"Che ultima mano!": Tiberio Calcagni's marginal annotations to Condivi's 'Life of Michelangelo.' (author Ascanio Condivi)

In 1966 the late Ugo Procacci published a fascinating group of marginal annotations made in a sixteenth-century hand to a copy of Condivi's Vita di Michelangelo that had passed from the Landau-Finaly library to his own possession.(1) Despite their extraordinary interest, which derives from the fact that they record Michelangelo's own reactions to some passages in Condivi's text, these postille have made little impact on scholarly literature.

There are, alas, only twenty-four annotations, most of them fairly laconic. The majority are signaled in the margins with letters of the alphabet, from A to T, but the last four are not marked in this way. Some passages have been flagged with a letter, but not annotated further. Puzzlingly, the letters L and O are repeated. It is difficult to make complete sense of all this, but it would appear that the annotator first marked passages with a letter, and then subsequently added the notes; the annotations without letters are all towards the end of the text. The lettering implies a systematic campaign of annotation, rather than spontaneous jottings.

The annotator purports in most cases to be recording corrections and comments that Michelangelo had made to him: "Mi disse" (he told me) is the usual formula. But occasionally he takes over the artist's voice and writes in the first person, as though simply writing down the words as he had heard them. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that he had, on one or more occasions, been through the text with Michelangelo and had taken notes, which he had subsequently recorded in the margins of his own text. In every case the comments are fresh and convincing: Michelangelo's authentic tones of irritation and impatience come through loud and clear. When writing of what the artist said to him, the annotator mostly uses the past historic "disse," but, interestingly, the very first annotation is in the present tense,(2) implying that Michelangelo was still alive at the time of writing [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. The final comment takes exception to Condivi's account of Michelangelo's health, and was certainly written after the artist's death in 1564: "Pietra. Errore. Chiarito nella morte."(3)

THE AUTHOR AND PURPOSE OF THE POSTILLE

Who was responsible for these marginal comments? Procacci did not go into this question in detail beyond suggesting tentatively that the annotator's name might be recorded in a faint inscription on the title page giving the then ownership of the book. This he transcribed as: "Conventus Sancti Antoni de Lacu ad usum Fratris Fulgentii," with a possible date of "Ag [osto] 1570."(4) The handwriting of this inscription is, however, quite different from that of the marginal notes, and, whoever Fra Fulgenzio may have been, he is not directly relevant to our quest.

The annotator was evidently someone who knew Michelangelo well for at least the latter part of the period between 1553 (the publication date of Condivi's biography) and the artist's death in 1564; he records the master's comments incisively and convincingly. The handwriting is an educated one, the writing style economical and eloquent, the orthography largely correct. The author would seem to be Florentine, since he knows about works in Florence (the Battle of the Centaurs, as well as Donatello's David and Judith and Holofernes),(5) while Florentine measurements come naturally to him ("it would have been enough to say so many braccia," he comments at one point).(6) The advice he reports Michelangelo as giving to him on matters artistic ("if you want to do well, always vary") and personal (to refrain from sexual intercourse in the interests of long life) suggests that he was a practicing artist and quite young(7).

The marginal reference to Michelangelo's Brutus next to the passage mentioning Cardinal Niccolo Ridolfi in Condivi's text prompted me to pursue the possibility that the annotations might have been written by Tiberio Calcagni (1532-65), the young Florentine sculptor and architect to whom the aged artist entrusted the completion of this bust (now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence) and who also repaired and recarved the Pieta (now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in the same city).(8) Calcagni, who died at the age of thirty-three, less than two years after the master to whom he referred affectionately as "nostro Vecchio,"(9) also had the responsibility of making drawings and models for the late architectural projects, S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini and the Sforza Chapel in S. Maria Maggiore.(10) Partly because of his early death, Calcagni has been little studied, but his surviving letters, most of them to Michelangelo's nephew Lionardo during the artist's last years [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED], show him to have been the sensitive and reliable figure described by Vasari,(11) and also one who could write fluent prose enlivened by eloquent turns of phrase. Although not as intimate with Michelangelo as Daniele da Volterra and Tommaso dei Cavalieri and not present at the artist's deathbed, Tiberio was certainly part of the inner circle.(12)

Calcagni's letters in the Archivio Buonarroti and the British Library, dating from 1561 to 1564,(13) are unquestionably written in the same confident and vigorous hand as the marginal annotations. Particularly characteristic are the ampersands, the extravagantly large "c"s, and the abbreviations of "per," but a comparison of individual capital and small letters reveals a whole series of equivalences, while the overall flow of the hand is instantly recognizable [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED]. The orthography in both letters and marginalia is clean, with the occasional use of a Florentine aspirate "h".

Having now established that Calcagni was the annotator, the purpose of the marginalia, and their lack of subsequent influence, become somewhat clearer. In addition to a private desire on Michelangelo's part to put the historical record straight on particular points, the notes could possibly have been intended for the benefit of Vasari, who in the 1560s was busy incorporating many of Condivi's observations and indeed much of his text into the second edition of the Vite.(14) But Vasari could never have seen the postille, for none of the corrections they record appears in the 1568 edition - a fact that makes them even more interesting for modern scholars. After Calcagni's premature death in 1565, his copy of Condivi evidently disappeared from any historiographic circuit, finding its way to the indistinct address of 1570 recorded at the front of the book, and evading notice for nearly four hundred years.

