Spaightwood Galleries
Updated 4-11-09
Home / Gallery Tour 1 / Master Drawings and Prints / Gallery Tour 2 / Artists
Raphael Sanzio (Urbino 1483-1520 Rome)
15th century North Italian Illuminated Manuscript / Italian School, 16th and early 17th-Century Drawings
Michelangelo Buonarotti (After) / Raphael / Parmigianino / Marcantonio Raimondi
Giulio Romano / Titian (after) / Andrea Schiavone / Tintoretto / Veronese / Federico Zuccaro
Jacopo Palma il Giovane / Cherubino Alberti / Annibale Carracci
Italian School, 17th-Century Drawings / Drawings2 / Simone Cantarini / Domenichino / Guercino / Pier Francesco Mola
Italian School Printmakers, 15th-17th Centuries: Venetian School, c. 1500 / Raphael School / Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio
Marcantonio Raimondi / The Master of the Die / Anea Vico / Agostino Veneziano / Nicholas Beatrizet
Michelangelo Buonarotti (After) / Girolamo Fagiuoli / Cherubino Alberti / Titian (after) / Tintoretto (after)
Parmigianino / Giorgio Ghisi / Diana Scultori / Agostino Carracci / Annibale Carracci / Ludovico Carracci
Simone Cantarini / Elisabetta Sirani / Gerolamo Scarsello
Netherlandish School 15th-17th-Century Drawings / Flemish School, 17th-Century
Bernaert van Orley / Lucas van Leyden / Maarten de Vos / Jan Baptiste de Wael / Abraham Bloemaert
Peter Paul Rubens / Philipp Sadeler / Nicolaes Maes / Rembrandt School
Netherlandish Printmakers 16th-17th Centuries: Lucas van Leyden, Maarten van Heemskerck, Dirck Coornhaert,42
Cornelis Cort, Philips Galle, Abraham de Bruyn, Hans (Jan) Collaert, Adriaen Collaert, Karel de Mallery, Theodore Galle,
Hendrik Goltzius, Julius Goltzius, Jacob Matham, Jan Sanraedam, Maerten de Vos, Jan Sadeler, Aegidius Sadeler,
Raphael Sadeler, Crispin de Passe, Magdalena de Passe, Wierix Brothers, Rembrandt, Rembrandt School, Jan Lievens,
Jan Joris van Vliet, Ferdinand Bol, Govert Flinck
German Drawings: Hans Sebald Beham / Virgil Solis / Hans von Aachen / Joseph Heinrich Roos
German 16th century printmakers: Heinrich Aldegrever, Jost Amman, Hans Sebald Beham, Hans Brosamer, Hans Burgkmair, Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Durer, Albrecht Durer (After), Hans Holbein (After), Hopfer Brothers, Georg Pencz, Hans Schäufelein, Virgil Solis, Wolfgang Stuber.
18th-Century Drawings / 19th-Century Drawings / 20th-Century Drawings
Giorgio Vasari, whose prime loyalty was always to Michelangelo, offers his ultimate praise at the beginning of his Life of Michelangelo in The Lives of the Artists, published in 1568. The first paragraph sets the tone of the 84 pages that follow: "While industrious and choice spirits, aided by the light afforded by Giotto and his followers, strove to show the world the talent with which their happy stars and well-balanced humors had endowed them, and endeavoured to attain to the height of knowledge by imitating the greatness of Nature in all things, the great Ruler in Heaven looked down and, seeing these vain and fruitless efforts and the presumptuous opinion of man more removed from truth than light from darkness, resolved, in order to rid him of these errors, to send to earth a genius universal in each art, to show singlehanded the perfection of line and shadow, and who should give relief to his paintings, show a sound judgment in sculpture, and in architecture should render habitations convenient, safe, healthy, pleasant, well-proportioned, and enriched with various ornaments. He further endowed him with true moral philosophy and a sweet poetic spirit, so that the world should marvel at the singular eminence of his life and works and all of his actions, seeming rather divine than earthly" (Everyman edition, vol. 3, 108). During the sixteenth century, Michelangelo bestrode the art world like a colossus, and artists desperately sought to learn how to understand his works by making drawings of them and studying them, seeking there inspiration and the ability to please patrons who demanded they achieve the effects that Michelangelo's paintings and sculptures had. Michelangelo's own drawings ranged from quick sketches, proposals from commissions mixing his hand-written ideas with sketches, working drawings for paintings and sculptures, proposals for ornaments, architectural projects, and presentation drawings for his friends. On occassion he also gave drawings to artists to use as a basis of their own compositions (see The Death of Phaeton below).
Select Bibliography: Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo. 5 volumes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943-1960; rpt. 1968); J. A. Gere, Drawings by Michelangelo in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, The Ashmolean Museum, The British Museum, and other English Collections (London: The British Museum, 1975); J. A. Gere, Drawings by Michelangelo from The British Museum (NY: The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1979), Paul Joanides, Michelangelo and His Influence: Drawings from Windsor Castle (Washington D.C.: The National Gallery of Art, 1996); Paul Joanides, The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
After Michelangelo, Pope Clement VII Blessing. Pencil on old laid paper after a design by Michelangelo. De Tolnay, Vol. 3, prints several works ( figures 314-323) apparently modelled after Michelangelo's lost design for a sculpture for the project on the Medici Dukes and Popes (Leo X and Clement VII). The Dukes ended up with their own monument in the Medici Chapel at San Lorenzo in Florence; the Popes are in Rome. The idea was first discussed in 1520 and Michelangelo worked on it, off and on, until Clement VII's death in 1533, when the new Pope, Paul II ordered him to paint the Last Judgment for the Sistine Chapel and two large frescoes for the Pauline Chapel, The Calling of St Paul and The Crucifixion of St. Peter. Inscribed "Michelangelo" at the base. Image size: 231x125mm. Price: $15,000.
Nicholas Beatrizet (Italian, c. 1515-1560), after Michelangelo, The fall of Phaeton. Edition unknown. Repaired tear at bottom, trimmed on margins within platemark. Both Michelangelo's drawing and Beatrizet's engraving are reproduced by Joanides 1996 on pp. 56-57. Ours is a very good impression after Nicholas Beatrizet's c. 1540s engraving. Image size: 411x283mm. Price: $5000.
Nicholas Beatrizet (Italian, c. 1515-1560), after Michelangelo, Bachanal of children (B. 40). A later impression on antique laid paper; with large margins. Beatrizet was an important figure in popularizing the art of the high Renaissance. His engravings after Michelangelo introduced Michelangelo's works to Europe. Originally published by Beatrizet in Rome, our impression was published in Rome in 1773. Image size: 284x402mm. Price: $2850.
Nicholas Beatrizet (Italian, c. 1515-1560), after Michelangelo, Jesus Christ Standing, Holding His Cross (B. 33). Engraving after Michelangelo's sculpture. A later impression on antique laid paper; margins trimmed. Originally published by Beatrizet in Rome, ours is from the edition of Marcelli Clody (Rome). The plate is still printing well. Image size: 435x238mm. Price: $1950.
