Raffaele Riario, Jacopo Galli, and Michelangelo’s Bacchus, 1471–1572, now available in print and online, investigates the intersection of Cardinal Raffaele Riario, the merchant-banker Jacopo Galli, and the young Michelangelo in late fifteenth-century Rome. The narrative is framed by the rise and fall of Riario and the Galli in an arc spanning from 1471—the election of Pope Sixtus IV, which marked the beginning of the Riario family’s ascendancy—to 1572, the year the Galli sold Michelangelo’s Bacchus to the Medici in Florence.
A thorough reassessment of their convergence sheds light on the careers of Riario and Galli as well as on Michelangelo’s Sleeping Cupid and Bacchus—two works long clouded by fundamental misperceptions. Chief among these are the belief that Michelangelo passed off his Sleeping Cupid to Riario as a “forgery”; the tradition, perpetuated by Ascanio Condivi’s 1553 Life of Michelangelo, that Galli rather than Riario commissioned the Bacchus; and the widespread presumption that Riario “rejected” the Bacchus. This study demonstrates instead that Michelangelo vigorously asserted his authorship of the Cupid. Michael Hirst’s discovery in 1981 of a payment record established Riario as the patron of the Bacchus; this book argues that the statue must be seen as a central product of Riario’s ambitious cultural program, and that no contemporary evidence supports the twentieth-century theory that the cardinal refused the work.
To reassess Riario’s identity as a patron, the study considers the politics and intellectual milieu that shaped his choices, beginning with the impression made on him by Marsilio Ficino during their encounter in the lead-up to the Pazzi Conspiracy in Florence (1478). In Rome, armed with the powerful office of Camerlengo, Riario launched a long and ambitious career as a patron. Of particular significance was his collaboration with Galli to rebuild San Lorenzo in Damaso and to reshape the neighborhood around the church in the Rione Parione. The study examines this immense project as well as the opportunities it created for Galli, notably his consolidation of a complex of properties—traced through maps, photographs, and archival documents. Chapters on Riario’s patronage explore his sponsorship of humanism, preaching, and the arts. They reconsider his role as a sponsor of theatre and festival, especially in relation to his support of the Spanish Reconquista, his promotion of astrology and Kabbalistic studies, and the construction of his villa in Trastevere—all aimed at bolstering his own status and that of the fragile Riario dynasty.
Set in this wider context, Michelangelo’s arrival in Rome and his work on the Sleeping Cupid and Bacchus take on new meaning. The reception of the Cupid in Rome and the commission of the Bacchus are reconsidered in detail, especially through the lens of Michelangelo’s first surviving letter, written in July 1496, in which he makes clear that he hoped to claim his own authorship of the Cupid when it was being deceptively sold as an antiquity by an unscrupulous dealer. The same letter describes Riario’s invitation to Michelangelo to view “certain figures” (no doubt, antiquities) and to do “something beautiful” in response. The resulting statue of the Bacchus (inspired in part by Antonio Federighi’s Sienese Bacchus) aimed to rival the antique and to assert the value of modern sculpture.
The book also redefines Galli’s role, showing him as far more than a banker. He emerges as poet, antiquities collector, and patron who acted as mediator, facilitator, and guarantor of Michelangelo’s early commissions, embedding the artist in a world of antiquarianism and collecting. His logistical and supportive role extended to the Young Archer in Manhattan, the Pietà in St. Peter’s, an altarpiece for Sant’Agostino, the Piccolomini monument in Siena, and the Bruges Madonna. He also occupied a prominent place in the intellectual and artistic circles of Renaissance Rome, at the center of a vibrant cultural milieu as a close friend of Jacopo Sadoleto, Pietro Bembo, Jacopo Mazzocchi, and others.
The final chapter considers the enduring presence of Michelangelo’s Young Archer and Bacchus in the Rione Parione, where they remained for more than sixty years, in the context of the lasting friendship between Michelangelo and Galli’s sons. A previously unknown commission from Michelangelo for a traveling altarpiece, requested by Galli’s sons for a journey to Bologna with Pope Julius II and Cardinal Riario, is also discussed. The book then traces the reception of the Bacchus in the houses of the Galli, where artists and other viewers could study it alongside the family’s collection of antiquities. Its display changed dramatically after the Sack of Rome, when the Galli properties were devastated and invading troops attempted to loot the Bacchus—almost certainly the occasion when Michelangelo’s statue was broken at the right wrist. It was drawn by Maarten van Heemskerck in a damaged state, missing its hand, in the aftermath of the Sack—a poignant moment in the intertwined histories of the sculpture and the Galli family. The decline of the Galli family continued, leading to the gradual dispersal of their collections and the sale of the Bacchus in 1572.
By moving beyond fixed interpretive frameworks and a long tradition of negative aesthetic judgments of the Bacchus, the study redefines the statue not as a failed experiment but as the outcome of a dense nexus of cultural, political, artistic, and economic interests. In so doing, it offers a reconsideration of Raffaele Riario’s patronage and Jacopo Galli’s identity, alongside a recontextualization of Michelangelo’s early career in Rome.
The book appears in the new Harvey Miller series All’antica edited by Cammy Brothers and Kathleen Christian.