THE CHARACTER OF THE POSTILLE

As Michael Hirst has shown,(15) Condivi's Life of Michelangelo had a very definite agenda - a defense of the artist against the charge of having failed to fulfill his commitments to the heirs of Julius II and an account of his biography largely colored by the "Tragedy of the Tomb."(16) Looking back over his life, Michelangelo must have been tormented by the number of commissions left unfulfilled and the number of sculptures left unfinished. He was anxious that his biographer should ignore or underplay unfinished sculptures wherever possible, and should propagate the myth of the artist's reluctance - overridden by powerful patrons - to accept non-sculptural commissions. For his part, Condivi had never been to Florence and did not know important unfinished works there, such as the Pitti and Taddei tondi. Moreover his powers of understanding had their limits (he was no Boswell), and in his anxiety to exculpate his master he often went too far. It is indeed over issues of profession and professionalism, finish and lack of finish, that the marginalia are at their most fascinating. They also reveal the aged artist's desire to modify the harsh judgments of other people attributed to him (probably correctly) in Condivi's text. It must be emphasized that although in some cases Michelangelo is clearly making factual corrections to Condivi's account, in others his artiste pensees are flagrantly self-justificatory and may be no more reliable than the original information he had supplied to his hapless biographer.

FINITO AND NON-FINITO

When writing of Michelangelo's early relief of the Battle of the Centaurs now in the Casa Buonarroti, made at the time when the young artist was working in Lorenzo de'Medici's garden off the Piazza San Marco, Condivi made a characteristically well-meaning but slightly misdirected comment. The relief was so successful, Condivi reported, that "when he sees it again, he realizes how untrue he was to his nature in not promptly following the art of sculpture, since that work reveals how greatly he could succeed. Nor does he say that out of boastfulness, being the most modest of men, but because he is truly unhappy at having been so unfortunate that sometimes by the fault of others he has been unable to work for ten or twelve years."(17) (Although Condivi writes in the present tense, it is unlikely, as Hirst has pointed out, that Michelangelo had seen the Battle relief since 1533, when he left Florence for the last time.) There is nothing worse than having one's regrets misquoted, or even quoted too correctly. No doubt Michelangelo was annoyed at Condivi's implication that he had not eagerly embraced the art of sculpture and also at the statement that he had sometimes found himself doing nothing for ten or twelve years. Hence the response recorded by Calcagni: "On the contrary, he says that sculpture is his art: it is to please rulers that he practices and has practiced the others; about the relief, he says that when he saw it again, he realized that the labors of the art, for one who falls in love with it, are very light." Procacci, reading "imponera" for "inamora," found the second half of this annotation "a little strange and obscure."(18) With the new reading it is quite clear: love of art makes art's labors light - a notion connected, but not identical, to the concept of "difficolta."(19)

Condivi goes on to say that scarcely had Michelangelo completed the Battle of the Centaurs than Lorenzo de'Medici died. Calcagni, however, contradicts the description of the work as "finita" by observing that the relief remained "imperfetta" in Michelangelo's house in Florence.(20) Condivi, who had never seen the relief, evidently did not know that it was unfinished, and Vasari does not record the fact. The annotator was here perhaps reporting his own knowledge of the work in Florence (to which he might have had access because of his friendship with Lionardo Buonarroti) rather than Michelangelo's comment to him, although we cannot be sure of this. It is notable that Francesco Bocchi, who greatly admired the relief, wrote in his guidebook to Florence that "it has not received the final touches, as one sees, and yet it shows vigor and force and it seems that every figure is in movement and in its own pose."(21)

The next remark about finish is of extreme interest and deserves to be much better known. Condivi who did not as we have seen know any works of art in Florence at first hand, made an egregious mistake when writing about Michelangelo's bronze David commissioned by Soderini for the Marechal de Gie. Donatello's bronze of the same subject, then in the courtyard of the Palazzo della Signoria, was, as Condivi surely meant to point out, but the text became slightly dislocated at this point, probably as a result of rewriting or editing, the model Michelangelo was asked to follow.(22) Condivi reports Michelangelo's praise of Donatello's excellence as a sculptor, his only reservation being that the Quattrocento master "did not have the patience to give his works a high finish; so that, although they were marvelously successful at a distance, from close up they lost some of their esteem" ("non aveva pazienza in ripulir le sue opere: di sorte che, riuscendo mirabili a vista lontana, da presso perdevano riputazione"). In his general anxiety to exculpate Michelangelo from criticism for non finito, Condivi puts into his master's mouth the sort of attack that might have been made on many of his own works. Scholars have sometimes taken this remark seriously as a criticism of Donatello's David, but the annotator puts us right: "Mistake: he meant the Judith and Holofernes, and that when they are good, such high finish is unnecessary" ("erro: [doveva dire] Iudetta et Oloferne e che quando son buone non ci occorre tanti pulimenti"). As Procacci noted, it had always seemed odd that Michelangelo of all people should criticize Donatello for lack of finish, and that he should choose the David which although faulty in casting is highly polished, seemed incomprehensible.(23) A comment on the much rougher-surfaced Judith that in the case of such a free work scrupulous finish was unnecessary, accords far more with a modern assessment of Donatello's work.(24)

But it is the annotation concerning the Sistine Ceiling frescoes that reveals how wide of the mark were Condivi's well-meaning attempts to anticipate and preempt possible criticism of Michelangelo's lack of finish. The passage provoking the comment is extremely well-known. Condivi writes that Julius II was so impatient to see the first half of the vault that he insisted it be uncovered, "even though it was unfinished and had not had the ultima mano."(25) Condivi's remark is just as odd as the one he puts into Michelangelo's mouth about Donatello's sculpture, but in the Roman context there is less excuse. To underline the vehemence of Michelangelo's rejection of this judgment, Calcagni assumes his persona: "What ultima mano! It was finished just as it is now, but I did not want to uncover it in sections." ("Che ultima mano!(26) l'era fornita come ora ma io non la voleva scoprire in pezzi.")([ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED], Q.)

