The Case of the Slee­ping Cupid, 1496

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

6 The Case of the Slee­ping Cupid 1496

In a letter sent care of the artist Sandro Botti­celli to Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco de’ Medici in Florence, Michel­an­gelo described the first day he had ever spent in Rome. The addressee was his supporter and patron Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco, a cousin of Lorenzo il Magni­fico from the ‘minor’ branch of the Medici family. While one would hope to hear more about Michelangelo’s first impres­sions of Rome and its artistic wonders, the artist kept his letter factual and brief:

Michel­an­gelo in Rome to Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco de’ Medici in Florence Yesus. 2 July 1496

Dear Lorenzo etc., I only want to let you know that we arrived safely last Saturday [25 June 1496] and imme­dia­tely went to visit the Cardinal of San Giorgio and presented him with your letter. He saw me willingly and urgently wanted me to go and look at certain figures [certe figure], which occu­pied me for that whole day, and so I didn’t deliver your other letters that day. Then on Sunday [26 June], the Cardinal came to the new house and called for me; I went to him and he asked me what I thought of the things I had seen. About this I said what I thought, that certainly it seemed to me that they are very beau­tiful things. Then the Cardinal asked me if I could summon the courage [l’animo] to do some­thing beau­tiful. I answered that I could not do such great things [non farei sì gran chose], but that he would see what I could do. We bought a block of marble for a life­sized figure, and Monday I will begin work [Appendix ii.10].¹

Michelangelo’s letter informs Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco that his first order of busi­ness in Rome was to meet Cardinal Raffaele Riario; their meeting place must have been the Cardinal’s resi­dence at Sant’Apollinare (Map 1.2). After presen­ting Riario with a letter of intro­duc­tion from Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco, Michel­an­gelo spent the rest of that day studying ‘certain figures’ (certe figure) at Riario’s request. On the follo­wing day, a Sunday, the Cardinal went to ‘the new house’, that is, the Palazzo San Giorgio then under cons­truc­tion. He summoned Michel­an­gelo there and asked the artist what he thought of the figures he had seen the day before. Michel­an­gelo replied that he considered them beau­tiful, promp­ting Riario to ask if he had the courage to create a ‘beau­tiful’ statue of his own. Michel­an­gelo replied that his statue would not be as ‘great’ as those he had studied, but Riario would see what he could do. There can be little doubt that these figures were anti­qui­ties, whose ‘great­ness’ inspired Michel­an­gelo as he carved the Bacchus over the course of the follo­wing year, as will be considered in Chapter 7.

On Sunday, 26 June, while he was meeting with Riario at the Palazzo San Giorgio to discuss the Bacchus, Michelangelo’s sculp­ture of a Slee­ping Cupid was being put up for sale as an anti­quity at Cardinal Ascanio Sforza’s palace. As a letter from Count Antonio Maria Pico

fig. 121 Album of Busts and Statues at White­hall, Windsor, Royal Coll­ec­tion, rcin 908914. c. 1629. Photo © Royal Coll­ec­tion Trust / His Majesty King Charles iii 2024.

della Miran­dola to Isabella d’Este reveals, on that day a dealer brought the Cupid to Cardinal Sforza and offered it for the lofty sum of 200 ducats. Della Miran­dola had his doubts that the Slee­ping Cupid was actually antique, nevert­heless he considered it to be ‘perfec­tis­simo’:

Antonio Maria Pico della Miran­dola, Count of Concordia, in Rome to Isabella d’Este, Marchio­ness of Mantua, Monday, 27 June 1496

