The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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196 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS CATALOGUE 37

6. CB 68 F/B13 0/Corpus 81 : 110 × 92 mm

7. BM W 51 /Corpus 252 bis: 91 × 40 mm (part of the 1859

Buonarroti purchase)

Of these drawings, 38 F alone – in which three fig-

ures are completed in pen while several other groups

on the page remain in lead-point only – may retain its

original dimensions. The others are clearly fragments of

one or more sheets of drawings. Six of the eight sheets,

including the present one, show three figures reacting

violently to some event taking place above them; the sev-

enth, CB 58 F, clearly represents the Transfigured Christ

between Moses and Elijah. Because this last drawing is not

physically attached to any of the groups of three reacting

figures, and because the original layout of the sheet (or

sheets) cannot be reconstructed, it is impossible to be

certain that Michelangelo planned to situate theTr ansfig-

urationgroup above the reacting figures – presumably the

disciples. However, this was the traditional way of rep-

resenting the subject, and it is difficult to imagine how

these figures could have been employed otherwise than

below Christ.

It may be presumed, therefore, that Michelangelo

planned a composition of theTr ansfiguration,inwhich the

group of Christ and His Old Testament forerunners was

fixed more or less at the outset, while the startled disciples

were tried in several variations. The vertical orientation

of the scheme rules out a connection, proposed by Hirst,

with theTr ansfigurationfrescoed by Michelangelo’s friend

Sebastiano del Piombo c. 1516 in the semi-dome of the

Borgherini chapel in San Pietro in Montorio. The area

available in the semi-dome demands the horizontally ori-

ented composition that Sebastiano supplied: Space was

lacking for a vertical layout. Furthermore, were such a

connection accepted, it would entail for this group of

sketches a date of c. 1516 , and they seem to be several years

later than that: Wilde proposed that they were of 1531 – 2.

The figures in the present drawing and those in the

Casa Buonarroti, with the exception of theTr ansfigu-

rationdrawing, were linked by Wilde with figures in

the foreground of Bugiardini’s vastMartyrdom of Saint

Catherine(Florence, Santa Maria Novella). Vasari stated

that Michelangelo helped his friend by drawing the fore-

ground figures, which were followed by Bugiardini as best

he could. But Vasari’s account implies that Michelangelo

sketched these figures directly on the panel, not that he

made preliminary drawings, although, of course, some

preparation cannot be ruled out. Vasari adds that Tri-

bolo subsequently made clay models after Michelangelo’s

figures, further to assist Bugiardini. Nevertheless, even

though there is some resemblance between the reacting

figures in the Casa Buonarotti–Ashmolean sequence and

those in Bugiardini’s painting, there seem to be no direct

links, and it is unlikely that they were made in that con-

nection. The approximate dating implied by Wilde’s pro-

posal, however, is very plausible.

It is not of course certain that the drawings on this sheet

are connected with those on the suite of fragments in Casa

Buonarroti and the British Mueum, and it is possible that

they are involved with some other project. But on balance,

the focus on three figures makes the connection likely.

The purpose of this and the other drawings remains

uncertain. There is no record that Michelangelo treated

the Transfiguration, and none that Sebastiano was offered

a commission of that subject to be executed on a ver-

tically oriented field. However, it is possible that after

Cardinal Giulio decided to retain Raphael’s great paint-

ing in Rome, he thought of offering the subject to Sebas-

tiano so that two altarpieces by the same hand could go

to Narbonne. If so, Sebastiano might well have asked

Michelangelo for a sketch. Finally, of course, a replica of

Raphael’s painting was commissioned from Penni but that

panel was not sent to Narbonne either, which received

only Sebastiano’sRaising of Lazarus.However, it must

be stressed that such a suggestion, which would prob-

ably entail a date for the drawings earlier than c.153 0,

remains entirely conjectural and, in the compiler’s view,

not very plausible. Michelangelo might, of course, have

made a design of the subject for execution by another of

his painter friends, but no evidence has been uncovered

to substantiate such an hypothesis.

One of the drawings linked by Wilde with this series,

Haarlem A 31 /VT 61 /Corpus 341 ;red chalk, 110 × 194

mm, is a study for one or other version of Michelan-

gelo’sFall of Phaetonand not directly connected with the

sheets under discussion.

History

Casa Buonarroti?; Jean-Baptiste Wicar?; William Young

Ottley; Sir Thomas Lawrence (L. 2445 ); Samuel Wood-

burn

References

Woodburn,184 2,no. 69 (“Three figures fighting.”).

Woodburn,184 6,no. 19 (As184 2.). Robinson,187 0,

no. 71 (“[P]robably for the composition of Christ driv-

ing the money changers out of the Temple.” Related to

three black chalk drawings “of the later period of the

master” in the British Museum, W 76 – 78 .). Black, 1875 ,

p. 215 ,no. 61. Gotti, 1875 , II, p. 228. Berenson, 1903 ,

I, p. 222 ,no.15 7 3(Late, probably for theExpulsion of the

Money Changers. “Interesting as an example of the master’s