In recent years Condivi's "ultima mano" has assumed extra significance, since accusations have been leveled at the Vatican restorers for having removed not only a secco retouches made by Michelangelo to his fresco, but also a layer of tinted varnish supposedly applied by the master to tone down his colors.(27) (Such an interpretation of "ultima mano" as "last layer" is not inconceivable, but it should be noted that the phrase is constantly used in the Cinquecento to mean "final touches," and is surely so intended here.)(28) Even were Condivi's comment reliable, however, such an interpretation of it by the critics of the restoration would be illogical and self-contradictory. For if the pope's insistence on seeing the first half of the ceiling meant that the "ultima mano" had not been applied, how could it have been removed by the restorers? Now, Michelangelo can be seen to respond to this controversy from the grave: "Che ultima mano!"

Condivi's strange comment seems to reveal a complete misunderstanding of Michelangelo's fresco technique, perhaps to be expected from someone who could state when writing of the early negotiations for the ceiling that Michelangelo had not yet worked with paints ("Michelangelo, che per ancora colorito non aveva"), ignoring not only the artist's various essays in panel painting, but also his presumable experience of fresco in Ghirlandaio's workshop (although Michelangelo would have had his own reasons for not discussing any of these with his biographer).(29) Condivi's statement that the first half of the ceiling was "imperfetta" is particularly puzzling, given that in the first half Michelangelo, while largely sticking to a buon fresco technique, took care, for example, to gild the balusters on the thrones of the prophets and sibyls.(30) If one were to try to take Condivi completely seriously, one would have to argue that the scaffolding was later re-erected and that Michelangelo returned to carry out the last touches at some subsequent point. But this contorted explanation is made redundant by the artist's comment to Calcagni: "L'era fornita come ora."

Condivi's remarks about the second half of the ceiling are equally off the mark, but have unfortunately been taken up with equal enthusiasm by commentators from Vasari onwards. Condivi claims to have been told by Michelangelo that here too the work was not finished as he would have liked because of the pope's impatience. It lacked the retouching with gold and ultramarine blue a secco that would have made it richer. Once Julius's "furore" had passed, he then wanted Michelangelo to do this work, but the artist did not consider it worthwhile to re-erect the scaffolding for so little. At this point Condivi sticks into his narrative a revised version of the comments Michelangelo claims in a letter of 1524 to have made about the "poverty" of the first program for the ceiling - "quei che sono quivi dipinti furon poveri ancor essi."(31) But here the historic poverty of the biblical figures is made the rhetorical excuse for not touching up their garments in rich colors and gold.

It is just within the bounds of possibility that Julius II, when looking at the second half of the ceiling, may have noticed and commented unfavorably on the fact that there was comparatively little use of gold and ultramarine when the vault was compared with the Quattrocento wall frescoes below. But what seems impossible is that Michelangelo had himself complained of its being unfinished as Condivi claims ("non e, come egli avrebbe voluto, finita, impedito dalla fretta del papa"). The artist had, of course, decided in the second half of the ceiling to change the way the balusters were depicted. In the first half, as we have seen, they were entirely gilded, with a little shading indicated by means of dark hatched lines. This gave a rich but tonally distracting effect, as Alberti had long ago warned in the Della pittura.(32) In the second half, then, Michelangelo resorted to a dull brownish yellow for the balusters, using gold leaf only for the streaky vertical highlights. Two of the balusters have no gold at all (one of the three visible on Jeremiah's throne and one of the two on Jonah's). These very small lacunae, which may have been intentional, hardly add up to a wholesale absence of gilding in the second half, as Condivi claimed, and the extant areas of the bronze roundels are also gilded, if in a more subdued way than in the first half.(33)

In conclusion, Condivi's series of remarks about lack of finish in the Sistine Ceiling need to be seen in the context of interweaving biographical strategies and topoi: the need first to defend Michelangelo against accusations of lack of finish, and secondly to counterpose against the myth of the reluctant artist the myth of the over-impatient patron. Both myths of course had their basis in reality in this case but were embroidered by Condivi with telling anecdotes in order to bring out their biographical force.