My most illus­trious and most hono­urable Lady […] when your brother-in-law Giovanni was here, he was looking for some good anti­qui­ties, saying he wanted some for you and that you took considerable delight in them. And I found myself yesterday [Sunday, 26 June] in the house of the Most Reverend Monsi­gnore Ascanio [Sforza] where one was brought for sale to his Lord­ship. It was a putto, that is, a Cupid, which is lying and slee­ping, prop­ping itself up with one hand. It is unbroken, about 4 hand­spans in length, and it is most beau­tiful. Some think it is modern, and some think it is antique. Whatever the case, it is thought to be, and is, perfect [    perfec­tis­simo]. If it were mine, I wouldn’t give it away for four hundred gold ducats, but its owner is asking for two hundred. Signor Girolamo Tutta­villa was also there and said, if Monsi­gnore Ascanio says he doesn’t want it, and if it isn’t sold in a few months, he would offer two hundred ducats for it and give it to the Duke of Milan. And remem­be­ring what the afore­men­tioned Messer Giovanni said, I wanted to give notice to you, to whom I send my infi­nite regards [Appendix ii.9].²

The seller offered Cardinal Sforza the first chance to buy the Cupid, but two members of his house­hold were given second dibs: della Miran­dola, a cond­ot­tiere allied with Cardinal Sforza,³ and Girolamo Tutta­villa, the son of Cardinal Guil­laume d’Estouteville and another cond­ot­tiere in the service of Sforza.⁴ Tutta­villa would wait to see if Cardinal Sforza wished to buy the Cupid, but if the statue had not been sold in a few months, he would purchase it for 200 ducats as a gift for the Cardinal’s brother, Duke Ludo­vico il Moro of Milan.⁵

Attemp­ting to bring an end to this ruse, on the follo­wing day, Michel­an­gelo set out to regain control of his Cupid. In his letter to Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco, he details the events of this Monday, when he came into conflict with the unscru­pu­lous agent who had tried to pass offthe Cupid as an antique. The dealer, whom Michel­an­gelo iden­ti­fies as ‘Bald­as­sare’ was a Floren­tine merchant-banker named Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese:⁶

Last Monday [27 June] I presented your other letters to Paolo Rucellai, who credited me the money I needed, and also that for the Caval­canti. And then I gave the letter to Bald­as­sare and I asked him for the bambino [the Slee­ping Cupid] and [told him] I would give him back his money. He answered me very sharply that he would rather smash it into a hundred pieces. He had bought the bambino, it was his, he had letters showing

he had paid the person who sent it, and he didn’t doubt that it was his to give away. He complained bitterly about you, saying that you had spoken badly about him. Some of our fellow Floren­tines here have inter­vened to try to resolve this matter, as yet without success. Now I will try to settle it through the Cardinal, as Bald­as­sare Balducci has advised me to do. I will advise you of what happens. Nothing else about this. I send my best wishes to you, and may God protect you from harm [Appendix ii.10].

As his letter reveals, Michel­an­gelo first secured a line of credit from Floren­tine bankers in Rome, the Caval­canti and Paolo Rucellai, using letters from Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco.⁷ With these funds at his disposal, he approa­ched Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese with an offer to buy the Slee­ping Cupid. He presented Bald­as­sare with a letter from Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco, which no doubt echoed Michelangelo’s own demands. It was evidently not the first time Lorenzo had attempted to inter­vene in this matter, since Bald­as­sare complained to Michel­an­gelo that Lorenzo had ‘spoken badly’ of him. Bald­as­sare refused Michel­an­gelo with the retort that he would sooner smash the Cupid to pieces than accept the amount the artist offered. Bald­as­sare had acquired the Cupid legi­ti­m­ately from an unnamed agent who had ‘sent’ it to him. Letters in Baldassare’s posses­sion showed that he had paid this person and that the Cupid was his to sell. After Michel­an­gelo failed to recover the statue, he sought help from the Floren­tines in Rome, also without success. As a next step, he would ask Cardinal Riario for his support, as Bald­as­sare Balducci had advised him to do.

