The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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222 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS CATALOGUE 45

Giovanni della Casa seems to have commissioned five

paintings from Daniele: The other four were

1. The double-sidedDavid and Goliath,onslate, 133 × 172

cm, at Fontainebleau (see Cat. 46 a).

2. The lostAeneas Commanded by Mercury to Relinquish

Dido,oncanvas, known in an unfinished reduction, on

panel (also lost but reproduced in an old photograph),

which may be identical with the version recorded in the

inventory of Paolo Orsini as an autograph work. Della

Casa planned to send the canvas as a gift to Henri II

of France: The commission may have been prompted

byCatherine de Medicis, with the aim of recalling ́

the king’s mind to his duties andaway fromDiane de

Poitiers.

3. ASaint Jerome. This may be the composition found

in a drawing ofSaint Jerome in Meditationattributed to

Marcello Venusti in Rotterdam (Boymans-van Beunin-

gen Museum, Inv. DN 124 / 21 ;black chalk 260 × 192

mm; see de Tolnay, 1960 ,p. 216 ), which could well be

a copy after a lostmodellobyMichelangelo. This com-

position is also recorded in two fairly crude engravings,

one of which, by Sebastiano da Reggio, is dated155 7,

and records Michelangelo as the inventor and Marcello

Ve n usti as the painter (de Tolnay, 1960 , fig. 252 ). This

engraving, and a very similar one by an anonymous Flem-

ish Master (de Tolnay, 1960 , fig. 253 )were probably made

after the now-lost altarpiece ofSaint Jerome in Medita-

tionwhich, according to Baglione, Marcello executed for

the Miganelli chapel in Santa Maria della Pace. The fig-

ure was also engraved, in reverse, by Cherubino Alberti,

who set it in an extensive landscape (dated15 7 5; 531 ×34 4

mm;The Illustrated Bartsch 34 ,no. 54 [ 69 ]). It is per-

fectly plausible that a drawing made by Michelangelo for

Daniele da Volterra could have been used also by Marcello

Ve n usti.

4. An unknownThe Dead Christ and the Three Maries.

It is argued both by Treves ( 2001 )and Thomas ( 2001 )

that all five paintings are likely to date from between June

1555 when della Casa returned to Rome, and November

155 6, when he died, with theAeneas,according to Vasari,

still unfinished. Support for this dating is provided by a

sheet in Casa Buonarroti ( 19 F/B15 0/Corpus36 8;black

chalk 199 × 197 mm). This contains three further studies

for theSaint John,twoon the recto (one of them hard