As a postscript to this discussion of non-finito, it may be added that one of the many unfinished works left out of Condivi's account is the bust of Brutus now in the Bargello. The natural place to have mentioned it, as Michelangelo and Calcagni saw, was in the passage referring to the artist's friendship with Cardinal Niccolo Ridolfi, for whom the bust had been begun.(34) And it was even more natural for Calcagni to insert a reference to the Brutus at this point since he himself had been given the sculpture by Michelangelo to complete. Although this particular annotation is, unfortunately, extremely indistinct, it seems possible - indeed likely - that it makes reference to this fact, for it reads: "Yes, and it was for him that I began that bust of Brutus that I gave you" ("Si, e per lui incominciai quella testa di quel Bruto che ti donai"). Procacci transcribes the last three words as "che li donai,"(35) meaning that Michelangelo gave the bust to Ridolfi, but the Cardinal died in 1550 and it is highly improbable that Michelangelo first gave the unfinished bust to him and then retrieved it after Ridolfi's death for Calcagni to complete.(36) Calcagni seems to have entered Michelangelo's entourage around 1555-56, and may have taken on the bust, along with the Pieta, shortly afterwards.(37) We do not know whether or not the Brutus ever entered the possession of the Ridolfi family,(38) but my reading of this annotation would suggest that Calcagni still had it when he wrote down his comment.(39)

"O QUESTO NON DISSI IO MAI"

Another recognizable and characteristic thread running through the marginalia is Michelangelo's anxiety to disclaim malicious comments he was alleged to have made about other people. On two occasions Calcagni is prompted to correct defamatory remarks about Bramante. The first is Michelangelo's alleged accusation in relation to the Cortile del Belvedere, St. Peter's, and what Condivi mistakenly calls "il convento di S. Pietro ad Vincula" (in fact S. Maria della Pace) that the architect had enriched himself at his paymaster's expense by deliberately using poor materials, that it then proved necessary to shore up his buildings against collapse, and that Bramante was afraid Michelangelo would reveal his malfeasance. Calcagni interjects: "I don't believe this, he said, of Bramante, but he had poor workmen in those times, and people did not know what is known today about all the arts" ("non credo questo, disse, di Bramante ma ebbe in quei tempi cattivi artefici e non si seppe quello si sa oggi in tutte le arti").(40) Here it is possible to believe that Michelangelo made both the original remark and its correction. Sixteenth-century Rome was rife with satirical comments concerning "Bramante ruinante," and Michelangelo would have been only one among many to accuse the architect of poor constructional techniques, if not of peculation.(41) However, the additional comment that Bramante could not rely on his workforce and that less was known in the early Cinquecento about "tutte le arti," reflects Michelangelo's own half-century's experience as an architect with a "hands on" approach, as well as an apparently undimmed belief in technical progress.

The second disclaimer, about a similar comment that Bramante had willfully destroyed the columns of Old St. Peter's, is a more generic protest: "Oh, this I never said to the pope or anyone else, I never said ill of anyone" ("O questo non dissi io mai non the al papa a persona male di niuno"). The original remark may or may not have been Michelangelo's - again it belonged to a common stock of contemporary accusations against Bramante - but one can well imagine Michelangelo coming up with the further comment that it was much easier to build a wall than to "make" a column: in other words to order and quarry the stone, have it perfectly cut by masons and then to erect it. The passion for the monolithic column was very Florentine, going back to Brunelleschi, and was among Michelangelo's most cherished architectural tenets.(42)

In his denial ("Disemi non haver mai detto tal cosa") that he had ever made the harsh judgment attributed to him of Piero di Lorenzo de'Medici, that he had remained in his father's place, but without the same grace ("che nel medesimo luogo del padre era restato, ma non nella medesima grazia"), Michelangelo is probably just betraying his usual nervousness about being caught in an anti-Medicean statement.(43) But it is possible that he did not at all times share unequivocally the prevailing damnatio of Piero's memory. After all, Piero had kept Michelangelo on as a member of the household after Lorenzo's death, and the artist had maintained contact with the exiled Medici during his first period in Rome, even if his patronage ultimately proved unsatisfactory.(44)

PROFESSIONALISM AND MICHELANGELO'S ART

It is in relation to a comment about Piero that Michelangelo seems to have misread Condivi's text while discussing it with Calcagni. When Condivi, writes of the improvisatory skills of the musician who told Michelangelo of his dream foretelling the Medici expulsion,(45) he adds that "he too practiced that skill" ("anche'egli profession faceva"), that is of singing to the lira da braccio. Condivi, as Procacci saw,(46) almost certainly was referring here to Piero himself as the musician, and Calcagni was overhasty in his anxiety to deny that Michelangelo had ever wasted his time in this way as a young man: "He never left his studies for the lyre or for improvising songs" ("Mai lasso li studii per la lira o'l provisare").

Condivi's statement that it had been fifteen years since Michelangelo had touched his chisels when he set to work again after the Siege of Florence on carving the tombs in the New Sacristy, and that he then made all the sculpture in the Sacristy in a few months, "driven more by fear than by love" ("spinto piu dalla paura che dall'amore"), was a dreadful muddle. He was presumably trying to imply that since the time when Leo X had set the artist to work on the architecture of the S. Lorenzo facade, Michelangelo had had no opportunity to practice his real profession as a sculptor. Calcagni's succinct comment, "what fifteen years! all nonsense" ("che quindici annil baie tutte"), is entirely apt, as are Procacci's editorial comments.(47) Not only would Michelangelo have been irritated by the statement that he had carved no sculpture between 1515 and 1530, a period in which he had completed the Risen Christ in S. Maria Minerva and worked on at least six sculptures for the New Sacristy as well as the Accademia Slaves (and perhaps the Victory); he might also have been annoyed by the suggestion that he was impelled more by fear than by love to resume work for Clement VII - to whose merits as a patron Condivi later pays a fulsome tribute, embroidering it with a classical parallel presumably supplied to him by Annibale Caro.(48)

Calcagni confirms Condivi's story that the Prior of Sto. Spirito gave Michelangelo an early opportunity to carry out anatomical investigation ("disse quelli delle notomie, come se li porgeva l'occasione [?]").(49) But later on, when Condivi is commenting in general on Michelangelo's studies, mentioning architecture, anatomy, and perspective, Calcagni records Michelangelo's brusque contradiction of the idea that he had expended much effort on this last: "Perspective, no, because it seemed to me to be a waste of too much time" ("Alla prospettiva non, che mi pareva perdervi troppo tempo"). This rings entirely true, for the artist's relative lack of interest in formal perspective is indeed evident from all his paintings and pictorial reliefs.