In the days and weeks that followed, while Michel­an­gelo began Riario’s new statue of Bacchus, the truth about the Slee­ping Cupid spread. On 23 July, Pico della Miran­dola wrote a follow-up letter to Isabella d’Este, reporting that the Slee­ping Cupid was still up for sale, but now ever­yone knew that it was modern. Pico della Miran­dola did not think the Cupid would be of any inte­rest to d’Este, since it was not antique. Nor did Pico della Miran­dola feel the need to reveal to Isabella the name of its sculptor, presu­mably because Michelangelo’s name was not yet known to her:

Antonio Maria Pico della Miran­dola, count of Concordia, in Rome to Isabella d’Este, Marchio­ness of Mantua, 23 July 1496:

That Cupid is modern, and the master who made it has arrived here. Nevert­heless, it is so perfect that ever­yone thought it was antique, and now that it has been found to be modern, I believe it will be sold for a lower price. But you would not want it since it is not antique, and I will not say anything further.⁸

The letters of Michel­an­gelo and Pico della Miran­dola quoted above offer remar­kable, first-hand accounts written in medias res of the attempted sale of the Slee­ping Cupid and the commis­sion of the Bacchus. They react to dramatic deve­lo­p­ments, from Michelangelo’s

first meeting with Riario, to Riario’s chall­enge to carve a statue in compe­ti­tion with other sculp­tures, to Michelangelo’s attempt to buy his own Slee­ping Cupid from Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese. They describe events that played out like a game of cat and mouse between Michel­an­gelo and Bald­as­sare: Michel­an­gelo arrived in Rome, met Riario, and agreed to create the Bacchus. On the same weekend, Bald­as­sare moved quickly to offer the Slee­ping Cupid as an anti­quity to Cardinal Ascanio Sforza; the next day, as soon as he had satis­fied his obli­ga­tions to Riario, Michel­an­gelo raised what he considered to be an adequate amount of money and approa­ched Bald­as­sare with an offer to buy the Cupid. Bald­as­sare flatly refused, and the situa­tion only came to a reso­lu­tion when Michel­an­gelo managed to prove his own author­ship of the statue. Less than a month after Michelangelo’s arrival in Rome, Pico della Miran­dola could report that ‘that Cupid is modern, and the master who made it has arrived here’.

The letters imply that Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco and Michelangelo’s common aims had been to regain control of the Cupid, to iden­tify Michel­an­gelo as the sculptor who had made it, and to prevent Bald­as­sare from deceitfully selling the work as an anti­quity. In these objec­tives, they could rely on a close-knit Floren­tine commu­nity in Rome (Bald­as­sare Balducci, the Rucellai, the Caval­canti, and others left unnamed). Through Balducci, Michel­an­gelo had learned that it would also be possible to call upon Cardinal Riario for assis­tance. Michelangelo’s letter reveals that from the moment he arrived in Rome, Riario was ready to help him. The Cardinal was prepared to award the artist a new commis­sion for the Bacchus, no doubt in response to a request by Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco. Michel­an­gelo offered no hint that Riario bore any resent­ment towards him, nor that he or Lorenzo had deceitfully attempted to sell the Cupid to Riario as an anti­quity, as the biogra­phies of Michel­an­gelo by Paolo Giovio, Ascanio Condivi, and Giorgio Vasari would later assert. How, then, had Michelangelo’s conflict with Bald­as­sare come about? Why had Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese tried to pass offthe Cupid as antique, and why were Michel­an­gelo and Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco so intent on stop­ping him? Why were the details of these events given in the later biographers so diffe­rent? Before retur­ning to these ques­tions, and to the biogra­phies of Giovio, Vasari, and Condivi, it is worth turning first to Michelangelo’s Slee­ping Cupid itself. A look back at Michelangelo’s trai­ning in the Medici coll­ec­tions of anti­qui­ties sheds light on the circum­s­tances of its crea­tion. It reveals that Michelangelo’s arrival in Rome brought toge­ther patrons who were already closely connected: the Medici in Florence and wealthy cardi­nals in Rome. These elites belonged to the same compe­ti­tive sphere, vied with each other for the same anti­qui­ties, and could some­times be deceived by the same ‘forged’ objects. With his Slee­ping Cupid, Michel­an­gelo hoped to posi­tion himself within this group, not as a forger, but as an artist who could win their patro­nage through his successful rivalry with the antique. It was a stra­tegy nurtured during his youth, when he trained in the sculp­ture garden of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Michelangelo’s Trai­ning in Florence and the Crea­tion of the Slee­ping Cupid

