Lot 42
  • 42

Italian 16th Century Follower of Michelangelo Buonarroti

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Description

  • Michelangelo
  • The Drunkenness of Noah
  • oil on canvas

Catalogue Note

In his Vita of Michelangelo, Vasari lauded the artist's generosity, not only to his fellow artists, but to his friends to whom he made presents of drawings and modelli which even then were of considerable value.  Among these gifts which Vasari noted were liberally spread "qua & la" was one that he made to his great friend Bindo Altoviti, the banker and Florentine consul in Rome, "al quale donò il cartone della Cappella dove Noè inebriato è schernito da un de' figliuoli e ricoperto le vergogne dagli altri dua...  [to whom he gave the cartoon from the (Sistine) Chapel where the drunken Noah is mocked by one of his sons and his shame is covered by the other two (Vasari, Vite, 1568, 1966 edition, vol. 6, p. 109)."

The composition of this canvas would appear to have been based on Michelangelo's cartoon which the Altoviti family would have made available for study by interested artists.  Philippe Costamagna notes that Francesco Salviati made a drawn copy of it circa 1534/35, now in the British Museum, London, (inv. 1940.0713.366; see A. Chong et al., Raphael, Cellini and a Renaissance Banker, Boston 2003, exhibition catalogue , p. 395-6, cat. No.14a) (see Fig. 1). This drawing was quite reasonably made after the cartoon which Salviati would have seen in his patron Altoviti's collection, rather than from the Sistine ceiling itself.  The Altoviti apparently ordered a painted copy of the composition, presumably at the time that they divested themselves of Michelangelo's valuable original drawing (now untraced), as is suggested in a 1644 inventory of the Villa Altoviti at Prati in Castello where one is recorded (see A. Chong et al., op. cit., p. 450).  A painting on panel of the composition, which retains the  wine vat behind the unconscious Noah and which differs in other details from the fresco, is in the collection of the Gemädegalerie, Berlin (inv. 2177) (see Fig. 2).  

The present canvas, painted in the mid 16 th Century, could be the one mentioned in the Altoviti collection, who presumably could have had more than one copy made. Other important collectors in Rome and Florence could also have commissioned such a piece.   Paintings after designs by Michelangelo were certainly collected by important patrons.  The most famous example of this is the Venus and Cupid now in the collection of the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, which was painted for the banker Bartolomeo Bettini from a design created by Michelangelo which was given to Pontormo to execute in paint (see P. Costamagna, Pontormo, 1994, p. 217 passim, cat. no. 70).

We are grateful to Philippe Costamagna for his suggestions in cataloguing this lot.