Drawing Limits Michelangelo Grows Old

The Art Bulletin ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcab20 Drawing Limits: Michelangelo Grows Old William E. Wallace To cite this article: William E. Wallace (2021) Drawing Limits: Michelangelo Grows Old, The Art Bulletin, 103:1, 37-64 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2020.1804792 Published online: 05 Feb 2021. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcab20 Drawing Limits: Michelangelo Grows Old william e. wallace A recent essay discussed a modern phenomenon of artists destroying work—oftentimes juvenilia—in an effort to curate their legacy.1 Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, and John Baldessari all gave in to such destructive impulses. Michelangelo Buonarroti, who mutilated his Florentine Pietà and burned his drawings, was cited as the earliest and only example from premodern times. The reason, I suspect, is that most early modern artists did not self-fashion and curate their legacy by destroying their work.2 For Michelangelo, to mutilate his sculpture and burn drawings were acts so extraordinary that they warrant explanation, both then and now. According to unspecified second-hand accounts—dicono (they say)—Michelangelo, shortly before he died, sat before a fire in his via Macel de’ Corvi house in Rome and burned many of his drawings.3 Yet Michelangelo spent his final days in the constant company of close friends and professional associates, none of whom mentioned the burning of drawings, nor would they have condoned such an act. Despite the lack of eyewitnesses, this destructive episode has never been questioned, even by generally skeptical scholars, largely because it seems consistent with Michelangelo’s character as a supposedly difficult and secretive artist.4 A fire also neatly explains a significant dearth of drawings from the artist’s final years: there are scarcely forty to fifty sheets (depending on how one counts and dates the drawings) over the last two decades of the artist’s life (ca. 1545–64).5 Did Michelangelo immolate many drawings, and if so, what did he burn? Was he curating his legacy or was he, as many persons suspect, acting irrationally, perhaps from a petty impulse to deny his admirers, followers, and posterity the fruits of his genius? Of course, both motivations may have been in play, but so, too, were others. From at least 1550, when Giorgio Vasari published the first edition of his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Michelangelo took some initiative in curating his life and legacy, most obviously by encouraging his amanuensis, Ascanio Condivi, to write the “corrective” biography that was published in 1553. Preceded by numerous other self-fashioning artists, such as Leon Battista Alberti, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo had the advantages of an exceedingly long life and the fact that he was the first artist ever to read his own biography and then help shape it.6 If we accept the fireside story, then we may suppose that Michelangelo, at the end of his long life, may have been ridding himself of material accumulated in his Roman house and studio over the last thirty years of his career, divesting himself of uncomfortable reminders of his many incomplete and abandoned projects. Yet we should not overlook that the most important reason for the dearth of drawings is the significant change that took place in Michelangelo’s practice in the last decades of his seventy-five-year artistic career. As is evident for other artists living into the extremities of old age—Titian and Rembrandt are obvious examples—Michelangelo’s art and ambitions in his last decades were radically different from those of his hubristic youth. A younger Michelangelo established his reputation by creating unique marvels that astonished the world: Pietà, David, the Sistine Chapel ceiling. In the last two decades of his 37 1 Michelangelo, tomb of Julius II, 1545, San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Dr. Jörg Bittner Unna/CC BY-SA creativecommons.org licenses by sa/3.0) 2 Michelangelo, Campidoglio, from 1538, Rome (artwork in the public domain; photograph by the author) 3 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (until 1546) and Michelangelo, Farnese Palace, 1534–68, Rome (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Myrabella, CC BY-SA 3.0 Wikicommons) life, the artist no longer produced such single-author works; in fact, the tomb of Pope Julius II, installed in 1545, was the last public sculptural work that he actually completed (Fig. 1). Michelangelo largely devoted his final years to architecture. Between 1545 and his death in 1564, he was associated with more than a dozen architectural projects and was principally responsible for half of them, including, all in Rome, the Capitoline Hill (or Campidoglio; Fig. 2), the Farnese Palace (Fig. 3), Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri (Fig. 4), the Porta Pia (Fig. 5), the Sforza Chapel (Fig. 6), the never-realized plan for a new church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini (Fig. 7), and, most important of all, New Saint Peter’s Basilica (Fig. 8). 38 The Art Bulletin March 2021 4 Michelangelo, Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, interior, from 1561, Rome (artwork in the public domain; photograph by the author) 5 Michelangelo, the Porta Pia, from 1561, Rome (artwork in the public domain; photograph by the author) 6 Michelangelo, the Sforza Chapel, interior, from 1560, Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Sailko, CC SA 3.0 Wikicommons) In his seventies and eighties, Michelangelo was busier than ever. This highlights an obvious disparity between his prominent position directing the most important projects of his day and the small number of extant drawings. Having lived well beyond average life expectancy, Michelangelo realized that he would never live to see any of these monumental projects to fruition. Thus, although it took him half a lifetime, Michelangelo had learned to collaborate, that is, to work within the norms of traditional medieval and Renaissance artistic practice. In his final years, he surrounded himself with a hand-picked team of highly skilled associates who understood his intentions and carried them out with his full authority, 39 michelangelo grows old 7 Michelangelo, Design for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, ca. 1559, black chalk, pen and brown ink, and white highlight on paper, 16³⁄8 × 16 in. (41.7 × 40.8 cm). Casa Buonarroti, Florence, 124A recto (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Washington University photo collection) 40 The Art Bulletin March 2021 8 Michelangelo, dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, Rome (artwork in the public domain; photograph by the author) following pages: 9 Michelangelo, Cleopatra, 1533–34, black chalk on laid paper, 9¼ × 7¹⁄8 in. (23.4 × 18.2 cm). Casa Buonarroti, Florence, 2F (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Scala/Art Resource, NY) 10 Michelangelo, Crucifixion, ca. 1538–41, black chalk on laid paper, 145⁄8 × 105⁄8 in. (37 × 27 cm). British Museum, London, 1895-9-15-504 recto (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Washington University photo collection) and according to his daily, mostly verbal directions. He increasingly depended on these collaborators for all aspects of this work, including the making of drawings—especially formal presentation drawings, but also working drawings, since he could not personally supervise a half-dozen locations scattered across Rome. That leads to the question: how much did he actually draw in his seventies and eighties? Michelangelo made many fewer drawings in his final two decades than would be indicated by his previous practice, and he probably destroyed less than is usually imagined. The episode of the fire, therefore, deserves critical examination, for it has disproportionately affected our perception of the aged Michelangelo and significantly influenced how scholars assess the artist’s late graphic production. Just as, perhaps, Rembrandt’s bankruptcy ineluctably influences our perception of the artist’s final years, so, too, we cannot escape the influence the fire has had on our perception of Michelangelo.7 But the fire is more than just a curious biographical episode; rather, it is a lens through which we can examine the artist’s late life and career, his keen interest in his family and legacy, and, most important, a significant evolution in his artistic practice. That change—from hands-on craftsman to increasingly supervisory project manager—paved the way for the next generation of architects/entrepreneurs such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini, and, further afield, Christopher Wren. The episode of the fire also provides a window onto the larger history of collecting. Drawing was foundational to Renaissance artistic practice. Until this transitional moment, drawings were largely functional, workshop products: attached to contracts and presented to patrons, used as aids in design and project execution, and created as intermediaries for translating design into different media, such as the drawings made by Raphael for Marcantonio Raimondi to engrave. Drawings, for the most part, were more utilitarian than collectible. The finely drawn sheets that Michelangelo presented to his friends Tommaso de’ Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna (such as Figs. 9, 10) helped to elevate the stature of drawing, transforming it from a preparatory medium into an independent artistic genre.8 These instantly famous examples of the draftsman’s art, described as “beautifully made” (assai ben fatto) and “well painted” (ben dipinta), stimulated an acquisitive desire for similar treasures, thereby spawning a culture of collecting.9 Soon, a growing number of individuals were anxious to acquire any remnant of the master’s genius, including drawings. Architectural 41 michelangelo grows old drawings, however, were not yet among the most desired items, as they retained the suggestion of work-site functionality. Early collectors, such as Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, had a clear notion of what they wanted: masterpieces of the draftsman’s art. The surprising paucity of late-life drawings invites a broader consideration of how artists, especially the long-lived, shape their biography and legacy. Thus, this investigation is not as much about Michelangelo’s “late style” (in the manner of a Titian, Rembrandt, Francisco de Goya, or Ludwig van Beethoven), as it is an examination of a late life: How and why did the artist continue to practice despite already having achieved incomparable fame? On what did Michelangelo elect to spend his final creative energies, what did those efforts produce, and what did he wish to pass on to posterity? What did Michelangelo burn and why? Inundated with requests for sculptures, paintings, drawings . . . At least once before, the artist is known to have destroyed his preparatory work. In a letter of February 1518, we learn that Michelangelo directed his assistant Pietro Urbano to burn cartoons (full-scale preparatory drawings) that the artist left in his Roman house, presumably cartoons for the ceiling frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. As Michelangelo’s friend Leonardo Sellaio reported from Rome, “They say they burned all the cartoons,”10 but he doubts (non chredo) whether this included all of Michelangelo’s drawings. Even though Michelangelo requested their destruction, there clearly was some reluctance on the part of his assistant to burn his master’s handiwork. Nonetheless, the paucity of Sistine drawings lends credence to this destructive episode. The artist wished us to admire the finished work of art, not the labor it entailed. Before the drawings were burned, Michelangelo presented one of the Sistine cartoons, for The Drunkenness of Noah, to his friend Bindo Altoviti.11 As subsequently happened with drawings presented to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, such gifts inspired acquisitive desires in others. By 1518—a half-dozen years after the unveiling of the ceiling—the artist was importuned regularly for similar gifts. It was one thing to willingly give a gift to a close friend; it was quite another to be asked for the fruits of one’s creative labor by lesser acquaintances. A number of such appeals likely prompted Michelangelo to call for the destruction of his cartoons rather than acquiesce to extortionate requests. From early in his career, Michelangelo was inundated with requests for work and examples of something “by his own hand” (di sua mano). King Francis I of France, Duke Alfonso d’Este II of Ferrara, and Cardinal Domenico Grimani all waited years in the vain hope of