Funda­mental ques­tions remain unans­wered concer­ning the appearance of Michelangelo’s Slee­ping Cupid, the circum­s­tances of its crea­tion, and its possible rela­ti­onship to an antique Slee­ping Cupid that Michel­an­gelo studied in the coll­ec­tion of Lorenzo de’ Medici.⁹ Nume­rous attempts have been made to iden­tify Michelangelo’s sculp­ture,¹⁰ but it is now assumed to be lost, after chan­ging hands several times. Its proven­ance can be traced from Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese in 1496 to Cesare Borgia, who gave it as a gift to the Duke of Urbino, Guido­baldo da Monte­feltro. By twist of fate, Borgia later acquired the Cupid once again when he took Urbino by force from Monte­feltro in 1502. From Urbino, the Cupid came to the posses­sion of Isabella d’Este.¹¹ D’Este was then eager to acquire Michelangelo’s Slee­ping Cupid from Borgia’s plunder. ‘For a modern work’, she wrote of the Slee­ping Cupid, ‘it has no equal’.¹² Isabella d’Este brought the Cupid into the Gonzaga coll­ec­tions in Mantua, and in 1627, it was sold along with most of the Gonzaga coll­ec­tions to King Charles I of England. It is now presumed that the Slee­ping Cupid was destroyed in the White­hall Palace fire of 1698.

Before the Gonzaga shipped their coll­ec­tions to England, they had an illus­trated inven­tory made. To summa­rise issues that have been the subject of lengthy debate, the putto holding poppies and labelled ‘28’ in the inven­tory (Fig. 121) has often been thought to repre­sent Michelangelo’s lost Slee­ping Cupid. An important objec­tion to this argu­ment proposed by Hirst, however, casts doubt on this assump­tion. Namely, the inven­tory valued this Cupid holding poppies at only five scudi, while other Cupids in the sale were esti­mated at twenty or twenty-five scudi. As Hirst argued, a Cupid attri­buted to Michel­an­gelo would certainly have been one of the most valuable. Michelangelo’s figure was likely a Cupid said to be ‘slee­ping on a rock’ appraised for twenty scudi in the Gonzaga sale, one that was not illus­trated on the Windsor sheet.¹³ Unfort­u­na­tely, there are no known visual repre­sen­ta­tions of Michelangelo’s Slee­ping Cupid, and written descrip­tions of the statue are sparse. As Pico della Miran­dola wrote to Isabella d’Este, the Cupid was an intact figure about four spanne in length (c. 80–90 cm) and shown ‘resting on one of its hands’ [Appendix ii.9]. Poems written about Michelangelo’s Cupid when it was visible in Mantua do not mention any attri­butes, such as poppies, arrows, a bow, or a torch.¹⁴ Appar­ently, Michel­an­gelo wished to focus less on the icono­gra­phic elements of the Slee­ping Cupid than on the repre­sen­ta­tion of a figure who seemed alive, but was tempo­r­a­rily made moti­on­less by slumber.

While the ques­tions of when, and why Michel­an­gelo made this object have yet to be resolved, what is certain is that the Cupid was closely asso­ciated with the aims and ambi­tions of the Floren­tine sculp­ture garden where the artist trained in his youth. Michelangelo’s career took an excep­tional turn in c. 1490 when, around the age of fifteen, he began to train as a sculptor

in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s anti­qui­ties garden near the church of San Marco. Despite doubts in the earlier lite­ra­ture, a consensus has formed around the exis­tence of this garden and its signi­fi­cance for Michelangelo’s career.¹⁵ In his Vita of Michel­an­gelo of 1550, Giorgio Vasari passed on the story that Lorenzo de’ Medici brought talented young artists to the garden to train in the art of sculp­ture, since it lagged behind the art of pain­ting in Florence. De’ Medici charged his fami­liar and sculptor-in-resi­dence Bertoldo di Giovanni, an asso­ciate or pupil of Donatello, with the task of looking after the ‘many beau­tiful anti­qui­ties’ in the garden and running a sculptor’s school there.¹⁶ Accor­ding to Condivi, Michel­an­gelo first learned to sculpt in marble in the garden, where he began prac­ti­sing his skills on a block intended for the architectural

