The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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0521551331 c 01 -p 3 a CUNY 160 /Joannides 052155 133 1 January 11 , 2007 10 : 18

CATALOGUE 54 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS 259

and upper interior compartments of the lantern were

continuous – the lower compartment could have been

sealed off from the upper and lit by portholes in the outer

skin of the dome – but it is probable that they were; in

which case, the solid ring at the base of the upper lantern

in the present drawing would be merely a matter of con-

venience in drawing, a mixing of section and exterior

view, rather than a representation of a solid floor. Further

representations of the lantern are found on CB 117 verso/

B15 6/Corpus 587 (pen and black chalk, 252 × 351 mm),

partly drawn over a study for an interior window of the

drum of St. Peter’s but with a triangular rather than seg-

mental pediment and thus drawn after the completion of

that part of the wooden model. Apparently drawn over it

is a rough plan for the “Altopascio” building, to be con-

nected with a planned hospice in the eponymous Tuscan

town, rather than with the Palazzo Grifone in Florence,

as the compiler, among others, had previously thought.

These drawings, however, are concerned with the exte-

rior and the articulation of the lantern, not its relation to

the dome.

The recto drawing is usually placed in155 7,but there

is no precise evidence for the date. The broken-off frag-

ment of a letter, virtually certainly addressed to Michelan-

gelo’s friend, the banker Francesco Bandini, and probably

referring to Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, mentioning

a model “sensa capo” could, of course, refer to a model of

the body of the building, without either drum or dome,

which would entail a date no later than the mid-155 0s. But

because the delivery of building material for the drum was

underway by 1555 , there must have been a model of it in

existence by then, even if aspects of its form were flexible.

The letter could, of course, refer to the situation imme-

diately before the clay model was executed, but it seems

more likely that it was written when the large wooden

model of the drum was about to be begun, or was under-

way,but before that of the dome had been added to it.

The phrasing suggests that the model in question is that

to be, or being, made by a carpenter in wood rather than

the clay model that Michelangelo is himself recorded as

having made. This would imply a date of late155 8or even

early155 9, which would square with the probable date of

the verso drawings.

Verso

Most of the drawings on the verso of this sheet relate to

the project for the church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini

at the top of Via Giulia. A church dedicated to San Gio-

vanni, the patron saint of Florence, had been projected c.

15 2 0to serve the Florentine community in Rome, then

prospering under the rule of the Medici Pope Leo X,

whose baptismal name was Giovanni. At this time, Jacopo

Sansovino was to be the architect, but work languished,

and no more than the foundations were begun. Julius

III thought briefly about reviving the project c.155 0,

and Michelangelo was consulted and prepared drawings

(one of which may survive in a copy in Dresden C. 49

verso/Corpus 276 , upper drawing, pen and ink with

green wash, silhouetted, 187 × 165 mm maximum; see

Fara, 1997 ,p. 6 )but nothing then seems to have come

of the idea. Only after Duke Cosimo agreed to support

the project in155 9wasitagain revived, and in October

that year the Duke specifically requested Michelangelo

to make designs for the church. Three carefully worked-

out autograph plans for centralised structures survive on

the rectos of three sheets in Casa Buonarroti ( 120 A, 121 A,

124 A/B15 9,15 8, 160 /Corpus 610 , 609 , and 612 ; all chalk,

stylus and brown wash, respectively 425 × 297 mm,

284 × 211 mm, 416 × 408 mm). It is CB 124 A that rep-

resents the most developed plan of the building by

Michelangelo’s hand. No comparably realised elevation

studies survive, but Michelangelo would certainly have

made them. There are also a number of sketches for dif-

ferent aspects of the different schemes, all in black chalk.

Michelangelo’s assistant Tiberio Calcagni travelled to Pisa

in April15 6 0to show the plans to Cosimo, a date that

must mark theterminus ante quemof the three plans.

Sketch C, a circular building with apparently eight

radial chapels in part overlaid with entrances on the

cross axes, links both with CB 121 A, a circular building

with corner additions, and with CB 124 A, the design that

comes closest to the final one and that contains four radial

chapels and four apsed entrances of chapels on the cross

axes. It seems to be based on the early Christian rotunda

of San Stefano, but it may also reflect Michelangelo’s

knowledge of earlier plans for the church by Giuliano

da Sangallo, Jacopo Sansovino, and Antonio da Sangallo

the younger. This scheme was tried again, on a larger

scale, just to the right, but it was not taken far. Over-

lapping C is a sketch plan, B, of what appear to be two

semi-circular chapels that are separated from one another

bya short wall; the corners of the chapels are articulated

bypaired columns placed obliquely, as it were to bevel

the corner. This scheme, and that seen in A, in which

there is only one column at each corner, is probably an

attempt by Michelangelo to work out the relation of the

chapels of San Giovanni to one another.

The two loosely sketched crosses, one with apsidal

ends, F, from which the other, G, with circular forms

placed between the arms, seems to have been developed,

may also have a role in the formulation of the final scheme,

which combined the ideas of roundness and cross-shaped