Studies of Michelangelo's original, un-bowdlerized designs for the Last Judgment, owned by Leopoldo Cicognara

[Michelangelo Buonarroti]. Album with 70 ink and wash studies after the "Last Judgment", preserving Michelangelo's original fresco designs.

€ 450.000,00

Album of seventy studies after the "Last Judgment", preserving Michelangelo's original fresco designs and thus almost certainly made during his lifetime, as the frescoes were bowdlerized on the orders of the Council of Trent shortly after his death in 1564. From the famous library of the Italian art historian and collector Leopoldo Cicognara (1767-1834).

The figures from "The Last Judgment" are rendered with such precision as to suggest the artist's intimate familiarity of the original work: obviously, he either saw the work in person, having joined Michelangelo on the scaffolding, or he must have had access to the original, now-lost cartoni of the frescoes. Most importantly, the drawings show the figures in their original state as painted by Michelangelo. After his death in 1564, the male genitalia in the frescoes, regarded as objectionable, were covered with drapery by the artist Daniele da Volterra, thenceforth known as "Il Braghettone" ("the breeches-maker"). The frescoes were only partly restored to their original stage in the 1980s. This album therefore stands as an important and early first-hand iconographical documentation of Michelangelo's masterpiece.

The proximity to the work in its original state, as well as the expensive colours and materials employed (including ultramarine, by far the most costly and treasured colour, made from the precious powder of crushed lapis lazuli), suggest that this very elegant album was at least not made by a student. It is also possible that the album is the product of different hands from the same pictorial school, since some of the drawings, particularly that on fol. 16, appear to have been executed by a more mature hand with a stronger and steadier stroke, while remaining stylistically consistent with the rest of the drawings. It also appears that the artist was so concerned with the Hellenic perfection of Michelangelo’s nude bodies that the drawings are unnaturally cropped in order to exclude every other element of the pictorial background: it therefore stands to reason that the album was realized by someone who had in mind the importance of nudity in Michelangelo's work and, perhaps, the sin of overpainting his astonishing masterpiece.

Michelangelo's "The Last Judgment" ("Il Giudizio Universale"), executed on the altar wall of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, is widely regarded as one of the most important artworks of all time. It depicts the Second Coming of Christ and God's final and eternal judgment of all humanity, with humans rising and descending to their fates as judged by Christ, who is presented surrounded by prominent saints. Completed in four years, between 1536 and 1541, it ended up being censored by the Catholic church: the album of drawings presented here captures a substantial part of the fresco in its original state, marking a critical moment in its history as well as that of art in general.

Michelangelo’s fresco - an exquisite example of his keen attention to musculature and the naked body - was the subject of intense debate between those who appreciated the artist's aesthetic genius and Mannerist style, and, on the other hand, critics from the Catholic Counter-Reformation who accused the work of being insensitive to proper decorum, and of flaunting personal style over appropriate depictions of content. After the Pope's Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, stated that "it was most disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully", and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather "for the public baths and taverns", Michelangelo retaliated by painting Cesena's likeness onto the face of Minos (judge of the underworld, whose inclusion here, along with that of Charon, was inspired by Dante's Inferno), with donkey ears suggesting foolishness and a coiled snake biting his membrum. It is said that when Cesena complained to the Pope, the pontiff joked that his jurisdiction did not extend to hell, so the portrait would have to remain.

The debate grew steadily, and a few years after the fresco was completed, the decrees of the Council of Trent urged a tightening-up of church control over "unusual" sacred images; thus, after Michelangelo’s death in 1564, the genitalia in the fresco, regarded as "objectionable", were covered with drapery by the Mannerist artist Daniele da Volterra. Volterra was the first in a series of 'braghettoni' painters to cover the original frescoes with multi-coloured veils and other deceptions to keep Michelangelo's work from being seen in its original incarnation. He is also responsible for chiselling away part of the fresco and repainting the larger part of St Catherine and the entire figure of Saint Blaise behind her. This was done because in the original version the latter appeared to be looking at the former's naked buttocks, and to some observers the position of their bodies even suggested intercourse. St Catherine, who had been nude, was redressed in a green and yellow smock; St Blaise, who was bowed down, was repainted in an upright position with his head turned in a direction opposite to that which had been painted by Michelangelo, thus ruining the geometry of the scene and distorting the meaning of the work.

The fresco was restored along with the Sistine vault between 1980 and 1994 under the supervision of Vatican Museum's curator Fabrizio Mancinelli. Over the course of the restoration about half the censorship from the "Fig-Leaf Campaign" was undone, and numerous other buried details, trapped under years of smoke and grime, were revealed; indeed, it was only after this restoration that the coiled snake biting Biagio de Cesena's genitalia was revealed once more. Remarkably, all these details - lost or altered after the 'Braghettoni' covered the fresco - and, perhaps most importantly, the destroyed portion of St Catherine and St Blaise, are reproduced in this elegant collection of drawings - a rare and extraordinary curiosity, and a contemporary art historical source worthy of further study.

As a note on the front flyleaf attests, the album later belonged to the outstanding Italian art historian and collector Leopoldo Cicognara, well known for his celebrated art bibliography. Throughout his collecting and writing, Cicognara amassed a fabulous art library, the inventory of which - published in 1821 - may today be his most consulted text. He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries such as Goethe, Quatremère de Quincy, Giordani and Monti, David and Canova.