fig. 122 Bene­detto Squilli, after a design by Jan van der Straet (called Strad­anus), Lorenzo de’ Medici and His Artists at the Sculp­ture Garden of San Marco, Pisa, Museo di Palazzo Reale di Pisa. 1571. Photo © Minis­tero della Cultura — Dire­zione regio­nale Musei della Toscana – Firenze.

deco­ra­tions of Lorenzo’s library. Borro­wing the stone­car­vers’ tools, he copied (or ‘portrayed’) an antique head of a Faun he found in the sculp­ture garden, resto­ring the missing parts accor­ding to his own inven­tion (‘di sua fantasia’). ‘Ageing’ the Faun by remo­ving one of its teeth was, for Condivi, the gesture that first sparked Lorenzo de’ Medici’s affec­tion for the young sculptor.¹⁷

Equipped with a loggia and a small living space, the garden at San Marco combined several func­tions: a storage area for marble, a space for displaying antique sculp­tures and other artworks, and a school for artists. Echoes of these acti­vi­ties are found in a famous tapestry made from a design by Jan van der Straet (Strad­anus) depic­ting de’ Medici seated under the loggia of the garden, surrounded by artists (Fig. 122). Some of his trai­nees sculpt marble blocks or sketch after antique sculp­tures, while others gather near de’ Medici, presen­ting him with their drawings. As Vasari put it, ‘the garden was full of anti­qui­ties and other things, brought toge­ther for the sake of beauty, study, and plea­sure’ [Appendix ii.34]. While it is diffi­cult to pinpoint which anti­qui­ties were visible in the garden, it was likely here that Michel­an­gelo first encoun­tered an ancient Slee­ping Cupid that Lorenzo de’ Medici received as a gift from Ferdi­nand I, King of Naples. Accor­ding to Vasari, Giuliano da Sangallo deli­vered this Cupid, toge­ther with a figure of a ‘nude woman’, from the Neapo­litan court. Many attempts have been made to iden­tify Lorenzo de’ Medici’s antique Cupid—an object that must have been an important impetus for Michelangelo’s version of the subject—yet none have yielded a defi­ni­tive result.¹⁸

Michel­an­gelo occu­pied a privi­leged place among the trai­nees who competed for Lorenzo’s atten­tion. In reco­gni­tion of his talent, and his family’s semi-noble status, Lorenzo de’ Medici made the artist a member of his house­hold. Michel­an­gelo lived with the Medici at their palace on the via Larga, where he would have studied the anti­qui­ties in a coll­ec­tion begun by Cosimo ‘il Vecchio’ de’ Medici. At this palace, the family exhi­bited Donatello’s bronze David in the cortile and, in the garden, the Judith and Holo­fernes along with a number of antique marbles. Paired across a doorway were a ‘hanging’ ancient Marsyas in red pavo­n­az­zetto marble, brought to the palace by Cosimo il Vecchio and restored in the 1460s by Mino da ­Fiesole (Fig. 123), and a seated ancient Marsyas in red marble restored by Andrea del Verroc­chio (now lost), added to the coll­ec­tion by Lorenzo.¹⁹ This display left a lasting impres­sion on the young

fig. 123 Marsyas in red (pavo­n­az­zetto) marble from the Medici coll­ec­tion, restored by Mino da Fiesole, Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi, inv. 201. 2nd century ce, restored c. 1465. Photo © Minis­tero per i Beni e le Atti­vità Cultu­rali Soprin­ten­denza Speciale per il Patri­monio Storico, Artis­tico ed Etno­an­tro­po­lo­gico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze. All rights reserved.

fig. 124 Zanobi Last­ri­cati, Project for the Funeral Monu­ment of Michel­an­gelo, Milan, Biblio­teca Ambro­siana, Codice Resta, inv. F 261 inf. n. 78/2, fol. 65. 1564. Photo © Vene­randa Biblio­teca Ambro­siana / Icas94 / Mond­adori Port­folio / Bridgeman Images.