One comment made by Michelangelo to Calcagni carries a broader theoretical charge. This comes at the point where Condivi praises Michelangelo's extraordinary visual memory and avoidance of self-repetition. The marginal comment adds: "Dissemi e vero, e se tu voi fare bene, varia sempre e fa piu tosto male." This satisfyingly epigrammatic remark, with its play on "far bene" and "far male" (Procacci rightly interprets it as "better to make a mistake than to repeat oneself")(50) could be taken to sum up the aesthetic of variety and novelty that was so central to Cinquecento Mannerism.

TALL STORIES

The marginalia confirm the veracity of two of Condivi's stories that might otherwise seem too "tall" for belief. The first is that Michelangelo had once had the idea of carving one of the Carrara mountains into a latter-day Colossus, which would have been a landmark for travelers. Here the marginal comment reads: "This was, he said, a madness that came over me ..., but if I could have been sure of living four times longer than I have lived, I would have taken it on" ("Questa era, disse una pazzia venutami per detta ma s'io fusse sicuro di vivere 4 yoke quanto son vissuto sarei io entrato").(51) Recalling celebrated real and projected ancient examples such as the Colossus of Rhodes or the statue of Alexander the Great holding a city in his hand that Vitruvius tells us Dinocrates offered to his imperial patron, Michelangelo's fantasy encapsulates all his heroic engagement with his primal material and the figures locked within it.(52)

The second surprising story concerns Michelangelo's alleged commission from the Ottoman Sultan in 1504-06 to construct a bridge over the Golden Horn from Pera to Constantinople and to serve the Turk in other "affari." Calcagni comments: "It was true, and he told me he had already made a model" ("fu vero e ne haveva gie fatto un modello mi disse"). Commentators on the Condivi passage have rightly drawn attention to a letter of 1 April 1519 written to Michelangelo from Adrianople.(53) The writer, a certain Tommaso da Tolfo, recalled conversations with Michelangelo fifteen years earlier in the house of Giannozzo Salviati where they had discussed the possibility of the artist going to Constantinople, and Tommaso had discouraged him on the grounds that the then sultan did not like figural representations, indeed held them in loathing ("non si dillectava di fighura ... l'aveva in odio"), as a simple-minded observer of the Muslim world might expect. Now, said Tommaso, the situation had changed, and the present sultan (i.e. Selim II, ruled 1512-20) had recently paid out four hundred ducats for a mediocre recumbent female nude. Michelangelo should come out at once via Ragusa, and Tommaso would give the luogotenente at nearby Chosa instructions to provide an escort for him, sending money to the Gondi bank. Much of this is repeated by Condivi at a later point in the life of Michelangelo, mentioning the Gondi bank, the preferred disembarkation point, and so on. In addition, he refers to specific letters to the artist from the sultan, sent by way of certain Franciscan friars. Could Condivi have had access to the letter from Tommaso da Tolfo, or did the whole story come from Michelangelo himself - another example of the artist's phenomenal powers of recall? At all events, the two episodes have evidently been conflated, and Condivi does not realize that two sultans were involved. It must have been Bajazet II (ruled 1481-1512) who issued the original invitation, by which the artist had been seriously tempted, before Soderini told him it would be better to die in the pope's service than to live in that of the sukan.(54)

The whole story is indirectly confirmed by the fact that Leonardo da Vinci too had designed for the sultan a bridge over the Golden Horn, of which there is a drawing in MS L in Paris labeled "Ponte da Pera a Ghostantinopoli."(55) Furthermore, a letter from Leonardo exists in the Topkapi archive, translated into Turkish, outlining projects for the bridge and for some mills, evidently in response to a specific request.(56) It is most remarkable that the sultan should have turned to these two great Florentine rivals for a major civil engineering project. Almost as interesting for students of Michelangelo's career is that he should have been asked to make, and indeed made, a design for the bridge as early as 1504-06 (and this is probably correct, since Leonardo's letter and drawing are usually dated c. 1502). It shows that he was deeply involved in architectural design and had acquired an international reputation as a potential architect some ten years before his first generally recognized building project.(57)

ABSTINENCE PROLONGS LIFE

Since Michelangelo's sexual orientation has been the subject of much speculation, it cannot fail to be of interest that Calcagni emphatically confirms Condivi's statement that the artist believed in total abstinence: "About [refraining from] sexual intercourse: this I have always done, and if you want to prolong your life, do not indulge in it or at least as little as you can" ("Del coito: questo ho io fatto sempre e se ti vol prollungar la vita non lo usare opure quanto puoi 'l meno"). The best discussion in the literature of Michelangelo's sentimental attachment to young men is that of an empathetic observer, John Addington Symonds, who made it the subject of a sensitive, but necessarily veiled, chapter in his fin-de-siecle biography of the artist.(58) In a letter to Edmund Gosse, Symonds wrote less guardedly of Michelangelo: "If he had any sexual energy at all (which is doubtful), he was a U," referring to the term "Unring," which Carl Heinrich Ulrich had invented to denote homosexuality.(59) Michelangelo's advice to his young protege is not inconsistent with Symonds's assessment, even if a Freudian observer might suggest that his "sexual energy" was sublimated rather than altogether absent.

