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THE DISPERSAL AND FORMATION OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE’S COLLECTION OF DRAWINGS 23and, on the face of it, to have been a thief. Whether Fil-
ippo raided the family collection surreptitiously or with
the connivance of his father – but that would be difficult
to explain – it may be that he felt he was doing no more
than realising his legitimate inheritance. It seems unlikely,
given Filippo’s life-long history of lofty idealism and com-
mitment to the ideals of the French Revolution, that his
action was merely mercenary: Perhaps the sale was to help
finance revolutionary causes; it may have been encour-
aged by friendship for Wicar and shared political ideals.
How many drawings or mountings of drawings by
Michelangelo Filippo Buonarroti abstracted is unknown,
and it is impossible to be precise about the dispersals. As
noted previously, a very rough guess would be that some
seventy-five mountings of drawings left Casa Buonarroti,
comprising something over one hundred sheets of draw-
ings, with Wicar being the main, if not necessarily the
sole, beneficiary. As also remarked previously, it is impos-
sible to say whether Filippo sold the drawings in a single
batch or released them gradually over the years, as he
required funds. Given what can be inferred of the pattern
of Wicar’s collecting, the latter seems more likely, but fur-
ther information would be necessary to establish whether
or not this is so.
Some reparation was made by Filippo’s son, the Cav-
aliere Cosimo Buonarroti, who died in 1858. Reacting
strongly against his father’s politics, he inherited some-
thing of his public conscience, combined with strong loy-
alty to Florence. Lacking direct heirs, he bequeathed Casa
Buonarroti and its collections to a foundation controlled
bythe City of Florence. Nevertheless, admirable and gen-
erous though his bequest was, his devotion to scholarship
left something to be desired, given that he was in the
habit of cutting up minor drawings – artistically speak-
ing – by Michelangelo, his order pages for marble blocks,
and giving the pieces to friends or even acquaintances.
One such example, which he presented to “Sig. Segret.
Gonnelli in segno di sincero riconoscenza” in 1827 ,is
in the Mus ́ee Bonnat, Bayonne; another, which sold at
Christie’s, London, 1 July 1986 , lot 40 ,was accompanied
byanote “L’Aul: Cosimo Buonarroti offriva/l’accluso
saggio del carattere del/suo illustro Antenato Michelan-
gelo/al Sig:r Dr: Bowring in segno di partiolare stima il di
39 bre 1836 ”; and two similar fragments recently entered
the British Museum (Turner, 1999 , nos. 353 , 354 ). Cosimo
also gaveawaysomeRicordibyMichelangelo.
Shortly after Cosimo’s death, his cousin, the Cavaliere
Michelangelo Buonarroti, removed some drawings and
manuscripts, claiming that they were his personal prop-
erty and had only been placed in Casa Buonarroti on
loan.^137 He was the source of the second great dispersalfrom the Casa Buonarroti, that of 1859 ;fromthis, the
British Museum was the beneficiary, acquiring thirty-six
sheets of drawings and a number of manuscripts. The
circumstances of this sale are not fully clear, but even
though there is no documentary evidence to prove that
these drawings had always been in Casa Buonarroti – they
were first seen by Eastlake in 1858 in the Villa Buonar-
roti in Settignano – some of the sheets are en-suite with
those in Casa Buonarotti, and it can be taken as certain
that the drawings came from this source. Happily, a num-
ber of drawings and manuscripts were later returned by
the Cavaliere Michelangelo to the Casa. Nevertheless,
the depredations had been great. An indication of the
original strength of the collection is that at least fifty-six
of the British Museum’s Michelangelo drawings, and at
least thirty-eight of those in the Ashmolean, were in Casa
Buonarroti until c. 1790.v. other collections
Although Casa Buonarroti contained by far the largest
collection of Michelangelo’s drawings, it was not alone.
Michelangelo himself at some date gave one of the car-
toons for the Sistine ceiling to his friend, the Florentine
banker Bindo Altoviti. And it seems inevitable that if he
gave away cartoons, he would have given drawings also. As
late as15 6 0,hesent to Leone Leone, in gratitude for the
portrait medal of him that Leone had made, a wax model
of theHercules and Antaeusthat he had hoped to carve in
15 2 4 – thus he had retained the model for thirty-five
years and had presumably transported it from Florence
to Rome – plus a number of drawings. A sheet in the
Albertina (BK 4868 /Corpus 408 ) carries an inscription
indicating that the sculptor had given it to the inscriber,
perhaps his pupil Jacomo del Duca, in15 6 0.And although
wehave no certain knowledge of Michelangelo making
drawings specifically as gifts before the15 2 0s, when he is
recorded as giving highly finished drawings to his young
friend Gherardo Perini, there is no reason to suppose that
he had not done so. Indeed, the highly finished nature of
some of Michelangelo’s early copies after Masaccio sug-
gests that they too were Presentation Drawings and were
not done only as exercises – and none has an ascertainable
provenance from Casa Buonarroti. He continued to make
drawings as gifts in the153 0s, and15 4 0s, most notably to
Tommaso de’ Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna, but other
friends were no doubt occasional recipients.^138 However,
gifts of this type were probably less common than more
practical ones – drawings given to other artists to assist
them with compositions – such as Sebastiano del Piombo