Michel­an­gelo, and the Marsyas figures are remem­bered in a scene desi­gned for Michelangelo’s funerary cata­falque many decades later: Lorenzo de’ Medici is shown recei­ving him with the two antique statues of Marsyas in the back­ground (Fig. 124). Resto­ra­tion, the compa­rison of diffe­rent antique versions, and the juxta­po­si­tion of antique statues and modern ones were methods used to educate Lorenzo’s artists. Rivalry was an over­ri­ding prin­ciple of the Medici art school, stimu­lated by the presence not only of anti­qui­ties but also of all’antica inven­tions. The crea­tion and display of sculp­ture at the San Marco garden was rooted in a well-­ estab­lished Floren­tine tradi­tion, in which the city’s grea­test sculp­tors won fame through their compe­ti­tion with Medici anti­qui­ties. For example, an antique bronze Horse’s Head (Fig. 125) in the Medici coll­ec­tions inspired Donatello when he cast an enormous bronze horse’s head for an equestrian statue of Alfonso V of Aragon (Fig. 126). After the Neapo­litan commis­sion fell through, Donatello’s head was—until it was gifted to Diomede Carafa in Naples in 1471—a modern frag­ment that could be compared with its antique coun­ter­part.²⁰

Many of the objects in the Medici coll­ec­tions at the via Larga and San Marco were acquired via anti­qua­rian and coll­ec­ting circles in Rome. Coins, gems, and sculp­tures in marble were

fig. 125 Horse’s Head, Florence, Museo Archeo­lo­gico, inv. 1639. c. second half of the 4th century bce. Photo published by permis­sion of the Museo Archeo­lo­gico Nazio­nale di Firenze (Dire­zione regio­nale Musei della Toscana). All rights reserved.

fig. 126 Donatello, Horse’s Head, Naples, Museo Archeo­lo­gico Nazio­nale, inv. 4887. 1456–1465. Photo by permis­sion of the Minis­tero della Cultura – Museo Archeo­lo­gico Nazio­nale di Napoli.

purchased in Rome by agents of the Medici bank, in colla­bo­ra­tion with the Roman dealer Giovanni Ciam­po­lini.²¹ The trade in anti­qui­ties brought de’ Medici’s agents into compe­ti­tion with Roman coll­ec­tors, notably Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. For example, when a small statue-group of Three Fauns and a Serpent (Fig. 127), a parody of the Laocoön myth, was disco­vered in 1489, Ciam­po­lini helped de’ Medici’s agents acquire the work before Della Rovere could win it for himself. After the Fauns were excavated in 1489 at San Lorenzo in Panis­perna, Ciam­po­lini sent in agents to outma­no­euvre the Cardinal by taking the statue under the cover of night. Della Rovere trium­phed over Lorenzo de’ Medici, however, in a compe­ti­tion for the most important statue from the excava­tion at San Lorenzo in Panis­perna, the Apollo Belve­dere.²² Through frequent corre­spon­dence from agents, the Medici, as well as the artists atta­ched to their sculp­ture garden, would have been well informed about Rome: its signi­fi­cant coll­ec­tions, major disco­veries, and important personalities.

When Lorenzo de’ Medici died in 1492, he was succeeded by his son Piero. Initi­ally, accor­ding to Condivi, Piero continued to favour Michel­an­gelo and kept him inside the Medici house­hold. Condivi states that soon after Lorenzo’s death, Michel­an­gelo bought a block of marble that had ‘lain exposed for many years to the water and the wind’ and carved from it a statue of Hercules.²³ Since the statue’s size (4 braccia, or about 2.4 metres) and expense make it

fig. 127 Three Fauns and a Serpent, Chicago, Art Insti­tute (Anony­mous loan). 1st century ce. Photo: Art Insti­tute of Chicago, public domain.

