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

CATALOGUE 51 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS 245

Condition

The sheet has minor abrasions, fibrous accretions, adhe-

sive staining, general uneven discolouration, and foxing.

The primary support is drummed by the four edges to

the backboard of the mount so the verso is not visible.

Discussion

The pose of this figure study is similar to those found on

two other sheets of drawings in the Ashmolean Museum,

Cats. 52 and 53 (the three were mounted together when

they entered the Museum), and a fourth, formerly in

the Gathorne-Hardy Collection at Donnington Priory,

now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

( 1991. 217. 2 a- 3 b/Corpus 429 ;black chalk, drawn on

recto and verso, 233 × 100 mm). All the drawings, seven

in total, on these sheets, portray advancing male figures,

seen from the front, one shoulder advanced and the other

drawn back, with the forward arm curved down across the

body and the other held up, as though supporting some-

thing. All four sheets are obviously fragments of larger

ones, but it seems unlikely that any two came from the

same sheet: None of the three Ashmolean drawings is

made on the same paper.

It might nevertheless be the case that the drawings upon

these four sheets were made at the same time for the

same project. However, despite the resemblances among

them, this is probably not the case, and the drawings

are best treated separately. It is clear that in his last years

Michelangelo employed and re-employed a limited num-

ber of poses and that a repeated pose does not necessarily

indicate a repeated context.

The present sheet is drawn on one side only. The form

is nude, like that at the left side of Cat. 52 , and the draw-

ings on both sides of the Washington, D.C., sheet, but the

internal movement of the body here receives somewhat

more emphasis than in those drawings, which might sug-

gest a slightly earlier date. The figure is most readily inter-

preted as supporting the body of Christ in anEntombment

or, more properly, aTr ansport of Christ’s Body to the Tomb.

In his late years, Michelangelo frequently returned to the

themes and forms of his youth and his late treatments of

theEntombmentrecall his painting in the National Gallery,

London, generally dated soon after15 0 0(NG 790 ;oilon

wood, 161. 7 × 149. 9 cm). Michelangelo’s late inventions

could have been intended as Presentation Drawings or as

models for paintings to be carried out by other artists –

it is improbable that he himself still considered execut-

ing paintings. Such designs for painting should probably

be distinguished from treatments of the same or related

subjects planned for sculpture, such as those in Cat. 48 ,

which are more simplified, but, finally, any distinctions

are tenuous since sculpture and painting (and, for that

matter, Presentation Drawings andmodelli) easily merge

into one another in Michelangelo’s work.

Probably around155 0 or a little later, Michelangelo

planned an elaborate pictorial composition of theLamen-

tationin the immediate aftermath of theDepositionin

anow-fragmentary autograph drawing in Haarlem (A 35

verso /VT 65 /Corpus 434 ;black chalk, c. 300 × 305 mm).

This contains the traces of at least seven figures, and it

may have been a preparatory study for a lost cartoon of a

Piet`acontaining nine figures, recorded in Michelangelo’s

posthumous inventory (see Cat. 40 ), about which nothing

further seems to be known. However, the Haarlem draw-

ing does not have supporting figures at either side in poses

like those of any of the drawings under present consider-

ation, and although no firm statement can be made about

the lost cartoon, it seems likely that this did not either.

The present drawing and the Washington, D.C., sheet

have also been connected with a five-figure composition –

in which all figures are entirely nude – of theEntombment.