The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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20 THE DRAWINGS OF MICHELANGELO AND HIS FOLLOWERS IN THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM

drawing by Michelangelo, he could do so. Most of those

he chose to copy precisely are relatively broad sketches of

figures or studies of details such as hands and legs. But in

addition to these, Commodi also made, in a sketchbook

with a page size of approximately 290 × 215 mm, a series

of quick and rough sketch copies, witty, vigorous, and

generally in media different from those of the originals,

after individual drawings.^118 He frequently juxtaposed on

the same pages copies of drawings from different sheets

or different sides of the same sheets and included several

copies of drawings made not by Michelangelo himself but

byhis students, notably Antonio Mini. The impression

these copies convey is of a deep, but self-confident inter-

est in Michelangelo, of a wish to acquire motifs, not to

absorb a figure style. The sketchbook has been disassem-

bled and its components survive as half-pages, individ-

ual pages, or as “double spreads” (approximately 290 ×

430 mm), which, in every case, were used as two pages, a

further indication that they were once bound. From the

layout of these sheets and the rough and ready nature of

the drawings upon them, it is a reasonable assumption

that the originals upon which Commodi focused were

together when he copied them. These sketches do not

givethe impression of being made at different times and

in different places.

Andrea Commodi was a friend of Michelangelo the

Younger, and although he did not contribute to the series

of paintings devoted to Michelangelo’s biography installed

in the famous Galleria constructed in Casa Buonarroti, he

did present to his friend hisSelf-Portrait.Itwould seem

that Commodi had access to Casa Buonarroti and that he

copied the drawings there. Support for this conclusion is

provided by the fact that he also knew three models by

Michelangelo, all in Casa Buonarroti, including the clay

group of aMature Man Overcoming a Young One, often

mistakenly connected with Michelangelo’s project for a

Herculesgroup to accompany hisDavidin the Piazza della

Signoria but, in fact, made in preparation for a counter-

part to the marbleVictoryon the front of the Julius Tomb.

Commodi copied this model from different angles, in

three large and impressive drawings, and must have had

access to it for at least an hour.^119 Still more significant evi-

dence for Commodi’s access to the Buonarroti property

is that he also made a copy of the large charcoal drawing

of aTr iton,ofcontroversial attribution, preserved in the

Buonarroti house in Settignano: This suggests that he was

afamily intimate, for the drawing remained on the wall

on which it was made until 1979.^120

It is conjectural when Commodi’s copies were made.

His closest acquaintance with Michelangelo the Younger

seems to have come after 1600 ,but one cannot be sure

that they were not friends earlier. In any case, Com-

modi certainly knew Ludovico Buonarroti, Michelan-

gelo the Younger’s brother, who died in 1600 ; his series

of drawings in the Uffizi includes the drafts of three let-

ters to Ludovico.^121 This suggests an alternative avenue

of access to the Casa Buonarroti drawings, and it would

coincide with the opinion of the only scholar to discuss

these copies at length – and with that of the compiler –

that they date from the first part of Commodi’s career,

before15 9 2.^122 Commodi’s copies are the earliest records

of nearly sixty surviving sheets of drawings by Michelan-

gelo and his pupils and no doubt of several others who

cannot now be traced. There is, however, a caveat. It can-

not finally be proved thatallthe originals copied accu-

rately by Commodi – or even all the originals copied in

his “sketchbook” – were in Casa Buonarroti when the

copies were made.^123 None of the drawings copied by

Commodi was also copied by Francesco Buonarroti, so

the two series do not corroborate each other. And because

Commodi’s drawing after the SettignanoTr itonis not part

of the sketchbook and is rather different from all his other

copies after Michelangelo, it cannot be used to certify

absolutely Buonarroti possession of the drawings. But

because most of the surviving drawings that Commodi

copied either remained in or have a clearly established

provenance from Casa Buonarroti, the presumption must

be that they were together there when Commodi copied

them. There are a few exceptions, but most present no

serious difficulties. Thus, Commodi copied twice a study

for theLast Judgement,nowin the British Museum, which

was acquired in Italy in the182 0sbythe Reverend Robert

Sandford from the Florentine sculptor Aristodemo Cos-

toli (18 03– 71 ), who would then have been quite a young

man.^124 Costoli may have acquired it from – or acted as

an intermediary for – Fedi or Wicar, or another of the

Buonarroti heirs, for it is unlikely that the disposals of

the late eighteenth century and of 1859 werethe only

ones. Sandford’s drawing, therefore, is not a major obsta-

cle. Similarly, Commodi seems to have known a drawing

now in Besanc ̧on (D 3117 /Corpus31 9), which, while not

byMichelangelo himself, must be an exact facsimile of a

lost drawing. The Besanc ̧on sheet – or its original – might

well have been in Buonarroti possession in the15 8 0s, and

because it has no known provenance prior to its appear-

ance in Jean Gigoux’s bequest of 1894 to the Museum of

his home town, it too – or its original – could well have

been part of the dispersals of the 1790 s.

The obstacles that stand in the way of our accepting that

Commodi’s copies recordonlydrawings in Buonarroti

possession are three. The first is that he made copies after

six sheets of rather scrappy drawings by Michelangelo that