obtaining a work by Michelangelo. Grimani, for example, deposited fifty ducats in advance and left everything to the artist: subject, invention, and medium, whether painting, bronze, or marble.12 Less patient than these princely patrons, the notorious “scourge of princes,” Pietro Aretino, repeatedly attempted to extract drawings from Michelangelo. At one point, perhaps aware of the earlier Sistine conflagration, Aretino even excused his importunity by expressing “my extreme desire for some of the drawings with which you are prodigal to the flames but so miserly toward me.”13 Frustrated by the artist’s determined silence, Aretino wielded his poisonous pen to accuse the artist of loving certain “Gherardos and Tommasos,” a snide allusion to the artist’s well-known friendships with Gherardo Perini and the Roman nobleman Tommaso de’ Cavalieri.14 Aretino’s various strategies failed to elicit any drawings. Many prospective patrons learned that the traditional forms of artistic patronage no longer pertained.15 Michelangelo’s biographer Condivi noted that “when he was asked by growing numbers of lords and rich people for something from his own hand, and they gave lavish promises, he rarely did it.”16 The septuagenarian artist no longer felt beholden to the demands or the polite requests of insistent patrons, even if they were willing to offer “lavish 44 The Art Bulletin March 2021 promises.” Michelangelo may be the first artist in history who fobbed off dozens of potential patrons and overly eager collectors. Yet one of these, Duke Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence, proved more determined and strategic than most. Cosimo waited patiently in the wings while his ambassador in Rome, Averardo Serristori, prepared to pounce. In Search of the Dead Artist’s Legacy Michelangelo died on February 19, 1564. The very next day, Serristori appeared with Angelo Antonio de Amatis, a Roman tax official, to take an inventory of Michelangelo’s house and possessions.17 The government agent and self-appointed Florentine representative went through the Macel de’ Corvi house systematically, room by room. Upstairs were two large bedrooms, the master’s sitting room with a writing desk, and a smaller servant’s room, all sparsely furnished. In Michelangelo’s room stood a well-constructed metal bed with a straw bed box, three mattresses, two coverlets of white wool and one of white lambskin. A large credenza stored the master’s household linens and clothes, which included a long fur coat of wolf skin, two lined black mantles of fine Florentine wool, a lamb’s wool tunic, also dyed black, a rose-colored undershirt with a rose silk border, two black “Persian” hats, more undershirts, stockings, nineteen old shirts, five new ones, fifteen handkerchiefs, a pair of slippers, five hand towels, three face towels, seven white sheets, and eight tablecloths—all made in Florence. On a large table sat a locked strongbox, which contained a huge sum of money: Roman gold scudi, Venetian gold ducats, and an assortment of Hungarian, German, and Spanish coins. The total value was more than 8,000 scudi, that is, enough cash to construct a small building or pay ten skilled workmen their annual salaries for more than fifteen years.18 The Roman official continued his meticulous inventory. The impatient Serristori evidently was interested in just one thing: artistic masterpieces that his patron in Florence hoped to acquire. Finally, the inventory taker opened a second, larger walnut coffer that was filled with a disorganized accumulation of papers—letters received, copies of letters sent, drafts of letters and poems, and an indescribable mess of loose sheets, miscellaneous notes, accounts, and poetic fragments. For the first time in a long day, Serristori showed keen interest, for here among the papers was a handful of drawings. Many were small sketches but there was a foliosize sheet with a window design for Saint Peter’s and four large cartoons with drawn figures.19 Serristori’s disappointment was evident, for these drawings, despite their size, were roughly drawn products of the artisan’s workshop that would be of little interest to Duke Cosimo. The duke wanted exquisite, collectible masterpieces of the draftsman’s art, similar to those that Michelangelo, many years previously, had presented to his close friends Cavalieri and Colonna (see Figs. 9, 10). Even Michelangelo’s ground-floor studio proved disappointing. In the master’s daily work space, one might have expected to find masses of drawings; however, the Roman official inventoried just three unfinished sculptures: a statue of a Saint Peter begun, roughed out, but not finished; a statue begun of Christ and another figure above him, attached together, roughed out but not finished (the so-called Rondanini Pietà); and another statue, this one very small, of Christ holding the Cross on his shoulders, not finished.20 There were no drawings. Later that day, Serristori wrote to Cosimo reporting the discouraging news that there “was little, and no drawings.”21 Serristori assured the duke that nothing would be removed from the house, but “as for drawings, they say (dicono) he already burned what he had.”22 Serristori turned up in the via Macel de’ Corvi well before Lionardo Buonarroti, the artist’s legitimate heir and nephew, arrived in Rome to secure his rightful inheritance, including the contents of Michelangelo’s house. Serristori’s purpose was clear: to acquire for Duke Cosimo what Michelangelo had been unwilling to part with in life. Cosimo may well have 45 michelangelo grows old assumed that his family’s long-time patronage of the artist entitled him to works of art, especially drawings related to the still-incomplete Medici projects at San Lorenzo in Florence.23 But to Michelangelo’s household servants and close friends, Serristori’s abrupt appearance must have seemed intrusive. Did persons in Michelangelo’s immediate entourage mention the burning of drawings as a means of forestalling an overly acquisitive intruder? Serristori may have repeated what he had been told (dicono) in order to cover for an inexplicable absence of expected works of art and to soften the blow to his patron. After all, Michelangelo had been well known as a prolific draftsman. How was it possible that there were so few drawings in the house where he had lived and worked for the last thirty years of his life? Duke Cosimo was certain to be both incredulous and hugely disappointed. In fact, to Serristori’s disconcerting report regarding the burning of drawings, an astonished Cosimo responded: “It did not appear to us to be an action worthy of him.”24 I suggest that Cosimo was astute in judging Michelangelo’s character, but wrong in lending too much credence to Serristori’s report. Michelangelo’s Entourage It would be a grave mistake to picture Michelangelo as Frank Jewett Mather did in his once popular A History of Italian Painting: “From a Roman studio as unkempt and filthy as its owner, he snarled at the world and himself like a dog from a kennel.”25 This image, while compelling, does a disservice to Michelangelo’s patrician character, his constant concern for his family and social status, his bustling household, and the sustaining happiness he derived from close friends. In Rome, Michelangelo’s large household included his longtime manservant, Antonio, two female servants, Benedecta and Agata, and an occasional second male servant who took care of Michelangelo’s property and aging horse. Because of his advanced years and inability to supervise work at Saint Peter’s on a daily basis, Michelangelo maintained supervision over that project by sharing his house with the building’s principal overseers: Sebastiano Malenotti until 1557, then Cesare Bettini, until he was murdered in 1563, and finally Pier Luigi Gaeta.26 In the final two decades of his life, Michelangelo consulted daily with these professional associates. The arrangement was efficient and effective, although it gave rise to slanderous accusations that Michelangelo worked “at night so as not to be observed.”27 It was probably true that he worked at night; with his chief overseers in constant contact, Michelangelo could work day and night. He was never alone. As Michelangelo aged, the artists Tiberio Calcagni, Marcello Venusti, Daniele da Volterra, and Diomede Leoni spent increasing amounts of time with him, as did his friends Cavalieri, Lorenzo Mariottini, and Pierantonio Bandini (to whom Michelangelo entrusted his mutilated “Florentine” Pietà). Friends dropped by often, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, to write letters for him, share a meal, or sample the latest shipment of Trebbiano wine and Tuscan delicacies that Michelangelo’s nephew Lionardo regularly sent from Florence. From frequent reports written to Lionardo, we learn that Cavalieri, Daniele, and Leoni were in constant attendance during the artist’s final days. So, too, were his servants Antonio, Benedecta, and Agata, as well as two mostly ineffective doctors. As Michelangelo wrote to his nephew, “as to being looked after, I could not be better off; neither could I be more faithfully treated and looked after in every way.”28 Mariottini, who served as the artist’s companion and personal secretary, further assured Lionardo: “I remain vigilant, to make certain that nothing happens, either at his house or in his life.”29 Michelangelo’s devoted companions also were central to carrying forward his many artistic and architectural commissions. The Roman nobleman Cavalieri, who had befriended Michelangelo some thirty years prior, was now a prominent civic leader 46 The Art Bulletin March 2021 11 Daniele da Volterra, Michelangelo, 1565, bronze, height 11¾ in. (30 cm). Bargello Museum, Florence (artwork in the public domain; photograph by the author) and one of two deputies overseeing Michelangelo’s unfinished Capitoline Hill project (Campidoglio).30 The versatile sculptor/architect Calcagni was involved in multiple Michelangelo commissions, including San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Porta Pia, and the Sforza Chapel. He worked alongside Michelangelo in his Macel de’ Corvi house/ studio, first in putting the finishing touches on the bust of Brutus and then salvaging the so-called Florentine Pietà.31 A younger Daniele da Volterra grew close to the aging Michelangelo and cast a bronze portrait bust of the famous artist (Fig. 11). Michelangelo entrusted the talented artist with the important commission from Queen Catherine de’ Medici of France to cast a bronze equestrian monument of her deceased consort, King Henry II of France.32 At Michelangelo’s invitation, Daniele moved into his house, and he took over the property and day-to-day management of affairs following the artist’s death. Gaeta, who already was living with the aging master, was the chief overseer at Saint Peter’s and spoke with Michelangelo on a daily basis. Michelangelo was surrounded day and night. His Macel de’ Corvi house and studio was a bustling hive of activity—a coming and going of workmen and Roman society. Most were colleagues, friends, professional associates, and important members of Roman society, but there were others, such as the greengrocer down the street who barged in one day and dragged away his daughter, Vincenza, objecting to her working as a servant in Michelangelo’s household.33 None who attended the master in his final months ever mentioned that the artist burned drawings. Moreover, given that he was in constant company, it is difficult to imagine them permitting such wanton destruction. Considering that at least a half dozen of these persons were artists, project managers, and collaborators with vested interests in Michelangelo’s current commissions, it is inconceivable that they would have countenanced the destruction of important drawings. But, more important, Michelangelo would not have betrayed the trust of his loyal, hand-picked team of collaborators who carried out his designs. And ultimately, Michelangelo never would have forsaken Saint Peter’s. Michelangelo repeatedly stated that he lived mainly to carry forward Saint Peter’s “to a stage at which my design could not be spoilt or altered.”34 As he wrote his nephew, “Because I am an old man . . . I have not wished to abandon it [Saint Peter’s], and also because I serve for the love of God, in Whom is all my hope.” And further: “I have always been, and am, thus diligent, because many people believe, as I do myself, that I was put there by God ” (esservi stato messo da Dio).35 This is an exceptional admission to his young nephew and an extraordinary declaration altogether. Michelangelo felt called by God to build his church. He truly believed he was God’s architect. To abandon the church, he claimed, would be a great sin and a danger to his soul. To burn drawings related to Saint Peter’s would be tantamount to abandoning the church. The same is true for every one of Michelangelo’s Roman architectural works: the Capitoline Hill, Farnese Palace, Sforza Chapel, Porta Pia, and Santa Maria degli Angeli. He dedicated the final two decades of his life—from age seventy to just shy of eighty-nine—to these projects, repeatedly refusing the enticement of returning to his native Florence and a promised, peaceful retirement. But if Michelangelo did not destroy drawings related to these projects, then are we justified in wondering if they ever existed? 