The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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

208 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS CATALOGUE 40

Numbering

Ve r so: visible through the backing sheet an old numera-

tion in pen and ink: 396 .R37, twice in graphite, in two

different hands on the old backing sheet, obviously reg-

istering Robinson’s numbering.

Discussion

It is often claimed that this drawing has been overworked

byasecond hand, but the compiler can see no evidence

for this: however, it has clearly been brought to differ-

ent levels of finish, a common feature of Michelangelo’s

drawings.

The date is controversial. Assigned to the period of the

Cappella Paolina by de Tolnay, the drawing is placed still

later by Hirst. However, from his surviving oeuvre, it may

be inferred that Michelangelo rarely used red chalk after

the early153 0s. No drawings in the medium are known

for theLast Judgement, the Pauline Chapel frescoes, or any

of the late architectural projects. Only one Presentation

Drawing post-dating the series for Tommaso Cavalieri is

in red chalk: theMadonna del Silenzio,probably of c.15 4 0,

but apparently not made for Vittoria Colonna (Duke

of Portland Collection/Corpus 388 ; 322 × 285 mm);

the forms and handling of that drawing, incidentally, are

unlike those of the present study.

More specifically, the differentiated technique of

this drawing, with broad hatching and loose contour

work establishing the subsidiary figures, while smoothly

stumped modelling is employed for the main ones, seems

to the compiler to count against a date either in the15 4 0s

or the155 0s. This also seems true of the forms of the fig-

ures. In all these features, the drawing is most similar to a

drawing of an eight-figureLamentationin the Albertina,

Vienna (BK 102 recto/Corpus 269 ;red chalk, 320 × 251

mm), generally agreed to date from the early153 0s. The

complexity of the arrangement in both is remarkable. In

addition, the foreground motif of Christ’s dangling legs

in the present drawing is closely related to a drawing in

the Louvre (Inv. 704 verso/J 36 /Corpus 243 ;red chalk,

290 × 174 mm), also datable around153 0.Inthe present

design, this motif also recalls the SistineIonas.

It was suggested by Nagel ( 1996 and 2000 ) that the

present drawing was executed in two phases. In his view,

the composition was sketched-in in the early153 0s, but

the more finished central figures were elaborated in the

mid-15 4 0s, when Michelangelo would have returned to

the sheet. However, even though this might explain the

advanced appearance of the densely worked figures that,

as Nagel noted, do resemble forms that Michelangelo

wastoemploy in the15 4 0s, close examination of the

drawing detects no signs of re-working in this area. The

dense figures do not overlay others more lightly sketched:

There are no lines beneath their surface resembling those

of the more lightly sketched figures around them. This,

if Nagel’s two-phase scheme of execution were to be

accepted, would entail Michelangelo’s having left a void

in the centre of his composition in the early153 0s, to be

filled in some fifteen years later. There is, in principle, no

barrier to the hypothesis that Michelangelo re-worked

one of his own drawings; on occasion, he demonstrably

used the recto and the verso of the same sheet at different

dates, and in his very last years certainly re-worked some

earlier architectural drawings (see Cats. 55 and 56 ). But

the compiler finds it hard to accept that Michelangelo

would initially have omitted the centre of his design, and

then seamlessly have completed it a decade and a half later.

Such a procedure seems uncharacteristic of so imperious

an artistic personality.

Scholars from Thode onwards have been attracted by

the fact that the cartoon of aPieta`containing nine figures

wasrecorded in Michelangelo’s studio after his death and

have considered that the present drawing might be a study

for it. But it contains ten figures, not nine, and because

Michelangelo returned to and reconsidered earlier mod-

els and themes in his later life, the relation need be no

more than generic. Furthermore, Michelangelo certainly

retained in his Roman workshop drawings made over sev-

eral decades, and that thePiet`acartoon was a work from

his final years is no more than assumption. It is also worth

noting that an alternative candidate exists for a preparatory

drawing for this lost cartoon in a drawing of c.155 0in the

Te yler Museum, Haarlem (A 35 verso/VT 65 /Corpus 434 ;

black chalk, fragmentary, original dimensions approxi-

mately 300 × 305 mm). The condition of this drawing

does not allow a full reading, but traces of seven figures

are now visible, and it might well have contained more.

Although it is not a strong argument, the fact that

the earliest ascertained appearance both of the present

drawing and of Albertina 102 ,which bears Mariette’s

stamp, is French might suggest that both were given

byMichelangelo to Antonio Mini, who certainly took

Louvre 704 with him to France. The fact that the verso

of Albertina 102 carries a partial copy by a pupil or asso-

ciate – the qualitative level seems higher than usual for

Mini, but it might be by him at the very end of his stay

with Michelangelo – of a figure from Michelangelo’s early

drawing of clothed and nude variants of antique mod-

els (Chantilly, Musee Cond ́ e; Lanfranc de Panthou ́ 28

recto/Corpus 24 ; pen and ink, 261 ×38 6mm) reinforces

the probability of such a provenance, at least for that