unli­kely to have been a work made without a patron, it has often been assumed that Michel­an­gelo sculpted the Hercules for Piero, perhaps in the sculp­ture garden at San Marco.²⁴ In 1494, these oppor­tu­ni­ties came to an abrupt end when Pietro’s inabi­lity to resist Charles VIII brought about a French occu­pa­tion and popular upri­sing. The Medici were sent into exile, and Michel­an­gelo fled Florence. A letter of October 1494 written to Medici sculptor Adriano Fioren­tino reports that Michel­an­gelo had gone to Venice: ‘Michel­an­gelo ischul­tore dal giar­dino se n’e ito a Vinegia’.²⁵ This choice of words implies either that Michel­an­gelo carried the title ‘the sculptor of the garden’ at that time, or that the artist fled ‘from the garden’. In either case, they unders­core the signi­fi­cance the Medici sculp­ture garden played in Michelangelo’s career even after Lorenzo il Magnifico’s death.

Shortly after arri­ving in Venice, Michel­an­gelo reversed course and, like other Medici supporters displaced from Florence, sought refuge in Bologna. Here he was hosted by the Bolo­gnese aris­to­crat Gian­fran­cesco Aldro­vandi, who put him to work comple­ting the tomb of St. Dominic with two figures of saints and a Knee­ling Angel (see Figs 149, 164). He returned to Florence perhaps at the end of 1495 or in January 1496.²⁶ There Michel­an­gelo found protec­tion with Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco de’ Medici who, toge­ther with his brother Giovanni, led the ‘minor’ branch of the Medici family. Giovanni and Lorenzo, as allies of the French, had bene­fitted from Charles VIII’s victory in 1494, and after Piero de’ Medici’s expul­sion they secured for them­selves a posi­tion of domi­nance. Lorenzo and Giovanni de’ Medici marked their diffe­rence from the major branch of the family by adop­ting the new name ‘Popolani’. Accor­ding to Condivi, once back in Florence Michel­an­gelo made a statue of a young St. John (a ‘San Giovan­nino’) for Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco [Appendix ii.29]. Although the San Giovan­nino was long presumed to be lost, Fran­cesco Caglioti has successfully iden­ti­fied it as a marble statue taken in the sixte­enth century to the chapel of El Salvador in Úbeda (Fig. 128).²⁷

Condivi (followed by Vasari in the 1568 Vita) asserts that after his return to Florence from Bologna, Michel­an­gelo carved not only the San Giovan­nino, but also a marble Cupid, six or seven years of age and lying in a slee­ping pose [Appendix ii.29 and ii.34]. Condivi in 1553, and Vasari in 1568, imply that Michel­an­gelo created this Cupid without a patron in mind. It was then brought to the atten­tion of Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco, who suggested it should be sold as an anti­quity in Rome: here the biogra­phies of Condivi and Vasari clash with the artist’s own account of these events in his letter of 1496. To probe this issue further, the discus­sion now turns to the ques­tion of how Michelangelo’s biogra­phies told the story of the Slee­ping Cupid.

The Slee­ping Cupid in the Biogra­phies of Paolo Giovio, Giorgio Vasari, and Ascanio Condivi

The vast art-histo­rical lite­ra­ture devoted to Michelangelo’s Slee­ping Cupid has relied far less on the letters quoted at the begin­ning of this chapter than on the biogra­phies of

fig. 128 Michel­an­gelo Buonar­roti, San Giovan­nino before its destruc­tion, in situ at Úbeda, Sacra Capilla del Salvador, detail. 1495–1496. Photo: Kunst­his­to­ri­sches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut.

Michel­an­gelo written decades after the fact—above all, Condivi’s Vita di Miche­lag­nolo Buonar­roti and Vasari’s second version of the artist’s Vita written in 1568. Little atten­tion has been paid, however, to the distor­tions caused by their mid-Cinque­cento perspec­tive on the past, or how their versions of the Slee­ping Cupid story fit into broader narra­tive aims. Condivi’s biography, in parti­cular, advances an over­ar­ching agenda, namely, to unders­core the igno­rance of Michelangelo’s patrons, to condemn the prio­rity given to antique sculp­ture over modern works, and to shift credit for the artist’s early successes towards Jacopo Galli.

