medici as Pope

Clement VII in November15 2 3.On 23 May15 2 4and

again on May 29 ,Giovanni Francesco Fattucci wrote to

Michelangelo on behalf of Clement VII, taking up in a

new form a topic that had already concerned Clement,

then still a Cardinal, in15 2 0– 1 .Fattucci suggested that

to the monuments of the four Medici planned for the

chapel, that of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother

Giuliano, and those of Giuliano, Duke of Urbino, and

Lorenzo, Duke of Nemours (respectively, the fathers and

the cousins of Leo X and Clement VII), should now be

added tombs for Leo and Clement. The New Sacristy

would now contain three double tombs rather than one

double and two single tombs. By June 7 ,Fattucci had

obviously received a reply from Michelangelo, now lost,

for on that day he wrote again. From his letter it may be

inferred that Michelangelo had stated that plans were too

faradvanced to make it possible now to install three dou-

bletombs and, indeed, that one of the ducal tombs had

nearly been built in. Instead, Michelangelo suggested one

of the small rooms either side of the choir, the so-called

lavamani,could be employed. In one of the corresponding

rooms in the Old Sacristy was placed Verrocchio’s mag-

nificent wash basin, and this may have inspired Michelan-

gelo’s idea. It seems that Michelangelo had indicated that

both papal tombs would be placed in a single room – that

to the left of the choir – or, at any rate, that is how Fattucci

understood it because he, speaking on the Pope’s behalf,

responded that this seemed “un piccolo luogo per due

papi”; he also queried whether there would be sufficient

illumination. By June 25 ,the date of Fattucci’s next let-

ter, Michelangelo had sent a drawing. It is not fully clear

whether he still intended to place both papal tombs in the

samelavamani,orwhether he now planned to use both.

If the latter, which seems in principle the more likely, the

tombs would presumably have been placed on the inner

walls of each room. The present drawing was followed

up by Michelangelo with a slight sketch for a crown-

ing element for the tomb in Florence (Archivio Buonar-

roti XIII, 160 /B35 0/Corpus36 6;black chalk, 286 × 208

mm) and by a more elaborated but unfinished drawing

in the same collection (CB 52 A/ B 256 /Corpus 188 ;black

chalk and brush and wash, 337 × 228 mm) which is prob-

ably a draught of the drawing referred to by Fattucci

on June 25 .This confirms that the present drawing was

intended for a papal tomb for, in addition to performing

an act of benediction, the central seated figure also wears

atiara.

The spaces of thelavamaniare constrained. That on

the left is about 3. 83 metres deep by 2. 77 metres wide

(dimensions kindly checked by W. Dreesmann); that on

the right is also 3. 85 metres deep but, at 3. 34 alittle

wider. That on the left has, against the exterior side wall,

astaircase descending to the crypt, so it was probably

the marginally larger room to the right of thecappelletta

in which Michelangelo initially considered placing the

tombs. As a consequence, Ackerman calculated, the sar-

cophagus to be included in the present project could be no

more than about 1. 4 metres long. The small scale imposed

upon the tombs by the restricted dimensions of thelava-

manidoes not invalidate the view that these designs were

planned for that location – Silvio Cosini had recently

executed the small but quite elaborate tomb of Antonio

Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella in which the sarcophagus

is symbolic – but such a scheme was inevitably modest,

and this site was soon rejected. In a letter of Fattucci’s

of July 25 ,Michelangelo’s attention was redirected to the

site of the choir of San Lorenzo.

AmodellobyMichelangelo in Christ Church ( JBS

65 /Corpus 282 ;pen and ink and brush and wash over

black chalk, 191 × 255 mm) seems to represent a dou-

bletomb, with two seated Popes, presumably Leo X and

Clement VII, on either side of a group of the Virgin and

Child; however, only the upper section of themodellosur-

vives, and the base of the structure and, presumably, the

sarcophagi are missing. It seems highly unlikely that this

project could have been conceived for one of thelavamani

because it would have entailed extreme miniaturisation of

the sarcophagi. Indeed, the Christ Churchmodellois dif-

ficult to account for, and the only explanation that the

compiler can offer is that it was intended for the end wall

of the choir of San Lorenzo, before Michelangelo decided

upon facing single tombs on the choir’s side walls. How-

ever, the scheme it depicts is puzzlingly uninventive for

so late a date as July15 2 4,compared with that shown in

the present drawing (and Casa Buonarroti 52 A), let alone

the highly innovatory facing tombs that Michelangelo

devised in 1525.

The figure on the verso of the present sheet, which is

not dissimilar in design to Michelangelo’s bronzeDavidof

twenty years earlier, is probably for an attendant allegori-

cal figure to stand on the right of the central niche in the

recto drawing. It is sometimes identified as female but it

seems to the compiler to be male, unlike the standing alle-

gories flanking the Dukes on the tombs in the main cham-

ber. There is a slight similarity in pose to Giambologna’s