47 michelangelo grows old Late Artistic Practice In contrast to his earlier career, Michelangelo’s artistic practice in his late years changed significantly, and especially after he was appointed supreme architect of Saint Peter’s in 1547. A succession of four papal patrons (Paul III, Julius III, Paul IV, Pius IV) assigned him a mounting number of large- and small-scale projects. In order to fulfill his multiple, simultaneous obligations Michelangelo increasingly turned to collaborators and conferred on them ever greater responsibility. Michelangelo’s late art and architecture depended on these personal relationships—from supportive patrons to trusted site supervisors and dedicated work managers (soprastanti, capomaestri). Over the course of his long career, he had learned to delegate. In his earlier career, accepting a new commission often provided Michelangelo with a ready excuse to shed or put off previous obligations, such as when he abandoned the Battle of Cascina to work for Pope Julius II or when he left multiple Florentine projects to work in Rome for Pope Paul III. Under Paul and then under Julius III, Michelangelo learned to accept new duties without also micromanaging them. He still had the ready excuses of his old age and multiple responsibilities, but rather than refusing new initiatives, he became more adept at effectively managing them—mostly from a distance, and with fewer encumbrances. And, while he was no less the governing authority, he mostly exercised influence—when and where needed—through his appointed representatives. From earlier in Michelangelo’s career, we have abundant documentary and graphic evidence regarding nearly every phase of the artist’s work. There is an especially rich cache of material from the years 1515 to 1534, when Michelangelo micromanaged the Medici projects at San Lorenzo in Florence as architect, project manager, site supervisor, and hands-on artist/ entrepreneur.36 In dramatic contrast, there is a significant lack of comparable material from the seventeen years he was chief papal architect in Rome (1547–64). We are confronted by the obvious paradox that Michelangelo was responsible for a half-dozen architectural projects and yet he was making few drawings. Thanks to his previous experience at San Lorenzo and the wisdom gained in old age, Michelangelo accommodated to a new mode of working—one that largely depended on the delegation of tasks, oversight, and authority. Thus, in contrast to his earlier career, Michelangelo learned to operate in a supervisory and collaborative capacity, such as characterized most medieval and Renaissance artistic practice and was absolutely fundamental to carrying out any large construction project. In almost every case, the best we have is not the “hard evidence” offered by legal documents, letters, drawings, and models but rather the personal relations that Michelangelo cultivated with his small circle of close collaborators. Over his seventeen-year tenure as papal architect, four popes, three friends in the Building Works Office (the Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro, known as the fabbrica), and four invaluable site supervisors (soprastanti) were instrumental in assisting the realization of the half-dozen projects for which Michelangelo was the responsible architect. Supremely important, since Michelangelo worked with them on a daily basis, were the succession of overseers at Saint Peter’s: Jacopo Meleghino (until his death in 1549), Malenotti (ca. 1550–57), Bettini (1560–63), and Gaeta (from 1563). In addition, several of these soprastanti also managed day-to-day operations at Michelangelo’s other Roman projects, and three of them (Malenotti, Bettini, Gaeta) lived in the master’s house and conferred with him on a daily basis. Michelangelo revealed the extent to which he depended on these individuals in writing that Gaeta, who “lives in my house[,] can explain to me in the evening what is to be done the next day [at Saint Peter’s].”37 Michelangelo’s late-life modus operandi is indicated by the fact that no contracts can be found for any of his Roman projects—not even for a building as large as Saint 48 The Art Bulletin March 2021 Peter’s. Traditionally, buildings and their patrons demanded contracts, drawings, and models, but there is a stunning scarcity of such materials—at least from Michelangelo’s own hand. Meager evidence remains from the two decades that he worked on a half-dozen architectural projects in Rome: a single, large-scale wood model for the dome of Saint Peter’s and scarcely two dozen architectural drawings. Of the drawings, we find just one window design each for the Farnese Palace and the Capitoline Hill project, a half-dozen drawings for the Porta Pia (but only for the central portal), and a couple of swiftly drawn sketches for Santa Maria degli Angeli and the Sforza Chapel. For the enormous project of Saint Peter’s, there are two drawings of the dome (discussed below), two schematic sketches included in letters to Vasari describing a mistake made in constructing a vault, and a mere handful of additional sheets, most related to resolving on-site design and construction issues. This is not much material from two decades of work on the largest building projects in Rome. Let us consider a fundamental missing piece of evidence: where is Michelangelo’s ground plan for Saint Peter’s? The building’s first architect, Donato Bramante, established the design for New Saint Peter’s, what Michelangelo referred to as “la prima pianta.” Following Bramante’s death, every subsequent architect drew up new plans—Giuliano da Sangallo, Raphael, Baldassare Peruzzi, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. By the time Michelangelo inherited the project in 1547, there were more than a dozen competing plans. Michelangelo’s task was not to draw up a new plan but to rescue the building from forty years of largely misguided construction. However, he faced determined opposition from the fabbrica, a bevy of obstinate and conservative bureaucrats, as well as from the setta sangallesca—the workforce who were as loyal to the recently deceased Antonio da Sangallo as they were skeptical of the comparatively inexperienced Michelangelo. Yet another ground plan was going to persuade neither the recalcitrant group of deputies nor the Sangallo claque that the seventy-oneyear-old Michelangelo was the correct person to take over the gigantic construction project. Rather than draw up a new plan, Michelangelo endorsed Bramante’s original design. Setting aside his personal dislike of his one-time rival, Michelangelo addressed the following assessment to the fabbrica officials: It was he who drew up the first plan for St. Peter’s, not full of confusion, but clear and uncluttered, luminous and free on all sides so that it did not detract at all from the palace. It was regarded as a beautiful achievement, as is still manifest; and thus anyone who has distanced himself from Bramante’s arrangements, as did Sangallo, has distanced himself from the truth.38 The “ground plan” was the building itself—a very large fact on the ground. This explains the complete absence of a Michelangelo ground plan and general “design” drawings.39 Michelangelo’s challenge—something all previous architects scarcely confronted—was less about the design of the building than its structure and engineering: how to build a perimeter, piers, and crossing vaults to support a dome the size of the Pantheon. For this central problem, drawings were less helpful than three-dimensional models. But were even models adequate to the task? Models and Drawings In the 1550s, Michelangelo came under increasing pressure to ensure the future of Saint Peter’s by having a model of the dome built. And yet his first act as the new architect of Saint Peter’s had been to reject Antonio da Sangallo’s extravagant wood model (Fig. 12).40 Sangallo’s model was the most insistent effort by any Renaissance architect to guarantee a “final” design. Sangallo must have assumed—as did his followers—that the model ensured that the new 49 michelangelo grows old 12 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, model of New Saint Peter’s, 1539–46, fir, lime, elm, and apricot wood, 15 ft. 9 in. × 24 ft. 15⁄8 in. × 19 ft. 9 in. (4.8 × 7.36 × 6.02 m). Fabbrica di San Pietro, Vatican City, Rome (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Washington University photo collection) church would be carried out in accordance with his design. Michelangelo, however, had no intention of being constrained by Sangallo’s extravaganza, and the model proved useless in completing the building. Models and finished drawings were public relations efforts to convince patrons to spend money; they were largely worthless at the work site. The Strozzi Palace in Florence offered an example of fairly standard procedure. Despite an impressive wood model by Giuliano da Sangallo, most design and all structural decisions were made once construction began. Even an exceptionally well-organized project such as El Escorial in Spain proceeded similarly: designs and working drawings for any given section were made just prior to construction and adjusted according to exigencies.41 All evidence of working procedure at Saint Peter’s demonstrates that Michelangelo operated in similar fashion.42 Architecture was not a science, and no amount of planning could anticipate the problems encountered or the changes that would need to be made, especially if one were building on the unprecedented scale of Saint Peter’s. Rather, in the tradition of most medieval and Renaissance builders, Michelangelo worked from moment to moment, solving design and structural problems as they arose. From his first engagement with architecture, he recognized that design and construction were inextricably linked, simultaneous rather than successive moments. This procedure, little changed from the Middle Ages to colonial America, parallels Michelangelo’s approach to sculpture. He worked into a block, made decisions and alterations midcourse, and kept enough material in reserve to effect changes. The procedure 50 The Art Bulletin March 2021 is symptomatic of what James S. Ackerman described as the “peculiarly biological character” of Italian Renaissance buildings, which “evolved like a living organism in their growth.”43 Michelangelo finally acquiesced to making a model largely because he enjoyed excellent relations with Cardinal Ridolfo Pio da Carpi, a prominent figure among the deputies at the fabbrica of Saint Peter’s. Michelangelo addressed the cardinal as “my most worshipful patron,” and Vasari, who knew Pio da Carpi well, lists him among the artist’s friends.44 Given his position as a deputy, the cardinal understandably was concerned about the incomplete church, which by the late 1550s had been under construction for more than fifty years. But Carpi was also thinking of Michelangelo. He was fully conscious of the artist’s advanced age; the cardinal himself was nearing sixty, and Michelangelo was twenty-five years his senior. They both knew—even if it was left unsaid—that Michelangelo could not possibly live long enough to see the dome completed. A model was the guaranteed means of ensuring the realization of one’s design, even if death intervened. Or was it? Michelangelo certainly appreciated having Cardinal Pio da Carpi as a friend at the fabbrica, particularly since the artist had struggled against the entrenched bureaucracy for years. It may have been contrary to Michelangelo’s nature to reveal his intentions or commit himself to a fixed design, but it was also in his character to cultivate and show appreciation for influential friends. Because Carpi supported Michelangelo in his dealings with the fabbrica, Michelangelo returned the favor, albeit reluctantly, by finally consenting to make a model. Resigned, Michelangelo first reported the situation to his nephew in February 1557: I am obliged to make a large model in wood, including the cupola and the lantern, in order to leave it completed as it is to be, finished in every detail. This I have been begged to do by the whole of Rome, and particularly by the Most Reverend Cardinal [Ridolfo Pio] di Carpi; so that I think it will be necessary for me to stay here for at least a year in order to do this.45 13 Anonymous woodworkers, from design by Michelangelo, model for the dome of New Saint Peter’s, 1558–61, limewood, 16 ft. 47⁄8 in. × 13 ft. 1½ in. × 6 ft. 6¾ in. (5 × 4 × 2 m). Fabbrica di San Pietro, Vatican City, Rome (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Washington University photo collection) Michelangelo cooperated but then procrastinated. The model to which he grudgingly agreed was not begun until two years later. Its construction occupied the efforts of eight specialized woodworkers, took more than two years to build (1558–61), and cost more than 750 scudi (Fig. 13).46 Michelangelo was eighty-six when the woodworkers finally completed the impressive object. The model supposedly established his “definitive” design, but, in the meantime, construction proceeded apace. Did the model still represent his intentions given that, over the course of those years, Michelangelo continued to think about the problem of constructing the dome and was constantly experimenting with various ideas? Perhaps. But a model, even on a large scale, does not communicate the issues and problems of brick and stone construction. 