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THE DISPERSAL AND FORMATION OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE’S COLLECTION OF DRAWINGS 17Wicar to Ottley – including Michelangelo drawings – at
aprice that would, on the one hand, allow Ottley to feel
he had not paid excessively over the odds and, on the
other, enable Wicar to make up some of his losses. This
would also account for the fact that Ottley seems to have
felt no disquiet about reproducing some of the drawings
that had probably been owned by Wicar in theItalian
School of Design.Tokeep or even to sell stolen drawings,
objects inherently difficult to trace, is one thing. But to
reproduce them in same-scale prints with Ottley’s own
address in the letter-press is entirely another and does
not suggest concealment. But, finally, it must be stressed
that the accommodation hypothesis is no more than that,
aprovisional suggestion to be confirmed or denied by
future research.
How many drawings or mountings of drawings by
Michelangelo came from Casa Buonarroti? It is impossi-
bletobeprecise. The family does not seem to have placed
any mark on the drawings, although a stamp was applied
later – if inconsistently – probably before Casa Buonar-
roti was given to the City of Florence, so for information
about the losses we are largely reliant upon the various
catalogues produced by Ottley and Woodburn with their
lacunae and errors. A very rough guess would be that
shortly before 1790 some seventy-five pages or mount-
ings left Casa Buonarroti, comprising over one hundred
sheets of drawings, with Wicar the main, if not necessarily
the sole, beneficiary.iv.the collections of casa
buonarroti: formation and dispersal
From the time of Michelangelo’s death until the later
eighteenth century, the collection of Michelangelo’s
drawings far outnumbering all others was that of Casa
Buonarroti. What was in Casa Buonarroti and how was its
collection formed? For the most part, the collection con-
sisted of relatively sketchy drawings. The most significant
exceptions are the carefully elaborated architecturalmod-
elli–the authenticity of which was often denied during
the twentieth century – and some of the lateCrucifixion
drawings, which, although unresolved, are in effect fully
satisfying and self-sufficient statements. The majority of
the drawings in – or once in – Casa Buonarroti date from
before 1534 when Michelangelo transferred permanently
from Florence to Rome, and it is a reasonable assumption
that the predominant source was material abandoned or
overlooked in Michelangelo’s various workshops when
he left Florence for good. The family’s archive of let-
ters, contracts, andricordi,together with drawings byMichelangelo of no immediate aesthetic interest, such as
his sketches of blocks of marble ordered for the façade of
San Lorenzo and other projects, remained largely intact.
This was material that would never have passed out of
the family’s possession, and it is likely that this mass of
paper – it is one of the largest surviving archives of a
non-princely family – was accompanied by many sheets
of drawings. Among them would also have been draw-
ings by his students, occasional drawings by other artists
acquired by Michelangelo for one reason or another, and
strictly utilitarian drawings – such as ground plans – by
others that Michelangelo required for some purpose.
The Archivio Buonarroti contains letters both to and
from Michelangelo throughout his life, and it is evident
that, on the master’s death in15 6 4,part of his archive
that must have been housed in Rome – although it is not
recorded in Michelangelo’s posthumous inventory – was
returned to Florence by his nephew. This body of paper
too is likely to have contained numerous drawings made
on the same pages as poems or accounts. And there are
and were a sufficient number of drawings in Casa Buonar-
roti made by Michelangelo after 1534 to make it clear
that the family also took possession of drawings made
byMichelangelo in Rome during the last thirty years
of his life. Some of these, one presumes, were recov-
ered from his Roman house after his death. It is other-
wise difficult to explain why, for example, drawings made
for Saint Peter’s found their way to Casa Buonarroti in
Florence.
When Michelangelo died, his nephew Leonardo was
placed in a difficult position. Throughout the last quar-
ter century of his life, Michelangelo, paying lip-service
to Cosimo’s regime, but at heart unreconciled with it,
trod a precarious line. He had a profound sense of family
and, with immensely valuable properties in the Floren-
tine hinterland, could not risk their being sequestered,
inevitable had he opposed Cosimo’s regime openly and
been declared a rebel. But he wished to distance himself
from the regime as far as possible and evaded all its more
pressing overtures. He never, for example, offered Cosimo
Iafinished drawing of the type that he made for so many
of his friends, and indeed, in 1561 ,presumably realising
he would never get anything directly from Michelangelo,
Cosimo had to exert great pressure on Tommaso dei Cav-
alieri to extract from him one of these trophies. Tommaso
gave Cosimo theCleopatra,made for him by Michelan-
gelo nearly thirty years earlier. Furthermore, Michelan-
gelo’s action in destroying, at the very end of his life,
many drawings (including ones made for various Flo-
rentine architectural projects) that Cosimo might legiti-
mately have considered should be made over to him, since