The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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0521551331 c 01 -p 2 CUNY 160 /Joannides 052155 133 1 January 11 , 2007 10 : 5

204 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS CATALOGUE 39

niche framed with at least three mouldings surmounted

byapowerful cornice, in turn surmounted by a roughly

square attic. The bay is closed at either side with two

inset columns or pillars that rise as far as the cornice of

the niche, and above this level by, apparently, inset colon-

nettes or smaller pillars. The central bay contains a high

base whose top edge is level with the lower edge of the

niche in the side bay and is topped by a shell head with a

flat top that rises above the level of the cornice or the side

bay. Above the shell-head is a rectangular field divided

into two emphatic horizontals. The cornice of the side

bays is registered in the central one by, apparently, a thin

moulding.

Verso

Outline sketch of the ceiling of the Laurentian Library,

compartmented approximately as executed.

Discussion

The recto is a controversial page, which has provoked a

number of different interpretations. It connects closely

with, and seems to be developed from, a drawing in

London (BM W 38 /Corpus 561 ; pen and ink, 427 × 258

mm). Wilde suggested that both drawings were made in

preparation for a double tomb of the Medici popes to

be placed against the end wall (the liturgical East) of the

choir of San Lorenzo. In Wilde’s view, this project came

before the final project for the choir, which comprised

a large facing tomb of a single pope on each of its side

walls. In this final scheme, Michelangelo was probably

inspired by that of the choir of Santa Maria del Popolo

in Rome, no doubt devised by Bramante, in which

two nearly identical tombs, sculpted by Andrea Sanso-

vino, face each other. Michelangelo produced a grandiose

project, which is known from a developed sketch in the

British Museum (W 39 /Corpus 192 ; pen and ink, 175 ×

182 mm) and two large drawings in Casa Buonarroti,

probably successive pages of the same album; a half eleva-

tion (CB 128 A/B 95 /Corpus 279 ; pen and ink, brush and

wash over black chalk, 399 × 274 mm); and a diagram-

matic analysis of the entire, highly inventive, columnar

structure (CB 116 A/B 251 /Corpus 190 ;black chalk 270 ×

385 mm), probably made with a view to ordering the mar-

ble for the architectural membering.

In favour of Wilde’s suggestion is the play made with

columns, which attaches the present sheet closely to the

final design of facing single tombs shown in the two

Casa Buonarroti drawings, and the plastic force of the

design. Indeed, Fasolo in 1927 already made the same

connection, although he assumed that the Casa Buonar-

roti drawings were intended for the New Sacristy. How-

ever, W 38 unmistakably shows the structure surmounted

bya lunette, whereas the lower storey of the end wall

of the choir of San Lorenzo is and always was delimited

byastraight entablature. In fact, the similarity of organ-

isation of, in particular, A and B on the present page to

Michelangelo’s design of15 2 1for the tombs of the Mag-

nifici on the entrance wall of the New Sacristy (see Cats.

63 and 64 ) suggests rather that they and the other draw-

ings on this page are revised designs for the entrance wall,

probably made after the renewal of work in153 0follow-

ing the four-year interruption caused by the collapse of

papal finances in15 2 6and the expulsion of the Medici

from Florence in15 2 7.Infavour of this view is, especially,

the drawing B, the most informative of those on this side

of the sheet. It includes two sarcophagi, the statue of a

seated figure in the central space, and two standing ones in

the upper levels of the side compartments, whose lower

sections too were presumably intended to house seated

figures. The complement of statues, and their arrange-

ment, is so close in basic design to Michelangelo’s project

of15 2 0– 1 for the Magnifici Tombs that it is hard to avoid