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THE DISPERSAL AND FORMATION OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE’S COLLECTION OF DRAWINGS 25theCleansing of the Templein the Montauto Chapel in San-
tissima Annunziata, are hardly explicable without direct
knowledge of the black chalk style adopted by Michelan-
gelo in his preparatory drawings for theLast Judgement.^145
Apart from Francesco Salviati, Giulio Clovio, and
Alessandro Allori, the identities of most copyists have
not yet positively been established. But in one case, a
copy at Windsor after the famous Presentation Drawing
theArchers,inthe same collection, is inscribed on the
verso with the name of Bernardino Cesari, the younger
brother of the Cavaliere d’Arpino. From this it is evident
that copying continued at least until the beginning of the
sevententh century. But it is likely that the majority of
these copies, some of which are of extreme beauty and
precision and by artists of the highest level of compe-
tence, were made within Michelangelo’s lifetime. Nat-
urally, such copies, although not made with any intent
to deceive, were often believed by later collectors to be
originals and served to swell their possessions, including,
of course, those of Sir Thomas Lawrence.
At the artist’s death, the various recipients of his Pre-
sentation Drawings, most of whom outlived him, would
probably still have owned them. Most of the greatest
ended up in the Farnese Collection. The Farnese inher-
ited Giulio Clovio’s collection, which seems to have con-
tained several originals by Michelangelo, including some
Presentation Drawings whose initial recipients are not
known. After Tommaso de’ Cavalieri’s death in15 8 7, the
Farnese also acquired the famous drawings that Michelan-
gelo had given him. A record of the early seventeenth
century, perhaps by Sisto Badalocchio, is revealing:Questo disegno [theFall of Phaeton]einmano di Cardinal`
Farnese che ha tutti i disegni di detto Messer Tommaso
compri per prezzo di scudi 500 ,elovisto insieme col Sig.
Lodovico Cigoli [thus before 1613 ] pittore e architetto eccel-
lentissimo, e col Sig. Pietro Abati, e stupivamo a vedere la
diligenza usata da Michelagnolo nel ritratto di detto Messer
Tommaso fatto da matita nera, che pare di mano di un Angi-
olo, con quei begli occhi e bocca e naso, vestito all’antica, e
in mano tiene un ritratto, o medaglia che si sia, sbarbato, e
insomma da spaurire ogni gagliardo ingegno. Vedemmo anco
altri disegni come sopra.^146A further influx into the Farnese Collection came with
the death in 1600 of their librarian, the erudite antiquary
Fulvio Orsini. He had acquired a number of Michelan-
gelo drawings: His posthumous inventory lists twenty,
including, perhaps, another autograph version of theFall
of Phaeton, possibly that now in Venice; the cartoon frag-
ment for theCrucifixion of St. Peter,nowin Naples; and
theEpifaniacartoon, now in the British Museum, whichhad been retained at Michelangelo’s death in15 6 4bythe
notary charged with preparing the inventory, and which
must have passed in the interim to Orsini. It was the Far-
nese’s holdings that provided the most important single
source for the great run of Michelangelo’s drawings at
Windsor, the collection richest of all in his Presentation
Drawings. It is not known, however, how the drawings
passed from one collection to the other, and it is a matter
for speculation when this occurred. All that can be said
with some degree of security is that forty-one drawings
attributed to Michelangelo were recorded in a Farnese
inventory of 1641 together with forty-four by Raphael.^147
The same inventory also grouped drawings by Michelan-
gelo and Raphael together, with a total of eighty-five:
This must represent a double count. In a later inventory
of 1653 and an undated one that must postdate 1662 , the
drawings listed under Michelangelo’s name are reduced
to two, those given to Raphael are now twenty-one,
while the number listed under both their names totals
147 .Itisdifficult to understand these figures, but they
may register a re-organisation of the collection; they also
imply a substantial acquisition between 1641 and 1653.
Whatever the case, they do not suggest departures from
the collection and it does seem clear that the Farnese’s
holdings of drawings by Michelangelo remained more or
less intact until at least 1662.^148 They, or most of them,
are next recorded in the British Royal Collection in the
reign of George III.^149 It is generally assumed that they
were acquired in the 1760 sor 1770 s, when George III’s
agents were active in Italy, but they may have left the
Farnese Collection before then. A possible clue is pro-
vided by Michelangelo’s drawing of aCandelabrumin the
Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York.15 0This drawing –
seemingly not then recognised as by Michelangelo –
wasprobably acquired by Sir Andrew Fountaine in Italy
between 1714 and 1717 ,aspart of a group of decorative
designs by Luzio Romano, who had also worked for the
Farnese. Because the Cooper-Hewitt drawing is the sin-
gle known study for a candelabrum by Michelangelo –
although, of course, he might have made others – it is
tempting to identify it with the second of the “Due di-
segni d’architettura di Michelangelo Bonarota, cioe una`
porta et un candeliere” recorded in a Farnese inventory
of 1626.^151 If this identification is correct, it would tend
to suggest that at least a portion of the Farnese Col-
lection came onto the market in the early eighteenth
century, and that at this time theCandelabrumbecame
separated from the rest of the Michelangelo sheets.
These might have come to Britain contemporaneously
or remained in Italy to be acquired later by George III’s
agents.