The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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

and Irregular Numbering inscriptions came onto the art

market in the eighteenth century. Two of these drawings,

both now in the Ashmolean, were owned by Sir Joshua

Reynolds (Cats. 20 , 26 ).

In the inventory of the Duke of Bracciano, it is also

noted that there were 282 drawings of the “Capella Ses-

tina del Vaticano fatti di Michelangelo,” but it is evident

that most, if not all, of these were copies – sixty-eight,

after engravings after figures from the Sistine ceiling –

remain together at Haarlem.^176 It is probable that the

album of autograph drawings by Michelangelo was that

made up by Sandrart, which had remained intact while

in Christina’s collection and which was only subsequently

dismembered. If so Sandrart would have owned one of

the largest – and best – collections ever formed of draw-

ings by Michelangelo. There is no evidence to suggest

when the remaining seventy-seven pages, probably con-

taining over one hundred sheets of drawings, were cut

from the album or where they went, but their number

may account for some of the other drawings that seem to

have become available in Rome in the late seventeenth

or early eighteenth century, such as the study forLibica,

now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, which was

probably owned by Carlo Maratta.^177 That this sheet once

formed part of the Sandrart-Christina group is suggested

bytheBona Rotiinscription that it bears.

It seems that no further dispersals from this album

at least of Michelangelo drawings, were made between

whatever was presented to Crozat and its sale to the

trustees of the Teyler Museum in Haarlem in the 1790 s

byDon Livio’s descendants. Although it is debatable

whether the Teyler Museum contains thirty-two auto-

graph sheets, the number comes close to that, and it is

likely that the Christina-Odescalchi album contained pre-

dominantly genuine drawings.

Pierre Crozat, who, from 1714 onward, negotiated the

sale of the Duke of Bracciano’s paintings to the Duke

d’Orleans, received as his fee one hundred drawings from ́

the Odescalchi collection. According to Mariette, some

sixty of these were of real value, and they may have

included a few by Michelangelo. But given the quality

of the drawings acquired by the Teyler Museum only

seventy years later, it seems evident that Crozat was not

offered the top of the range. In any case, no drawing with

an identifiable Crozat provenance bears either theBona

Rotiinscription or an Irregular Numbering.

Crozat did, nevertheless, obtain at least one major

Michelangelo in Italy. It was probably in 1714 that he

acquired numerous sheets – including some by Raphael –

from the heirs of the Cardinal of Santi Quattro, who

had formed his collection in the first half of the sev-

enteenth century. Among these was a large drawing

byMichelangelo of Christ and the Samaritan Woman.

Recorded in Crozat’s posthumous sale of 1741 , traceable

in further sales until 1807 ,itwas then lost to sight until

1981 when it was rediscovered in the Bodmer Library in

Geneva; it was subsequently sold by Sotheby’s in New

York on 28 January 1998 , lot 102.^178 From the character-

istic inscription on its recto, it is certain that it had been

owned by the Cardinal.

Gori remarked that, apart from the Grand Ducal Col-

lections, there were other collections of drawings by

Michelangelo in Florence. Among these was that of

Filippo Cicciaporci, of which Bottari’s account has been

cited previously. Gori also refers to the collection of Sena-

tore Pandolfo Pandolfini, who had inherited the personal

collection formed by Filippo Baldinucci, comprising four

large volumes of drawings, arranged in historical order.

In his edition of Vasari, Bottari somewhat amplifies this

information:

Ifigli Pandolfini eredi del Senator Pandolfo Pandolfini uomo

dotto, e dilettante delle belle arti, e promotore degli artefici,

hanno molti disegni originali di Michelangelo, de’ quanti

alcuni sono in cornice col loro cristallo, e alcuni sono inser-

iti in 4 tomi di vari disegni, che si era formati per suo stu-

dio e diletto, il celebre Filippo Baldinucci, nel tempo che

egli ordino i13 0 grossi volumi di disegni della immortal

regia Casa de’ Medici, per ordine del cardinale Leopoldo

della stessa famiglia. E siccome questi distribuigli per ordine

cronologico del tempo in cui fiorivano quelli artefici, cosi

lui distribuili i detti quattro suoi tomi.^179

These volumes were acquired for the Louvre in 1806 ,

but they contained no drawings now accepted as origi-

nal studies by Michelangelo. There seems to be no fur-

ther information about the framed and glazed drawings,

among which could well have been some originals, and

it may be that these were disposed of separately. It was the

disruptions in Florence of the late eighteenth century –

beginning with the dis-establishment of many religious

orders – that released a flood of works of art onto the

market and accelerated the liquidation of the city’s artis-

tic capital. This, of course, was greatly increased by the

European wars of the 1790 s. And it was from this situ-

ation, to return to our starting-point, that Sir Thomas

Lawrence profited so comprehensively.18 0

notes

1. Woodburn,184 6. Although this catalogue was printed for

J. Fisher, it copies Woodburn,184 2, and is here classed under

Woodburn’s name.