51 michelangelo grows old 14 Anonymous woodworkers, from design by Michelangelo, model for the vault of the south apse of Saint Peter’s, ca. 1556–57, limewood, inside dimensions 15³⁄8 × 31¼ × 18½ in. (39 × 79.5 × 47 cm). Fabbrica di San Pietro, Vatican City, Rome (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Washington University photo collection) Wood does not show a mason where the stresses will appear. And ultimately, the dome that was built deviated from the model, as Michelangelo surely would have predicted. Michelangelo’s experience partially explains the relative rarity of finished drawings and models for his many architectural commissions. Instead, we have evidence of Michelangelo employing partial “work models” to solve problems and to help carvers in translating his oftentimes complicated designs, especially his inventive moldings. Such partial, three-dimensional works, or “template models”—still used in modern architectural practice—are utilitarian, built on-site, and discarded or recycled once they fulfill their limited purpose. Most drawings made in connection with such models would be equally utilitarian, banal, and discardable. Documentary evidence shows that some ten different models were made during the construction of Saint Peter’s. Early in his tenure, Michelangelo produced two clay models (no longer extant), which, given the material and their small size, could only demonstrate broad design principles, most likely to the pope and possibly to the fabbrica officials who were skeptical of Michelangelo’s appointment.47 The other models were made to solve particular problems and to demonstrate to builders what could more readily be explained in three dimensions than on paper.48 Most are for specific elements, such as the wood model for an apse tabernacle and the model—evidently to scale—of a portion of the interior trabeation.49 There is still extant a wood model for the vault of the south apse of Saint Peter’s (Fig. 14), as well as a crude inset model made to help solve the technical problem of joining apse and barrel vaults.50 In building a hemispheric vault in 1557, Michelangelo encountered a major construction error despite having provided the builders with a precise model. Michelangelo lamented that the fault lay not with the model but with the fact that he was unable to supervise the work on a daily basis, as was his usual practice. In a letter to Vasari, Michelangelo wrote: “Since I had a precise model, such as I do for everything, this error should not have happened, but it did because I was unable to go there often enough due to my old age.”51 Thus, despite being “precise,” the model still required verbal explanation, and the actual work demanded personal supervision. For such complicated architectural projects, the verbal largely supplanted paper, partly because it was faster, more efficient, and more accurate. In following the course of building Saint Peter’s, we are witness to an emerging reorientation of the relation between paper and real architecture—between the ideal and the real.52 According to good evidence, Michelangelo had a large-scale wood model made for a section of the Farnese Palace cornice.53 This “piece model,” no longer extant, was hoisted high into position in order to demonstrate the correct proportions of the cornice in relation to the whole building. After successfully performing its brief demonstrative function, the model probably became a three-dimensional template for the stone workers carving the cornice. In most of the above cases, the models were made to demonstrate or solve particular issues. They were functional, not aesthetic or collectible, and probably did not entail the making of drawings that were any more attractive than the utilitarian models themselves. Moreover, as Michelangelo aged, more of this activity—whether drawings or models—was 52 The Art Bulletin March 2021 delegated to his hand-picked, highly competent overseers—the capomaestri and soprastanti who were on-site and supervising building activity on a daily basis. As the septuagenarian and then octogenarian artist came to realize, albeit reluctantly, he could no longer be his own on-site capomaestro. Many Obligations Late in Life By the time Michelangelo was in his seventies, even his papal patrons stopped expecting the artist to produce many drawings. For example, Condivi suggests that Pope Julius III (1550–55) wanted Michelangelo involved in his many projects, but rarely demanded drawings: “As regards the works of painting and architecture that His Holiness commissions, he almost always seeks Michelangelo’s opinion and judgment, very often sending the masters of those crafts to find him in his own home.”54 Thus, conversation and advice, or a few sketches and emendations to others’ designs, constituted Michelangelo’s contribution. For Julius, Michelangelo redesigned Bramante’s staircase in the Belvedere Courtyard (there are a few tiny sketches on one sheet), and he is said to have designed a fountain for the same space.55 He supposedly furnished a drawing for a new palace of the Rota (Apostolic Court of Audience) to be built alongside the church of San Rocco near the Ripetta Tiber River port (no longer extant), and he served as a consultant for the Del Monte Chapel decorations in San Pietro in Montorio. He similarly served as an adviser on Julius’s pet project: the design and construction of a suburban villa/vigna, the Villa Giulia, on the slopes of the Pincian Hill close to the via Flaminia.56 How much did the nearly eighty-year-old artist actually contribute to these various projects at the same time that he was overseeing the large-scale constructions at the Capitoline Hill and Saint Peter’s? When Michelangelo furnished drawings, often they would be for a specific detail, such as the window design for Saint Peter’s mentioned in the artist’s inventory or the central portal of the Porta Pia (Fig. 15). The Porta Pia drawing reveals Michelangelo’s intense working and reworking of a design, yet from the multiple alternatives no final form emerges.57 For all of its heavy redrafting and apparent development, the drawing is incomplete, suggesting that most of the work of realizing this portal design took place at the building site and not on paper. We admire the sheet because it permits us to see the process of the master’s creative mind, but this is not a drawing that could be used by a stonecutter to carve the doorway, nor even a single molding. Nor is it, as we will see, the type of drawing that Duke Cosimo sought for his collection. A commission to erect a new church for the Florentine community in Rome offers a well-documented example of Michelangelo’s late-life practice. For San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Michelangelo drafted three designs for the patron, Cosimo de’ Medici.58 When the largest and most developed of these was selected (see Fig. 7), Michelangelo proceeded to have his collaborator Calcagni redraw it as a finished presentation drawing. Although Michelangelo’s original is one of the most dynamic and impressive architectural drawings of the entire Renaissance, he considered it too imperfect to present to Duke Cosimo as a finished drawing or “final design.” Modern viewers might consider this a magnificent, highly developed composition, but it never achieved such a status in the sixteenth century. Rather, Tiberio Calcagni made a ruled and finished presentation sheet (no longer extant) from Michelangelo’s inchoate mass of alternative details and messily applied washes. The experience of San Giovanni may assist in explaining the surprising scarcity of drawings for the Sforza Chapel or Santa Maria degli Angeli. We do, in fact, have a few small design schizzi of ground plans for the Sforza Chapel (Fig. 16).59 From such small sketches, Calcagni, Michelangelo’s longtime collaborator and highly accomplished overseer, could 53 michelangelo grows old 15 Michelangelo, Design for the Central Portal of the Porta Pia, ca. 1561, black chalk, pen and brown ink, and white highlights on paper, 17³⁄8 × 11¹⁄8 in. (44.1 × 28.2 cm). Casa Buonarroti, Florence, 106A recto (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Scala/Art Resource, NY) 16 Michelangelo, Sketch Designs for the Sforza Chapel, ca. 1560, black chalk on paper, 7¼ × 10¾ in. (18.4 × 27.3 cm). Casa Buonarroti, Florence, 104A recto (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Washington University photo collection) have generated a drawing of sufficient interest and finish to please the patron, Ascanio Sforza. After all, Sforza was a friend of long standing and formerly the chamberlain in the household of Michelangelo’s greatest patron, Pope Paul III Farnese. The younger, cultivated cardinal—precisely the sort of person and patron Michelangelo was repeatedly drawn to—may even have been witness to a less than formal “design” session between Michelangelo and Calcagni. Calcagni would not need many Michelangelo drawings, as he was fully capable of developing a schizzo and directing the construction operation. And Sforza—a friend to whom Michelangelo gave some of his precious time—would not have expected or demanded drawings from the eightyfive-year-old artist.60 Santa Maria degli Angeli was something like Saint Peter’s: as a former Roman bath complex, it was a large fact on the ground. The ground plan was established; it merely needed to be edited, modified, and articulated.61 Those decisions and the communication to the builders would have happened more effectively on-site than through the medium of drawings. None of the extant drawings for Saint Peter’s, the Campidoglio, Santa Maria degli Angeli, the Porta Pia, or the Sforza Chapel are as fully realized as those for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini. Two that come closest are designs Michelangelo made for the dome of Saint Peter’s. On the less finished, more exploratory sheet in the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Lille (Fig. 17), Michelangelo began by sketching a semicircular, Pantheon-shaped dome.62 He continued drawing until he had sketched no fewer than a dozen different potential dome profiles on this single sheet. The related drawing in the Teyler Museum, Haarlem (Fig. 18), appears to offer a more “developed” and therefore a more “definitive” indication of Michelangelo’s intentions. The number of alternative profiles, although reduced, still numbers eight, all of which suggest a double-shell construction with semicircular inner and a stilted exterior profile. Ultimately, no matter how attractive these drawings, they cannot be construed as finished or definitive. They are design sketches that fall far short of defining Michelangelo’s final intentions or guiding construction. Many decisions had yet to be made. These two sheets, like the Porta Pia drawing (see Fig. 15) or the design for San Giovanni (see Fig. 7), were early stages in a process that rapidly advanced beyond paper. There is little to suggest the existence of further, missing drawings. Largely because of his simultaneous commitments, advanced age, and the fact that he lived with and was in constant contact with his hand-picked building supervisors, Michelangelo increasingly divested himself of the responsibility of detailed graphic production. Moreover, the “Divine” Michelangelo could not escape the tyranny of aging. As he himself admitted, he was old, his hand shook, and he could no longer draw straight lines.63 Even writing letters became a delegated task. On one, he merely signed his name, admitting to his nephew, “Don’t be surprised if I don’t write to you myself, because I’m an old man, as you know, and I cannot endure the fatigue of writing.”64 If writing letters had become too tiresome for the generally indefatigable correspondent, then we should scarcely expect many drawings. Increasingly, he turned over both tasks to trusted companions. 