CONCLUSION

The unfortunate Calcagni had all too little opportunity to decide whether or not to follow his beloved master's injunctions. But we must be grateful to him that he recorded these and other comments before his own premature death. Calcagni's marginal annotations are instructive not simply for their vivid immediacy and the crumbs of information they contain, but also for the light they throw on Michelangelo's attitude to Condivi's biography both before and after it was written. While there is no doubt whatever that the Vita was composed at Michelangelo's own behest, and that he must have supplied the detailed information on which it was based, we cannot therefore infer that the text is always an exact representation of the artist's views or recollections. And if he read the final edited version of the text before it was printed, he cannot have done so with great attention, or he would not have allowed the more glaring errors - not all of which, incidentally, are corrected in the marginalia - to stand. It is particularly fortunate, then, that Calcagni's copy and notes should have survived, reminding us once again how much care is needed in the reading of Michelangelo's biographies. This is, as I have stressed, just as true of the annotations themselves as of the text they are glossing; but the task of discriminating among them between genuine corrections and disingenuous obfuscations is still one worth undertaking.

The Burlington Magazine

I should like to express my gratitude to Michael Hirst for proposing that I write this piece and for making many astute suggestions; to Giovanni Nencioni for sharing his new readings of the postille, to Pina Ragionieri and the staff of the Casa Buonarroti for giving me generous access to the Archivio Buonarroti and help with obtaining photographs; to Waiter Kaiser and Patricia Rubin for kind hospitality at Villa I Tatti, making this research possible; and to Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt for supporting the project in every way.

1 Procacci, 279-94.

2 "Anzi dice che l'arte sua e la scultura . . ." (see note 18 below). Procacci had read "disse," but the word is dearly "dice," and "fa" also appears later.

3 Ibid., 294. As shown below, the postillatore was closely in touch with the inner circle at the time of Michelangelo's death and would have heard the opinions of his doctors. Is he saying that, contrary to what Condivi claims, Michelangelo's kidney-stones had not been averted or cured by the treatment of his doctor?

4 Ibid., 281.

5 See notes 20 and 22 below.

6 "Bastava dire tante braccia." He is taking exception to the labored description of the Moses on the tomb of Julius II as "di grandezza meglio di due yoke al naturale."

7 See notes 50, 58, and 59 below.

8 For the Brutus, see notes 34-36 below. For the Florentine Pieta, see De Tolnay, 149-51. For the book in preparation on the Pieta, see note 10 below.

9 In the letters cited at note 13 below.

10 For Calcagni, see the rather inadequate account by Casadei Mugnai. He was born in February 1532, died on 7 December 1565, and was buried in S. Giovanni Decollato where an extant tombstone records that he was buried by his mother, Lucrezia Bonaccorsi and his brothers Raffaelle, Nicola, and Orazio (Forcella, VII, 60, no.138: "D.O.M. / TIBERIO CALCANEO FLORENTINO. AC RO. CM / HVMANITATE AC LIBERALITATE IN OMNES / OMNIBUS. IVCVNDISS[IM]O / CHARITATE. AC PIETATE. IN SUOS / SUIS ETIAM. CHARISS[IM]O / QUI DV[M] AD STATVARIAE ARTIS. ET ARCHITECTVRAE / EXCELLENTEM PRAESTANTIAM SVMMO STVDIO / CONTENDERET / IMMATVRA MORTE. MAGNO OMNTVM DOLOR[E]/ EREPTVS. EST / VIX. ANN. XXXIII. MEN. X / OBIIT. VII. IDVS. DECEMBRIS. M.D.L.XV / [scudo] LVCHRETIA. BONACHVRSIA MATER. AC / RAFFFAEL. NICHOLAVS. HORATIVS.FRATRES / NON.SINE LACRIMIS. P.P.") The identity of his father can be deduced from another inscription (ibid., 549, no.1135), now lost, from S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini. This is the tombstone of Roberto Calcagni, who died on 5 November 1560 at the age of 82. His wife's name is recorded as Lucretia Bonacarta, but this must be a mistake by Schrader (Monument. Ital., 137) from which Forcella took the transcription. Evidently Roberto was a Florentine resident in Rome who had been granted Roman citizenship for his work "conficiendis sacrarum vestium ornamentis" for Paul IV Carafa. Franca Trincheri Camiz and William Wallace kindly inform me that they have found Roberto's will of 1 September 1560 which mentions that he has a bottega in the rione Ponte near the Palazzo Alberini (Archivo di Stato di Roma, Notai Auditor Camerae 6183, fols. 2r-3r) and an inventory of his house of 1 November 1561 (ibid., 6130, insert no. 542). These will be discussed in the chapter on Calcagni by William Wallace in a forthcoming book edited by Jack Wasserman on Michelangelo's Florentine Pieta. Apart from his work for Michelangelo, Tiberio restored the church of S. Angelo in Borgo in 1565, where his work is recorded in an inscription but has disappeared as a result of eighteenth-century restructuring (Forcella, X, 258, no. 414).

