The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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0521551331 c 01 -p 3 CUNY 160 /Joannides 052155 133 1 January 11 , 2007 10 : 14

232 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS CATALOGUE 47

rear immediately below Saint Sebastian (the compiler is

indebted to W. Dreesmann for this observation), and it

is probable that Michelangelo was here referring back to

one of his preparatory drawings for the fresco. The figure

is found again, in reverse to G in the present drawing but

in the same direction as that in theLast Judgement,ina

drawing in Florence attributed to Leonardo Cungi but, in

the compiler’s view, by Raffaello da Montelupo (Uffizi

257 Fverso/B 210 ;black chalk and pen, 424 × 275 mm;

the hatching on both sides of this sheet is left-handed).

The recto of this sheet contains, among other sketches, a

version of Christ and the figures immediately beside Him

in theLast Judgement,either inaccurately sketched after

the fresco or, more likely, taken from an unresolved lost

drawing by Michelangelo. The verso bears a copy after

Christ more or less as executed in the fresco, placed imme-

diately above the figure that concerns us here. It seems

unlikely that Raffaello himself would have had the imag-

ination to juxtapose two figures so separated in the fresco,

and he was presumably combining figures from different

drawings by Michelangelo, to which – as in other

instances – he would have had access. Some support

for this conjecture is found in a page of drawings by

Battista Franco in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

(WAG 1995. 249 /Brooke, 1998 ,no. 28 ; pen and ink,

188 × 267 mm), in which virtually the same figure occurs,

this time in the context of a series of studies for aResurrec-

tion.This page dates from soon after the period in which

Franco worked with Raffaello.

The prime version of Marcello Venusti’sAgony in the

Gardenseems to be that now in Galleria Doria Pam-

phili (oil on panel, 580 × 820 mm), but it exists in several

replicas, some autograph (one offered at Sotheby’s, Lon-

don, 14 December 2000 ,lot 186 ;oil on panel, 554 × 735

mm). It is not known for whom the panel was planned,

butitmust have been for someone whom Michelangelo

valued, because he prepared a full-sizecartonettofor the

figurative parts, now much damaged by over-exposure

to light (Florence, Uffizi, 230 F/B 198 /Corpus 409 ). This

cartonettowasnot retained by Venusti. At Michelangelo’s

death, it was owned by his assistant and prot ́egeJac ́ omo

del Duca, to whom Michelangelo seems to have given it,

together with thecartonettofor Venusti’s LateranAnnun-

ciation(Florence Uffizi, 229 F/B 197 /Corpus 393 ;black

chalk, 405 × 545 mm) and, no doubt, other drawings. This

gift would have been made in the spring of15 6 0,asnoted

byWilde. Bothcartonetti weresubsequently extracted

from Jacomo by Leonardo Buonarroti for presentation

to Duke Cosimo. This situation is comparable with that

of the cartoon ofVenus and Cupid,which, after it had been

rendered in painting by Pontormo, was to be handed to

Antonio Mini.

The present sheet, the associated drawings and the car-

toon can be dated to the second half of the155 0s. As Wilde

noted,terminiare established by the poems in the Vatican

Codex, dated by Frey to no earlier than 1555 ,and15 6 0,by

which time the cartoon had obviously been used, since it

wasgiven to Jacomo del Duca. TheAgony in the Garden

represents one of the clearest examples in the work of the

aged master of a conscious turning back to the artistic

modes of the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-

turies. Christ is shown twice, praying and rebuking His

disciples, as in the rendering of the subject by Duccio in

theMaest`a,and the block-like forms of the figures reflect

Michelangelo’s intense response to the massive figures of

Arnolfo di Cambio and Tino da Camaino, the sculptural

counterparts of Giotto.

Athird drawing, in the Albertina (BK 4868 /Corpus

408 ;black chalk, 173 × 197 mm maximum dimensions,

irregular), which bears an owner’s inscription and the date

27 March15 6 0,was taken by Wilde to be a further study

for theAgony in the Gardenand to provide an additionalter-

minus ante quemfor the composition. However, although

it too may well have been among the drawings given to

Jacomo del Duca, it seems to the compiler that the studies

on this sheet – all of which show a nude sleeping figure

seen from the back, in a pose derived from classical gems –

are of a woman, and that they are unconnected with the

Agony in the Garden.

Parker emphasises that the writing on the recto of the

present sheet is of the eighteenth or nineteenth century:

It presumably replaces or repeats the earlier inscription,

found on the verso.

History

Daniele da Volterra or Marcello Venusti? theBona Roti

Collector; the Irregular Numbering Collector; the Cic-

ciaporci family and Filippo Cicciaporci; Bartolommeo

Cavaceppi; William Young Ottley (his sale, 6 June 1814 ,

etc., lot 824 ,“One, of studies in black chalk for his

composition of Christ praying in the garden ditto.”

Lot 825 adds the information: “from the collection of

the Cicciaporci family of Florence to whom the con-

tents of the three above lots formerly belonged, men-

tioned in the preface to Condivi, Life of Michelangelo,

published in 1746 ,page xviii. This collection was sold

and dispersed about 1765 ,and with others purchased

of the Cav. Cavaceppi, 1792 – 3 ,bytheir present propri-

etor,” £ 4. 0. 0 ); Sir Thomas Lawrence (no stamp); Samuel

Woodburn.

References

Ottley sale, 6 June 1814 ,etc., lot 824 (“One, of stud-

ies in black chalk for his composition of Christ praying