55 michelangelo grows old 17 Michelangelo, Design for the Dome of New Saint Peter’s, ca. 1547–55, black chalk on paper, 10¼ × 10 in. (25.9 × 25.5 cm). Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Lille, France, 93–94 recto (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Washington University photo collection) 18 Michelangelo, Design for the Dome of New Saint Peter’s, ca. 1547–55, black chalk on paper, 155⁄8 × 9¹⁄8 in. (39.7 × 23.2 cm). Tey ler Museum, Haarlem, the Netherlands, A29 recto (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Washington University photo collection) Missing Late Figural Drawings Let us turn our attention to figural drawings—the sort that a Pietro Aretino or Duke Cosimo most coveted. Like many contemporaries, they lusted after masterpieces of the draftsman’s art such as the exquisite drawings Michelangelo had presented to select friends (see Figs. 9, 10). As we will see, Duke Cosimo ultimately was successful in obtaining a number of Michelangelo drawings. Although space prevents a fuller discussion of all the figural drawings, I would like to suggest some additional factors that help explain the dearth of drawings from the artist’s final two decades. The tragic death of the artist’s close friend Luigi del Riccio in 1546 was followed just a few months later by the equally devastating loss of Vittoria Colonna in February 1547. A contemporary described Michelangelo at wit’s end with grief and despair.65 In the same horrendous year, Michelangelo lost two more friends: the humanist writer Pietro Bembo and the poet Jacopo Sadoleto. Suddenly, the artist’s circle of literary friends was decimated. Although he had been on the verge of publishing a volume of his poetry, Michelangelo gave up the project entirely, and he largely stopped writing verse. In the last eighteen years of his life, the artist penned at most thirty-five poems and possibly as few as half that number. None was published.66 The death of Colonna also greatly diminished Michelangelo’s motivation to fashion the type of exquisite drawings he once made for his closest friends. He continued to provide occasional drawn designs for two artist friends, Marcello Venusti (1512–1579) and Daniele, who used them to make paintings. However, as death regularly deprived the long-lived 56 The Art Bulletin March 2021 Michelangelo of many friends, the incentive to share drawings—or poetry—gradually diminished. From letters and a few poetic fragments, we learn that Michelangelo began to question the validity of making art altogether.67 He looked on art as false and futile, even a “deadly peril to my own soul” (gran periglio dell’alma).68 Art, once the artist’s “sovereign lord,” was now a “pack of lies.”69 Only his complete devotion to Saint Peter’s would ensure his salvation. An additional factor for the dearth of figural drawings may be related to Michelangelo’s extreme discretion in his final years, which was intensified by the fraught political and religious circumstances during this period. Living through the turbulent course of the Protestant Reformation and the first stirrings of the Counter-Reformation, the artist experienced what Hans Belting and Alexander Nagel have described as a “crisis of the image.”70 Art and imagery were under scrutiny, and sometimes under attack. Because of the widespread criticism directed at The Last Judgment, Michelangelo knew that his art was the subject of intense public attention.71 As with his personal relations, Michelangelo practiced a sort of self-censorship with regard to his art. A safe course was to refrain from making art that could be misunderstood; a safer course was to devote himself to the all-consuming project of realizing New Saint Peter’s; the safest course was to rid himself of compromising material. Michelangelo was habitually cautious, and increasingly so as he focused on his late-life priorities: his personal salvation and the future of the Buonarroti family. Tuscan proverbial wisdom regarded the preservation of wealth to be the highest domestic virtue, as wealth was important in maintaining social standing. Michelangelo worked his entire life to “raise up his family” and to ensure his heirs their rightful place among the Florentine elite.72 When the artist died, Leoni wrote to Lionardo: “He died without making a will, but in the attitude of a perfect Christian, this evening, about the Ave Maria. I was present, together with Messer Tommaso dei Cavalieri and Messer Daniele da Volterra, and we put everything in such order that you may rest with a tranquil mind.”73 Vasari—who was not present—invented some final words when he wrote that the artist made a simple declaratory will, “committing his soul into the hands of God, his body to the earth, and his material possessions to his nearest relations.”74 The artist’s actual final words were a request for Lionardo to come to Rome. Daniele wrote to Lionardo informing him that his uncle was asking for him and repeated three or four times, “I beg it of you.” Weakly, Michelangelo signed after Daniele’s name.75 The artist died intestate, which was not uncommon even among certain wealthy citizens. In fact, a will could greatly complicate inheritance since an important person’s estate, such as Michelangelo’s, might face numerous challenges from individuals and institutions, especially ecclesiastical.76 Intestacy was a means of simplifying inheritance. Lionardo was Michelangelo’s sole and intended heir. The house and everything in it was part of Michelangelo’s legacy to his nephew, helping to ensure the continuing social and economic prominence of the Buonarroti family. By not making a will, Michelangelo ensured the passing of his possessions to his nephew—not to Duke Cosimo or other rapacious individuals who sought to benefit from the artist’s death. Lionardo was well aware of Cosimo’s acquisitive desires, given that he himself was under pressure to make gifts of Michelangelo’s works. The most recent was the sculpture of Victory, which Lionardo believed should adorn Michelangelo’s tomb but which Cosimo insisted on acquiring for himself. Lionardo was forced to relinquish the sculpture, leaving the tomb bereft of any vestige of his uncle’s artwork. In addition, Lionardo presented Cosimo with two cartonetti (small-scale cartoons) that Michelangelo had drawn for Venusti as models for paintings: a Christ Praying in the Garden and an Annunciation, which Cosimo reportedly “treasures as a jewel” (Fig. 19).77 Vasari further mentions that Cosimo 57 michelangelo grows old 19 Michelangelo, cartonetto of the Annunciation, ca. 1551–55, black chalk on paper, 16 × 21½ in. (40.5 × 54.5 cm). Gallerie degli Uffizi, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Florence, 229F recto (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Washington University photo collection) had “many other drawings, sketches, and cartoons by Michelangelo,”78 which strongly suggests that Lionardo removed much more material from Michelangelo’s house than was initially reported. Cosimo previously had exerted similar pressure on Cavalieri, strong-arming him into relinquishing Michelangelo’s magnificent drawing of Cleopatra (see Fig. 9). Cavalieri unwillingly parted with the drawing, as he made clear in the letter he wrote to Cosimo accompanying his precious sheet. It was, Cavalieri bemoaned, “so dear to me that I feel I am depriving myself of one of my children.”79 It was Serristori who first reported that Michelangelo had willfully burned drawings. This was corroborated by Lionardo Buonarroti, but not until he returned to Florence in May 1564, three months after Michelangelo’s death. Lionardo reported the incident to Vasari, who in turn wrote to Duke Cosimo (now nearly one hundred days after the purported fire): “Of artistic things, he had nothing other than two little cartoons [cartonetti] each of a braccio [“arm’s length” in size], drawn, rather old, and it grieves him that for Your Excellency he has nothing else since [Michelangelo] burned everything in two lots.”80 As I have suggested, Serristori may have embellished the oral report by unnamed persons (dicono) about the burning of drawings in order to mitigate Duke Cosimo’s acute disappointment. And Lionardo may have subscribed to the story for similar reasons. As Michelangelo’s sole heir and guardian of his famous uncle’s reputation and legacy, Lionardo sought to protect the family patrimony from Cosimo’s predatory inclinations. In the end, Cosimo was successful in extracting from Lionardo drawings and sketches that the Buonarroti heir did not, at first, admit to having removed from Michelangelo’s house. In neglecting to mention these drawings to Cosimo, Lionardo permitted the story of the fire to protect what he rightly regarded as his family inheritance. Thus, the story of burned drawings became a credible gambit used first by members of the household to stymie the inquiries of the Florentine outsiders and, in turn, employed by Serristori and Lionardo to placate a disappointed Cosimo. How else could the persons closest to Michelangelo explain to Serristori, Vasari, Cosimo de’ Medici, or Lionardo Buonarroti that the artist made few drawings in his final years? Would a sycophantic courtier (Serristori), a well-dressed Florentine gentleman (Lionardo Buonarroti), or even a prolific, entrepreneurial artist (Vasari), comprehend how the octogenarian Michelangelo worked in his old age? Would anyone believe that the chief architect of Saint Peter’s made very few drawings in his final years? It was easier to suggest a destruction of drawings than to describe a gradual change in Michelangelo over the last two decades: changes in his artistic practice, his capacity and motivation to draw, as well as in his personal and spiritual priorities. Certain drawings, moreover, had to be protected, such as those related to the commissions for which Michelangelo’s collaborators were now fully responsible. The few drawings that remained would have been considered critical to the projects still under way; moreover, they would never have been surrendered as “collectible” objects. Such drawings would disappear not into a fire but at the work site—the usual destination of most working drawings. Most likely this was the fate, for example, of the window drawing for Saint Peter’s mentioned 58 The Art Bulletin March 2021 in the inventory, hungrily perused by Serristori but ultimately rejected for Duke Cosimo’s collection. In 1564, it would not yet have been considered a collector’s drawing. As described in the inventory, it is less an item for ducal admiration than destined for a stoneworker at the work site: “Another cartoon, wherein is drawn a window of the church of St. Peter’s.”81 As far as we know, the drawing no longer exists, a work-site casualty. Likely, it was taken from the house by one of the capomaestri and served its limited purpose as a means to translate a drawn design into travertine on a monumental scale.82 Other architectural drawings, not at the work site but still in Michelangelo’s house, were brought back to Florence by Lionardo and remain in the Casa Buonarroti (see Figs. 15, 16). Meanwhile, in Rome, the explanation of a destructive fire proved credible since, in fact, there had been one. By the Fire Although we lack an eyewitness account, we must give some credence—as has every scholar of Michelangelo—to the secondhand reports of a consuming fire. We can now better consider the artist’s motivations and what might have been consigned to the flames. Given the artist’s determinedly private nature and his lifelong Florentine Republican sentiments, he likely was just as wary as his nephew of the autocratic Medici duke and the rapacious Serristori. Michelangelo knew that the duke’s servant was hovering. At least since June 1563, the “rather greedy and parsimonious” Serristori was doing Cosimo’s bidding by keeping watch on a failing Michelangelo.83 Did Michelangelo wish to deny them the artistic fruits they were seeking, just as previously he had stubbornly denied so many impetuous requests from others? For the last four days of his life, Michelangelo spent most of his time reclining in an armchair before the warmth of a fire. After all, it was February. On the fourteenth, Michelangelo’s friend Leoni wrote to Lionardo: I left him just now, a little after 8 p.m., in full possession of his faculties and quiet in his mind, but oppressed with a continued sleepiness. This has annoyed him so much that, between three and four this afternoon, he tried to go out riding, as his wont is every evening in good weather. The coldness of the weather and the