11 Vasari-Milanesi, 7:99, 243-44, 262-64. According to Vasari, Calcagni had made Michelangelo's acquaintance through Francesco Bandini and Donato Giannotti.

12 The most extended account of him I have found is in Papini, esp. chap. 163, "Tiberio Calcagni." Papini, who unfortunately gives no bibliographical references, prints portions of an important letter of 8 August 1561 to Lionardo Buonarroti, which is not in the Archivio Buonarroti and has escaped the net of the Carteggio Indiretto (see note 13 below). Papini thanks Giovanni Poggi as head of the Archivio Buonarroti in his acknowledgments, and it seems probable that it was through Poggi that Papini knew this letter, a copy of which is not among those discussed and published by Wolf (my thanks to Michael Hirst for this last reference).

13 Florence, Archivio Buonarroti (hereafter AB), VII, n. 130, XXXIV, nn. 165-72; and London, British Library, Egerton MS 1977, fols. 16-19; published in Barocchi and Ristori, 218, and Barocchi, Loach Bramante, and Ristori, 107-09, 152, 154-55, 157-59, 161, 164, 169-70, 174, 181, nos. 310-11, 343-44, 346, 347, 349, 351, 356, 359.

14 That Calcagni was asked by Vasari to furnish information on Michelangelo's works is clear from a letter written by Calcagni to Vasari on 30 September 1564 (Archirio di Stato di Firenze, Carteggio d'Artisti I, fol. 47r-v; published, with a few mistakes, in Frey, 112-14), in which he sends or promises drawings of S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini among other things but says he has not time to supply information about 'questi pittori." It is worth noting that Vasari records in his life of Taddeo Zuccaro that Calcagni accompanied Taddeo on a sightseeing trip to Florence, probably in 1563 (Vasari, 1984, 5:567.) They visited Vasari and saw him at work on the ceiling of the Salone dei Cinquecento. I am grateful to Michael Hirst for this reference.

15 Hirst, 1996, 63-84; and also his contribution to Giovanni Nencioni's new Condivi edition, forthcoming.

16 That even Condivi's exculpatory account of the tomb was not sufficient for Michelangelo is dear from the gloss objecting to the biographer's use of "ratoppata" to describe the final result in S. Pietro in Vincoli: "Se tutte le cose ratoppate stessero cosi!" (Procacci, 292).

17 "Quando la rivede, cognosce quanto torto egli abbia fatta alia natura a non seguitar prontamente l'arte della scultura, facendo giudizio per quell'opera quanto potesse riuscire. Ne cio dice per vantarsi, uomo modestissimo, ma perche pur veramente si duole d'esser stato cosi sfortunato, che per altrui colpa qualche volta sia stato senza fare nulla dieci o dodici anni." Condivi, 1964.

18 The emended transcription runs: "Anzi dice che l'arte sun e la scultura: l'altre fa et a fatto per compiacere ai principi; della storia, che quando la vedeva, conoscieva le fatiche della arte a chi se ne inamora esser legierissime." See Procacci, 282, for the earlier reading.

19 For difficolta, Summers, chap. 4. "Fatiche" in the context of sculpture includes the physical labor of working the marble; see Michelangelo's reply to Varchi in the Paragone debate, where he speaks of the greater "difficulta, impedimenti e fatica" in sculpture as opposed to painting, Barocchi, 1:82; for "le fatiche dell'arte" in general, see Vasari-Barocchi, 4:1835-36.

20 "Questa opera in casa a fior[enza] imperfetta," pace Procacci, 282, who reads "mi par perfetta"; for the relief, see the entry by Michael Hirst in Barocchi, 1992, 52-61. Hirst notes that the nonfinito of the work had already been remarked by Giovanni Borromeo in 1527.

21 Bocchi, 167-68: "Ella non ha avuta l'ultima mano, come si vede, e pur mostra vigore e forza, e pare che si muova ogni figura in sun attitudine." See also Vasari-Barocchi, 10003.

22 For the complicated vicissitudes of Donatello's David, and whether or not Michelangelo was asked to copy this statue, see Caglioti, forthcoming; the conclusions are anticipated in Caglioti, 1996(1) and idem, 1996(2); see also Gatti.

23 Procacci, 287. As Michael Hirst has kindly pointed out to me, however, the criticism of Donatello attributed to Michelangelo by Condivi is of Donatello's work as a whole, although the order of the passage makes it difficult not to interpret it - as Michelangelo himself evidently did - as a comment on the bronze David.

24 For a superb discussion of the whole question of non finito, see Vasari-Barocchi, 4:1645ff, where a gallant attempt is made to give sense to Condivi's passage by citing the high finish that Michelangelo gave to some of his early sculptures.

25 "Ancorche fosse imperfetta e non avesse avuto l'ultima mario." The remark is taken up by Vasari in 1568; see Vasari-Barocchi, 2:335.

26 Procacci, 290, reads "ultimamente."

27 See, especially, Beck.

28 See Bocchi, 167-68, and Condivi, 1964, 59, on the New Sacristy sculptures: "Nessuna de' queste ha avuta l'ultima mano."

29 See Dunkerton and Hirst. Condivi himself makes Michelangelo's painted copy on panel of Schongauer's print of the Temptation of St. Anthony the subject of a long and fascinating digression (Condivi, 1964, 24).

30 The anomaly is noted in Condivi, 1976, 133, note 66. Excellent photos of the balusters may be found in Mancinelli, vol. 1.

31 This has been noted by all commentators since Klaczko in 1898; see Vasari-Barocchi, 447.

32 Alberti, 92-93.

33 See Mancinelli, 1:34 and 36 for illustrations of the changeover in the method of gilding the balusters between the seventh and eighth bays; and 48.1 and 56.6, for the ungilded balusters on the thrones of Jeremiah and Jonah. Unfortunatedly the position is not quite correctly described in Mancinelli, 2:16, where it is stated that none of Jeremiah's balusters are gilded, and Condivi's passage is adduced, giving haste as the reason. The diagrams of the gilding, ibid., diagrams 48 and 57, are also inaccurate in detail.

34 For an extremely interesting account of the political implications of the bust and why Michelangelo abandoned it, see Hirst. I am entirely in agreement with Hirst and Martin (following Ridolfi, 130) that the bust was begun years later than 1539, the usual date assigned to it, either soon before or after Lorenzino de'Medici's death in 1548.

35 Procacci, 292. Calcagni uses "li" for "gli," as in gloss 4.

36 Wilde, 9, suggests that the bust remained unfinished because of the cardinal's death, Hirst because of the artist's fear of reprisals from Florence. Lorenzo Ridolfi continued in 1551 after his brother's death to commission busts of ancient personalities, including Julius Caesar, Philip of Macedon, Titus, Lucretia; some of these were in bronze, like the Sulla supplied by Condivi himself, and some must have been copies of ancient examples. See Milanesi.

37 His first surviving letter to Michelangelo, from a visit to Cosimo I in Pisa, in connection with the designs for S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, is of 8 April 1560; see note 13 above. Vasari in 1568 refers to the Brutus and to Calcagni's work on it in the context of Calcagni's work on S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini and states that he had already received the bust before that architectural work began (in 1559). Vasari's implied chronology and his statement that Calcagni came into Michelangelo's orbit through both Francesco Bandini and Donato Giannotti (away from Rome in 1552-55) yields the approximate date for their meeting given here (see Martin, 78-79; it should be noted that Papini gives the same chronology for the meeting date, for Michelangelo's work on the Brutus, and its handing over to Calcagni - perhaps again with Poggi's help).

38 Vasari in 1568 (Vasari-Barocchi, 4:1800), says the bust was undertaken by Michelangelo at Donato Giannotti's request for Cardinal Ridolfi, but does not give its location; he seems to have seen it, since he describes "certe minutissime gradine" on the head. The first secure location for the bust is at the Medici Villa at Petraia in 1584, in the collection of Duke Francesco de' Medici; see De Tolnay, 132.

39 This accords with the opinion of Martin, 83, note 65.

40 Uncertain reading: Procacci, 289, has "in sulla arte."

41 For a recent summary, see Borsi, 25-31: "La fortuna negativa, il ruinante." For a sensitive and subtle account of Michelangelo's relations with Bramante, see Robertson.

42 See Wallace, 48-51.

43 See, for example, Spini, esp. 111-12, 127; and Hirst.

44 Vasari-Barocchi, 2:160-61; for the letters describing an abortive commission in Rome from Piero, see Barocchi and Ristori, 2:35-59.

45 The next gloss confirms the story of the dream, but adds that Michelangelo had heard of it from others (i.e. perhaps not from Cardiere himself), and had predicted the flight of the Medici from comments made to him by various Florentines "che ne haveva sentore da altri mi disse, confermando 'l sogno. Pero, antivista la fuga dei Medici per parole coke da vari cittadini, si parti" (Procacci, 285).

46 Procacci, 284 (though referring, by a slip of the pen, to Lorenzo).

47 Ibid., 291.

48 For Caro's role, see Hirst.

49 The writing here is indistinct, but Procacci's reading, 284, "come sedi poteria locate tutte" cannot be correct.

50 Procacci, 293: "Sbagliare magari ma non ripetersi. For varieta in Michelangelo, see Summers, ad indicem, esp. 181, quoting Serlio, VII, folio 94: "Gran cosa e veramente di voler variare in quelle cose c'hanno in se pochissimi termini."

51 Not "da tanto," pace Procacci, 288. His reading of "l'etta" instead of "detta" apparently makes more sense, but the "d" is clear.

52 See the discussions cited in Vasari-Barocchi, 2:283-84.

53 Ibid., 2:253 (without further comment); Condivi, 1964, 109-10.

54 Ibid.

55 Pedretti, 170-71; Firpo, 289. The MS is thought to date from 1502 when Leonardo was in the service of Cesare Borgia.

56 Babinger and Heydenreich (I am grateful to Anna Contadini for this reference).

57 It would also be interesting to know if Michelangelo had any knowledge from his contacts across the Adriatic of the buildings of Bajezit in Istanbul. The mosque of 1505-06 has pendentives supporting a dome which are roofed over in a manner very similar to the exterior of the New Sacristy; see Aklanapa, 211-18, pls. 157-62.

58 Addington Symonds, 2:119, 125-66.

59 See Grosskurth, 257-61, esp. 259 and note. The letter, in the Brotherton Collection, is dated 18 September 1891.

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