weakness of his head and legs prevented him; so he returned to the fireside, and settled down into an easy chair, which he greatly prefers to the bed.84 The fire was burning; what did it consume? I doubt the fire was fueled by many drawings from Michelangelo’s final years, or by many that we would consider graphic masterpieces, or by many that Lionardo could use as social capital. In fact, Lionardo evidently was successful in rescuing a number of finely finished sheets from Michelangelo’s house (see Fig. 19), as well as the “many other drawings, sketches, and cartoons” that were his rightful inheritance.85 Cosimo ultimately was successful in extorting several of these previously unmentioned sheets from Lionardo, and they formed the core of the ducal drawing collection, today in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. The avaricious duke, however, was less interested in architectural drawings, many also rescued from Michelangelo’s house and which remained in Lionardo’s possession. These included drawings for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Porta Pia, and the Sforza Chapel sketches (see Figs. 7, 15, 16).86 To this day, they remain in the Casa Buonarroti. Michelangelo also did not consign the drawings of Saint Peter’s dome to the flames (see Figs. 17, 18). Although they contributed little to the final design or actual construction of Saint Peter’s, these drawings belonged to Michelangelo’s most important project—the one 59 michelangelo grows old that he hoped would guarantee the salvation of his soul. They, too, must have returned to Florence with Lionardo, only to be dispersed in later centuries. Perhaps the artist burned some of his inchoate efforts at poetry—what he called his “trifles” (quelle frascherie). And he might have burned his copy of the Beneficio di Cristo (Benefit of Christ), a much beloved but dangerous text since it was considered heretical and had been long on the index of prohibited books.87 For the same reason, the ever cautious Michelangelo may have wished to suppress his involvement with Vittoria Colonna and the “Spirituali.”88 Thus, it is likely he burned some letters. Although he was diligent in keeping correspondence and even copied many letters he himself sent, there are some notable gaps, the most glaring of which are with his most important but potentially compromising interlocutors. There is, for example, a paucity of extant letters between Michelangelo and one of his dearest friends, Lodovico Beccadelli: just three letters from Beccadelli and none from the artist.89 From the intensity of feeling expressed in the several sonnets that Michelangelo sent, as well as from Beccadelli’s replies, it is clear that the two shared much more than three letters over more than two decades. In a still extant sonnet, Michelangelo expressed a powerful longing for his friend: “we’ll meet in heaven, but before our final breath, I would still like for us to enjoy each other here on earth. . . . Thus I am with you always in my thoughts.”90 Such potent, but potentially compromising feelings were also once expressed more freely to another young friend, Cavalieri. Although the initial intensity of their relationship mellowed, a love and mutual regard continued for more than thirty years. However, there are no letters between Michelangelo and Cavalieri for twenty-eight years, between 1533 and 1561.91 As Henry James poignantly recounts in The Aspern Papers—and it is as true in life as in fiction—many persons burn correspondence toward the end of their lives. Although a very public figure, Michelangelo was a private person. If he burned some of his correspondence, this would provide a confirming cover story for a burning of drawings. If drawings went into the flames, they were most likely incidental sketches, considered of little worth even by his close associates. Or they might have been sheets that were no longer useful, such as preparatory sketches for The Last Judgment, drawn more than a quarter of a century earlier. For Michelangelo, who likely was practicing a form of self-censorship, the many nude studies he made for The Last Judgment would be compromising, as the fresco was still subject to recurrent and wounding criticism.92 How else do we account for fewer than twenty extant sheets from that gigantic undertaking? Or, more simply, he was acting in a manner consistent with his earlier impulse to rid himself of material from the Sistine ceiling project. Regarding drawings connected to Michelangelo’s “late” work—that is, from the final two decades of his life, when he was responsible for a half-dozen architectural projects, including Saint Peter’s—there is a stunning scarcity. As Cosimo de’ Medici correctly surmised, burning drawings important to any of these endeavors would not “be an action worthy of him.” Worse, for Michelangelo, it would have been a grave sin and a danger to his soul. I doubt a fire claimed a substantial body of work, and probably little of great beauty or of significant value in completing Michelangelo’s many unfinished commissions. There were just too many persons invested in the artist’s projects and reputation to allow him to immolate the future of Rome and its greatest monuments. Michelangelo helped to transform the Eternal City, and he had a lasting impact on the next generation of artists and architects. But drawings were not a critical factor in that legacy. william e. wallace is the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History at Washington University in Saint Louis. He has published extensively on Michelangelo and his contemporaries, including most recently Michelangelo, God’s Architect (Princeton University Press, 2019) [Art History and Archaeology Department, Box 1189, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO 63130, [email protected]]. 60 The Art Bulletin March 2021 NOTES I would like to thank Zoltán Kárpáti of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, for inviting me to undertake this topic, and Deborah Parker and Raymond Carlson for organizing the sessions at the Renaissance Society of America annual meeting in Toronto, in March 2019, where I first presented the ideas in public. I am indebted to Cammy Brothers, Angela Dressen, Emily Fenichel, Mauro Mussolin, Alexander Nagel, Sarah Prodan, Maria Ruvoldt, and Mary Vaccaro for asking the penetrating questions that helped expand and improve the essay, as well as to the two anonymous readers for The Art Bulletin. My Saint Louis colleagues Daniel Bornstein, Robert Henke, Joseph Loewenstein, and Jonathan Sawday read an early draft and helped sharpen the argument. Unless otherwise indicated, translations, are mine. 1. M. H. Miller, “Burn This: Why Do Artists Destroy Their Own Work?,” T: The New York Times Style Magazine, March 24, 2019, 60–64. 2. Sandro Botticelli and other followers of Girolamo Savonarola may be considered an exception, as they are believed to have consigned a number of works to the friar’s infamous bonfires of the vanities; see Herbert Horne, Botticelli: Painter of Florence (1908; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 153, 273–75. These artists, however, were likely more concerned for their material and spiritual salvation than with curating their future legacies. 3. Averardo Serristori, Rome, to Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, Florence, February 19, 1564; see Karl Frey, ed., Der literarische Nachlass Giorgio Vasaris, 2 vols. (Munich: Georg Müller, 1923–30), 2:901. 4. For example, by scholars of Michelangelo drawings such as Michael Hirst, “Survival and Destruction,” chap. 3 in Michelangelo and His Drawings (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 16–21; Alexander Perrig, Michelangelo’s Drawings: The Science of Attribution, trans. Michael Joyce (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 1; Carmen C. Bambach, “Vasari on Michelangelo’s ‘Gelosie delle Figure’ and the Destruction of His Drawings,” in Giorgio Vasari pittore e il disegno: Atti del colloquio internazionale di studi, Annali Aretini, ed. Alessandra Baroni Vannucci (Arezzo, Italy: Fraternità dei Laici, 2012),131–47; and Julian Brooks, “Michelangelo Drawings: Flames, Blades, and Human Foible,” in Michelangelo: Mind of the Master, ed. Emily J. Peters and Brooks (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019), 21–29. The story is related as well in widely read modern biographies such as George Bull, Michelangelo: A Biography (London: Penguin, 1995), 43; and Martin Gayford, Michelangelo: His Epic Life (London: Penguin, 2013), 559. For a recent assessment of Michelangelo’s late draftsmanship, see Carmen C. Bambach, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017), esp. chap. 8, “The Fame and Legacy of a Genius,” 232–65. 5. The sheet count depends on whether one separately counts recto from verso and whether one counts tiny sketches or fragments as “sheets.” Most important, the number will fluctuate depending on an individual scholar’s attribution and dating of these mostly undated drawings. Paul Joannides counts approximately eighty sheets from the last fifteen years of Michelangelo’s life, thirty of which are predominantly architectural and about fifty figural (Joannides, “I disegni tardi di Michelangelo,” in L’ultimo Michelangelo: Disegni e rime attorno alla Pietà Rondanini, ed. Alessandro Rovetta [Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2011], 20). See also Alessandro Rovetta, “Disegni e rime nell’ultimo Michelangelo (1547–1564): Prossimità e distanza,” Annali di critica d’arte 11 (2015): 15–32. Of course, much depends on how one dates the drawings, for which there are few secure dates. Joannides (“I disegni tardi,” 20) maintains that Michelangelo must have made many more drawings that have not survived. He cites an interesting letter written on August 29, 1561, in which Michelangelo’s friend and assistant Tiberio Calcagni reported to Lionardo Buonarroti that Michelangelo “drew for perhaps three hours” (disegnare forse 3 ore). The natural supposition is that Michelangelo often or regularly drew for three hours a day and made many drawings; however, the full context of the letter suggests that this was a notable and possibly rare occurrence, hence worth mentioning, especially as it helped to allay fears about Michelangelo’s current health problems, which was one of the main reasons for Calcagni writing the letter. For the complete letter, see G. Daelli, Carte Michelangiolesche inedite (Milan: Autografia G. Daelli, 1865), no. 23. 6. William E. Wallace, ‘“Certain of Death’: Michelangelo’s Late Life and Art,” Renaissance Quarterly 68 (2015): 10–11; and William E. Wallace, “Who Is the Author of Michelangelo’s Life?,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Giorgio Vasari, ed. David Cast (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2014), 107–19. 7. On Rembrandt’s bankruptcy and how it has inflected the artist’s biography, see Paul Crenshaw, Rembrandt’s Bankruptcy: The Artist, His Patrons and the Art Market in Seventeenth-Century Netherlands (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 8. William E. Wallace, “Studies in Michelangelo’s Finished Drawings, 1520–1534” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1983). 9. Michelangelo, Il carteggio di Michelangelo, ed. Giovanni Poggi, Paola Barocchi, and Renzo Ristori, 5 vols. (Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1965–83), 4:49, 169. The admiration and collecting of drawings was a phenomenon that largely emerged toward the mid-sixteenth century. See Julius Held, “The Early Appreciation of Drawings,” in Studies in Western Art: Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art, vol. 3 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 72–95; Charles de Tolnay, History and Technique of Old Master Drawings (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1972), 76–79; and Joseph Meder, Die Handzeichnung: Ihre Technik und Entwicklung (Vienna: A. Schroll, 1919), trans. Winslow Ames as The Mastery of Drawing, 2 vols. (New York: Abaris Art Books, 1978; see esp. chap. 17, “Collecting,” 1:478–515. The drawings that Michelangelo presented to Cavalieri caused an immediate sensation and stimulated an immediate acquisitive desire. Maria Ruvoldt presented a lecture on the subject, “Michelangelo Multiplied: The Afterlife of the Drawings for Tommaso de’ Cavalieri,” at the symposium (January 2018) in conjunction with the exhibition Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer 61 michelangelo grows old at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. See also Maria Ruvoldt, “Responding to the Renaissance,” in Renaissance Theory, ed. James Elkins and Robert Williams (London: Routledge, 2008), 370–76; Maria Ruvoldt, “Copies of Michelangelo’s Dream for Ottavio Farnese?,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 30 (2011): 18–25; and Ruvoldt’s book in progress on the subject, provisionally titled Michelangelo and Tommaso de’ Cavalieri: Art, Love, and Politics in Renaissance Rome. 10. Leonardo Sellaio to Michelangelo, February 5, 1518, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 1:318: “dichono avere arssii tutti que’ chartoni, ma non chredo di tutti.” 11. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, 6 vols. (Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1966–87), 6:109. 12. See Michelangelo, Carteggio, 2:376, 381, 383; and Michelangelo, Il carteggio indiretto di Michelangelo, ed. Paola Barocchi, Kathleen Bramanti, and Renzo Ristori, 2 vols. (Florence: S.P.E.S. Editore, 1988, 1995) 1:199. 13. Pietro Aretino to Michelangelo, ca. April 1546, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 4:238: “per il desiderio estremo d’alcuno disegno di quegli di che sete così prodigo al fuoco, et a me tanto avaro.” See Erica Tietze-Conrat, “Neglected Contemporary Sources Relating to Michelangelo and Titian,” Art Bulletin 25 (1943): 154–59. My thanks to Maria Ruvoldt for reminding me of this incident. 14. Aretino to Michelangelo, November 1545?, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 4:216. 15. See for example William E. Wallace, “Reversing the Rules: Michelangelo and the Patronage of Sculpture,” in Patronage of Italian Renaissance Sculpture, ed. Kathleen W. Christian and David Drogin (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 149–67. 16. Ascanio Condivi, in Michelangelo: Life, Letters, and Poetry, trans. George Bull (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 70. 17. For the inventory, see Aurelio Gotti, Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti, 2 vols. (Florence: Tipografia della Gazzetta d’Italia Editrice, 1875), 2:148–56. 18. Ibid. Despite the apparent thoroughness of the inventory, a striking omission is any record of books. It is certain that Michelangelo owned a number of books, including the precious volume of verse that was given to him by Vittoria Colonna (mentioned below). He certainly also owned one or more editions of Petrarch and Dante Alighieri. It is evident he was familiar with Cristoforo Landino’s Neoplatonic commentary on Dante, and he was openly critical of Alessandro Vellutello’s commentary, published in Venice in 1544 (see Michelangelo to his nephew Lionardo Buonarroti, May 9, 1545, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 4:212). He also owned a copy of the Beneficio di Cristo and a volume of Colonna’s poetry that is today in the Vatican Apostolic Library. The question remains: Why were books not part of the extensive inventory taken on the artist’s death? Were books listed in a separate inventory that perhaps has not survived or surfaced? It is similarly curious that there are clothes but no books mentioned in William Shakespeare’s will (my thanks to Jonathan Sawday for this latter point). 19. Gotti, Vita, 2:151. 20. Ibid., 2:150: “Una statua principiata, per uno santo Pietro, sbozzata et non finita. Un’altra statua principiata per un Cristo ed un’altra figura di sopra, ataccata insieme, sbozzata et non finita. Un’altra statua piccolina, per un Cristo con un la croce in spalla, et non finita.” 21. Serristori to Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, February 20, 1564, in Frey, Der literarische Nachlass, 2:901: “che furono poche, et manco disegnj.” 22. Ibid.: “perche quanto à disegni dicono che gia abbuciò cio che haveva.” 23. For which projects, see William E. Wallace, Michelangelo at San Lorenzo: The Genius as Entrepreneur (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 24. Cosimo de’ Medici to Serristori, in Frey, Der literarische Nachlass 2:902: “Non Ci é parso atto degno di lui l’havergli dati al fuoco.” 25. Frank Jewett Mather, A History of Italian Painting (New York: Henry Holt, 1923), 301. 26. For these individuals, see William E. Wallace, Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man and His Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 270–72, 312–15, 323–24. 27. Giovan Francesco Ughi, Florence, reporting to Michelangelo, Rome, May 14, 1547, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 4:267: “che voi lavorate la nocte perché non si veghi.” 28. Michelangelo to Lionardo Buonarroti, in ibid., 5:309–310: “quanto al governo ti dico che io non potrei star meglio, né più fedelmente esser in ogni cosa governato e tractato.” 29. Lorenzo Mariottini to Lionardo Buonarroti, January 2, 1563, in Michelangelo, Carteggio indiretto, 2:138: “Io sto vigilante, se ocorerà cosa nesuno, così de la casa come de la vita.” 30. See Anna Bedon, Il Campidoglio: Storia di un monumento civile nella Roma papale (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2008), 133–39. 31. See William E. Wallace, “Michelangelo, Tiberio Calcagni, and the Florentine Pietà,” Artibus et Historiae 42 (2000): 81–99. 32. For Michelangelo’s collaboration with Daniele, see Antonia Boström, “Daniele da Volterra, Ruberto Strozzi and the Equestrian Monument to Henry II of France,” in The Sculpted Object, 1400–1700, ed. Stuart Currie and Peta Motture (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1997), 201–14; Letizia Treves, “Daniele da Volterra and Michelangelo: A Collaborative Relationship,” Apollo 154 (August 2001): 36–45; and Morton Steen Hansen, In Michelangelo’s Mirror: Perino del Vaga, Daniele da Volterra, Pellegrino Tibaldi (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2013), chap. 3. di qua se prima non conduco la fabrica di Santo Pietro a termine che la non possa essere guasta né mutata della mia compositione.” 35. Michelangelo to Lionardo Buonarroti, July 1, 1557, in Michelangelo, The Letters of Michelangelo, trans. E. H. Ramsden, 2 vols. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1963), 2:177, emphasis added; and Michelangelo, Carteggio, 5:110: “E io, perché son vechio e non avendo a lasiare altro di me, non l’ò voluta abandonare, e perché servo per l’amor di Dio e in lui ò tucta la mia speranza”; and “E questa diligentia ò sempre usata e uso, perché, come molti credono e io ancora, esservi stato messo da Dio.” 36. For which, see Wallace, Michelangelo at San Lorenzo. 37. Michelangelo to the deputies of the Fabbrica of Saint Peter’s, after November 4, 1561, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 5:272. 38. Michelangelo to the fabbrica of Saint Peter’s, trans. Bull, Michelangelo: Life, Letters, and Poetry, 119; and Michelangelo, Carteggio, 4:251: “Lui pose la prima pianta di Santo Pietro, non piena di confusion ma chiara e schietta, luminosa e isolata a torno, in modo che non nuoceva a chosa nessuna del Palazzo; e fu tenuta cosa bella, come ancora è manifesto; in modo che chiunche s’è discostato da decto ordine di Bramante, come à facto il Sangallo, s’è discostato dalla verità.” For a discussion of Michelangelo’s indebtedness to Bramante, see Charles Robertson, “Bramante, Michelangelo and the Sistine Ceiling,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986): 91–105. 39. Moreover, Michelangelo never makes reference to any such disegno or pianta, except to refer to Bramante’s la prima pianta (Michelangelo to Bartolomeo Ferratino, end of 1546 or early 1547, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 4:251). Michelangelo merely refers to protecting la mia compositione (Michelangelo to Bartolommeo Ferratino, shortly before March 1547, in ibid., 5:110)—the building that he wished to complete during his tenure as chief architect of Saint Peter’s. Michelangelo’s compositione (that is, the built fabric, not a drawn plan) achieved unquestioned authoritative status and directed the work of his followers—those persons who professed to have knowledge of the master, of his “intentions,” or who just claimed to have been his assistant, pupil, or collaborator, and, therefore, who wielded a degree of inherited authority. Howard Burns and Marvin Trachtenberg have discussed how initial design decisions and building facts restricted the choices of a project’s subsequent builders, a strategy practiced by Michelangelo at Saint Peter’s; see Burns, “Building against Time: Renaissance Strategies to Secure Large Churches against Changes to Their Design,” in L’église dans l’architecture de la Renaissance, ed. Jean Guillaume (Paris: Picard, 1995), 107–31; and Trachtenberg, Building in Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 33. For these incidents and a more general picture of Michelangelo’s household, see Wallace, The Artist, the Man and His Times, esp. chaps. 12, 15. 40. On Sangallo’s model, see Henry A. Millon, “Models in Renaissance Architecture,” in The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture, ed. Millon and Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani (Milan: Bompiani, 1994), 35–43, cat. no. 346. 34. Michelangelo to his nephew Lionardo Buonarroti, July 1, 1557, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 5:110: “di non partire 41. On the Strozzi Palace, see Richard A. Goldthwaite, “The Building of the Strozzi Palace: The Construction 62 The Art Bulletin March 2021 Industry in Renaissance Florence,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 10 (1973): 99–194; for the Escorial, see Catherine Wilkinson, “Building from Drawings at the Escorial,” in Les chantiers de la Renaissance, ed. Jean Guillaume (Paris: Picard, 1991), 263–78. 42. For example, Vitale Zanchettin, “Un disegno sconosciuto di Michelangelo per l’architrave del tamburo della Cupola di San Pietro in Vaticano,” Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 37 (2006): 10–55. 43. James S. Ackerman, “Architectural Practice in the Italian Renaissance,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 13 (1954): 9. Michelangelo pursued a similarly open process in drawing and sculpting; see for example William E. Wallace, “Michelangelo: Separating Theory and Practice,” in Imitation, Representation and Printing in the Italian Renaissance, ed. Roy Eriksen and Magne Malmanger (Pisa, Italy: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2009), 101–17; Leonard Barkan, Michelangelo: A Life on Paper (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), passim; and Joost Keizer, “Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Subject of Art,” Art Bulletin 93 (2011): 304–24. See also Cammy Brothers’s important discussion of the relation between paper and real architecture in Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Invention of Architecture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 44. Michelangelo to Cardinal Ridolfo Pio da Carpi, ca. September 1560, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 5:230: “padron mio colendissimo”; and Vasari, Le vite, 6:109. 45. Michelangelo to Lionardo Buonarroti, February 1557, in Michelangelo, The Letters of Michelangelo, trans. Ramsden, 2:171; and Michelangelo, Carteggio, 5:84: “m’è ag[i]unto che m’è forza fare un modello grande di legniame con la cupola e la lanterna, per laciarla terminata come à a essere finita del tucto; e di questo son pregato da tucta Roma, e massimamente dal reverendissimo cardinale di Carpi: in modo che io credo che a far questo mi bisogni star qua non manco d’un anno.” 46. An excellent discussion of the model is found in Henry A. Millon and Craig Hugh Smyth, Michelangelo Architect: The Façade of San Lorenzo and the Drum and Dome of St. Peter’s (Milan: Olivetti, 1988), 119–28, cat. no. 21. 47. See Millon, “Models,” 47. 48. The various models are surveyed by Alessandro Brodini, “La carta, la terra e la pietra: Materia e lavoro in alcune architetture romane di Michelangelo,” in Michelangelo: Arte, materia, lavoro, ed. Alessandro Nova and Vitale Zanchettin (Venice: Marsilio, 2019), 113–27. See also Mauro Mussolin, “Forme in fieri: I modelli architettonici nella progettazione di Michelangelo,” in Michelangelo e il disegno di architettura, ed. Caroline Elam (Venice: Marsilio, 2006), 94–111. 49. Federico Bellini, La Basilica di San Pietro da Michelangelo a Della Porta, 2 vols. (Rome: Argos, 2011), 1:115, 2:417. 50. Henry Millon and Craig H. Smyth, “Michelangelo and St. Peter’s: Observations on the Interior of the Apse, a Model of the Apse Vault, and Related Drawings,” Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 16 (1976): 137–206; and Millon and Lampugnani, Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo, cat. no. 378. 51. Michelangelo to Giorgio Vasari, July 1, 1557, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 5:113: “Questo errore, avendo il modello facto a punto com’io fo d’ogni cosa, [non si doveva mai pigliare]; ma è stato per non vi potere andare spesso per la vechieza.” On the problem with the construction of the vault, see Alessandro Brodini, “Michelangelo e la volta della cappella del re di Francia in San Pietro,” in Annali di architettura: Rivista del Centro internazionale di studi di architettura Andrea Palladio 17 (2005 [2006]): 115–26. 52. My thanks to the anonymous reader for this insight. On Michelangelo’s emergence as an architect, especially as it transpired on paper, see Brothers, Michelangelo, Invention of Architecture. 53. James S. Ackerman, The Architecture of Michelangelo, 2 vols. (New York: Viking, 1961), 1:82–83, 2:74. 54. Condivi, in Bull, Michelangelo: Life, Letters, and Poetry, 61–62. 55. See Charles de Tolnay, Corpus dei disegni di Michelangelo, 4 vols. (Novara, Italy: Istituto geografico de Agostini, 1975–80), 4:no. 589 verso; and Anna Bedon, “Architetture minori di Michelangelo a Roma,” in Michelangelo: Architetto a Roma, ed. Mauro Mussolin (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2009), 46–57. 56. There is little agreement about Michelangelo’s role and the extent of his contributions to these various projects or to Julius’s other initiatives, which included a design for the church of the Gesù and a redesign for the Ponte Rotta, the “broken bridge,” which was damaged—or collapsed—every time the Tiber flooded. Michelangelo’s name is also linked to projects beyond Rome, such as a design for the choir of Padua Cathedral. For all these various projects, see Ackerman, Architecture of Michelangelo, passim; Alessandro Nova, “The Artistic Patronage of Julius III (1550–1555): Profane Imagery and Buildings for the Del Monte Family in Rome” (PhD diss., University of London, 1982); and Alessandro Nova, “The Chronology of the Del Monte Chapel in S. Pietro in Rome,” Art Bulletin 66 (1984): 150–54. 57. This drawing, and others for the Porta Pia, reveals the imprecision of Michelangelo’s late draftsmanship, or what Brodini (“La carta,” 115) has characterized as “a laborious graphic process” (un processo grafico faticosa), resulting in sheets that a capomaestro could not easily comprehend or utilize for construction purposes. Regarding Michelangelo’s late architectural draftsmanship with reference to the Porta Pia drawings, see also Christof Thoenes, “Michelangelo und Architektur,” in Michelangelo e il linguaggio dei disegni di architettura, ed. Golo Maurer and Alessandro Nova (Venice: Marsilio, 2012), 15–29; and Golo Maurer, “Porta Pia,” in Mussolin, Michelangelo: Architetto a Roma, 226–39. 58. Ackerman, Architecture of Michelangelo, 1:chap. 9; 2:120–25; and Tolnay, Corpus, 4:nos. 609, 610, 612. The scholarship on the project is vast; an accessible review of the history with references to past literature is Mauro Mussolin, “San Giovanni dei Fiorentini,” in Mussolin, Michelangelo: Architetto a Roma, 206–13. 59. See Tolnay, Corpus, 4:nos. 624, 625. 60. Partly for this reason—the lack of demands on the artist—the project, one among so many, was actually realized. Others who made demands on the artist or who begged for work generally got nothing (see Wallace, “Reversing the Rules”). Cammy Brothers notes that, already with the Laurentian Library, “economy reigned” in Michelangelo’s drawing practice—with ideas being transferred from one scheme to another and from one function to another. Before Michelangelo ever took over the large construction projects of Rome, this principle of economy was a fundamental characteristic of Michelangelo’s graphic practice: minimum drawing offered maximum possibilities (see Brothers, Michelangelo, Invention of Architecture, 165). For Saint Peter’s, Michelangelo drew mainly to resolve particular problems. 61. For Santa Maria degli Angeli, a gigantic undertaking, there is extant just one, extremely simplified and partial ground plan (see Tolnay, Corpus, 4:no. 623). 62. An excellent discussion of the sheet, with references to the extensive literature, is found in Millon and Smyth, Michelangelo Architect, 143–47, cat. no. 27. 63. Vasari, Le vite, 6:104: “Michelagnolo dunque per le cose d’architettura, non possendo disegnare più per la vecchiaia né tirar linee nette, si andava servendo di Tiberio”; and Wallace, “Michelangelo and the Florentine Pietà,” 89. In this reportage, we can trust Vasari as an eyewitness since he was in Rome with Michelangelo in 1550 and worked in collaboration with him on several commissions, most notably the Del Monte Chapel in San Pietro in Montorio and the Villa Giulia. He was well acquainted with Calcagni and the entire history of the San Giovanni dei Fiorentini commission. 64. Michelangelo to Lionardo Buonarroti, June 27, 1562, in Michelangelo, The Letters of Michelangelo, trans. Ramsden, 2:205; and Michelangelo, Carteggio, 5:291: “Non vi maravigliate se io non vi scrivo, perché sono vechio, come sapete, et non posso durar fatica a scrivere.” 65. Bernardino della Croce to Pier Luigi Farnese, late 1546, in Ernst Steinmann, Michelangelo e Luigi del Riccio (Florence: Vallecchi Editore, 1932), 28: “Hora che è morto Luigi del Riccio, che governava tutte le sue cose, li pare esser impaniato di sorte che non sa che si fare se non disperarsi.” 66. The first printed but much bowdlerized selection of Michelangelo’s poetry was published by the artist’s grandnephew, Michelangelo the Younger, in 1623. For this history, see James M. Saslow, The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 53–61. 67. Wallace, “‘Certain of Death,’” esp. 15ff. 68. John Frederick Nims, The Complete Poems of Michelangelo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), no. 282. See also Saslow, Poetry of Michelangelo, no. 282. 69. Nims, Complete Poems, no. 285: “error carcar.” 70. Hans Belting, “Religion and Art: The Crisis of the Image at the Beginning of the Modern Age,” chap. 20 in Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Alexander Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Alexander Nagel, “Art as Gift: Liberal Art and Religious Reform in the Renaissance,” in 63 michelangelo grows old Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange, ed. Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner, and Bernhard Jussen (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 319–60. 71. Romeo De Maio, Michelangelo e la Controriforma (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1981), esp. chap. 1; Bernadine Barnes, “Aretino, the Public, and the Censorship of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment,” in Suspended License: Censorship and the Visual Arts, ed. Elizabeth Childs (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 59–84; Bernadine Barnes, Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment”: The Renaissance Response (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); and Massimo Firpo and Fabrizio Biferali, Immagini ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2016), esp. chap. 5. 72. William E. Wallace, “Michel Angelus Bonarotus Patritius Florentinus,” in Innovation and Tradition: Essays on Renaissance Art and Culture, ed. Dag T. Andersson and Roy Eriksen (Rome: Edizioni Kappa, 2000), 60–74; and Wallace, Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man and His Times, esp. chaps. 2, 11. 73. Diomede Leoni to Lionardo Buonarroti, February 18, 1564, in John Addington Symonds, The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, 2 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1893), 2:320. 74. Vasari, Le vite, 6:107–8: “fece testamento di tre parole, che lasciava l’anima sua nelle mane de Iddio, il suo corpo alla terra e la roba a’ parenti più prossimi.” 75. Daniele da Volterra to Lionardo Buonarroti, February 14, 1564, in Michelangelo, Carteggio indiretto, 2:171. 76. On dying intestate, see Thomas Kuehn, Heirs, Kin, and Creditors in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), esp. 89–95. 77. Vasari, Le vite, 6:110: “che gli tien per gioie.” Thanks to Lionardo’s gift, both drawings entered the ducal collection and are currently in the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, GDS, inv. nos. 230F and 229F respectively. 78. Ibid.: “e molti altri disegni e schizzi e cartoni di mano di Michelagnolo.” 79. Tommaso de’ Cavalieri to Cosimo de’ Medici, January 20, 1562; see Ernst Steinmann and Heinrich Pogatscher, “Dokumente und Forschungen zu Michelangelo,” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 29 (1906): 504–5. 80. Giorgio Vasari to Cosimo de’ Medici, May 22, 1564, in Frey, Der literarische Nachlass 2:82: “Che delle coʃa dell arte non a auto altro che duo cartonettj, dj uno braccio luno, djʃegnatj, ʃendo vechio, assai ragionevolmente, e quali ʃerba per.V.E.I., dolendogli non avere altro, poi che luj ʃteʃʃo in duo volte abruʃcio ogni coʃa.” 81. Gotti, Vita, 2:151: “Un altro cartone, dove sta designato una fenestra della chiesa di San Pietro.” We can track the relation between the inventory and some of the figural cartoons and sculptures mentioned in the inventory; see James Beck, Three Worlds of Michelangelo (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 221–31; and Joannides, “I disegni tardi.” 82. We can follow the fate of one such drawing, the remaining two pieces of which are preserved in the Casa Buonarroti. In 1558–59, Michelangelo drafted a window design for the wood model of Saint Peter’s dome. Once used by the woodworker, the drawing was cut in half, and Michelangelo used both parts for other purposes, including to draw the magnificent ground plan for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini (see Fig. 7) on the reverse side (now considered the “recto”) of one half of the previously drawn window design. For the sheet, now separated in two, see Tolnay, Corpus, 4:nos. 612, 613; and Joannides, “I disegni tardi,” 25. 83. See Michelangelo to his nephew Lionardo Buonarroti, June 25, 1563, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 5:307. Serristori was a longtime faithful servant and diplomat for Cosimo. Although his contemporary Benedetto Varchi much esteemed him, he was also, in Varchi’s estimation, avaricious and parsimonious, as well as prudent, eloquent, graceful, animated, and generally faithful: “giovane non letterato e piuttosto avaro che parsimonioso, ma per altro prudente, eloquente, grazioso, animoso e sommamente fedele” (Varchi, in Giorgio Spini, Cosimo I e l’indipendenza del principato mediceo [Florence: Vallecchi Editore, 1980], 103). If Varchi’s characterization is accurate, these are not qualities that would especially endear the sycophantic courtier to Michelangelo. Michelangelo’s Poetry and Iconography in the Heart of the Reformation (London: Routledge, 2017). 89. Michelangelo, Carteggio, 5:66–67, 89–90, 127. 90. Michelangelo, in Saslow, Poetry of Michelangelo, no. 300. 91. My thanks to Maria Ruvoldt for information regarding the relationship of Michelangelo and Cavalieri. 92. See the forthcoming study by Emily Fenichel, “Michelangelo and Reform: Art and Devotion after The Last Judgment,” on how Michelangelo responded, on multiple fronts, to this constant criticism. 84. Diomede Leoni to Lionardo Buonarroti, February 14, 1564, trans. Symonds, The Life of Michelangelo 2:319; and Michelangelo, Carteggio indiretto, 2:173. 85. The “molti altri disegni e schizzi e cartoni di mano di Michelagnolo” that Vasari describes in Cosimo’s possession, of course, came from Lionardo, who removed these sheets from his uncle’s house after his death (Vasari, Le vite, 6:110). 86. The three illustrated are among some fifteen drawings associated with San Giovanni dei Fiorentini (Tolnay, Corpus, 4:608–13), the Porta Pia (ibid., 4:614–20), and the Sforza Chapel (ibid., 4:624–25), all of which remained in the possession of the Buonarroti. 87. Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (London: Penguin, 2004), 233; quelle frascherie is from Michelangelo himself (for example, Michelangelo to Giovan Francesco Fattucci, April–June 1547, in Michelangelo, Carteggio, 4:260). On the Beneficio, see Carlo Ginzburg and Adriano Prosperi, Giochi di pazienza: Un seminario su Beneficio di Cristo (Turin, Italy: G. Einaudi, 1975). 88. On Michelangelo and his relations to the “Spirituali” (who were at first reformers but later deemed heretics), see Massimo Firpo, “Vittoria Colonna, Giovanni Morone e gli ‘spirituali,’” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 24 (1988): 211–61; Emidio Campi, Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna: Un dialogo artistico-teologico ispirato da Bernardino Ochino e altri saggi di storia della Riforma (Turin, Italy: Claudiana, 1994); Una Roman D’Elia, “Drawing Christ’s Blood: Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the Aesthetics of Reform,” Renaissance Quarterly 59 (2006): 90–129; Maria Forcellino, Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna e gli “spirituali”: Religiosità e vita artistica a Roma negli anni Quaranta (Rome: Viella Editore, 2009); Sarah Rolfe Prodan, Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality, Poetry, and Art in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Ambra Moroncini, 64 The Art Bulletin March 2021