The first biographer to discuss the Cupid was Paolo Giovio, who wrote his brief Michaelis Angeli vita between c. 1524 and 1534. Giovio states that Michel­an­gelo won fame when ‘he made a marble Cupid and excavated it after having buried it for a time, so that it would seem antique, then sold it through an agent to Cardinal Riario for a high price’ [Appendix ii.24].²⁸ What is parti­cu­larly surpri­sing is Giovio’s clarity regar­ding Riario’s role. In matters invol­ving Riario, Giovio was a more trust­worthy source than Vasari and Condivi: he lived in Rome between 1512 and 1549 and was a member of Cardinal Bandi­nello Sauli’s house­hold when Sauli and Riario were caught up in the events of the Petrucci conspi­racy. After Sauli’s death in 1517, Giovio entered the service of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, Vice-Chan­cellor of Rome. Leo X made Riario’s palace the papal Cancel­leria, and Giovio moved there toge­ther with the rest of Cardinal de’ Medici’s house­hold. From inside Riario’s former palace, the histo­rian and biographer had every oppor­tu­nity to gather anec­dotes about Riario, and he passes on several of them in his publi­ca­tions.²⁹

Although Giovio does not mention the Bacchus, his insider status lends credi­bi­lity to his account of the Slee­ping Cupid, even to his asser­tion that the Cupid was purpo­sefully buried and unear­thed. Indeed, the staged excava­tion of the Cupid is the one detail of the story on which all sixte­enth-century biogra­phies agree, not only Giovio, Vasari, and Condivi, but also Giam­bat­tista Gelli and Bene­detto Varchi.³⁰ The fact that Giovio includes this detail, and that it is also repeated so consis­t­ently (seemingly without a know­ledge of Giovio’s text, which was only published in the eigh­te­enth century), suggests that Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese may indeed have gone so far as to simu­late the ‘disco­very’ of the Cupid to make its anti­quity belie­vable in Rome; in 1490s there are reports of staged burials by the sculptor Pietro Maria Serbaldi da Pescia, or Annius of Viterbo.³¹ A process of deli­be­rate ageing by Bald­as­sare would help to explain why the cour­tiers in Cardinal Sforza’s house­hold would, moreover, have found it diffi­cult to judge whether Michelangelo’s statue was antique or modern.

Giorgio Vasari first wrote about the sale of the Slee­ping Cupid in his Vita of Michel­an­gelo published in 1550. In this telling, Vasari confuses the chro­no­logy of events that had long faded into distant memory, incor­rectly placing the episode of the Cupid and the artist’s trip to Rome (1496) before his wooden Crucifix for Santo Spirito (c. 1492–1493) and marble Hercules (c. 1493–1494). Vasari muddles the story further by writing that Michel­an­gelo made his statue

of Bacchus (1496–1497) after he painted a St. Francis Recei­ving the Stig­mata (c. 1497) and after the Doni Tondo (1504–1506). Unlike Giovio, Vasari does not mention Riario in connec­tion with the Cupid:

He carved a boy in marble in a room [the Slee­ping Cupid carved, by impli­ca­tion, in a room in the Medici sculp­ture garden at San Marco] and it was then bought by Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese. After the object was made to look antique, it was taken to Rome and buried in a vineyard. Once excavated from there it was thought to be antique and sold at a high price. Michel­an­gelo made it known, by travel­ling to Rome, that it was by his hand, even if ever­yone strug­gled to believe him. [A discus­sion of Michelangelo’s wooden Crucifix, his marble Hercules, a pain­ting of St. Francis Recei­ving the Stig­mata in San Pietro in Montorio, and the Doni Tondo follows]. He had the desire to move to Rome, because of the wonders he had heard about the anci­ents. Ther­e­fore, once he arrived there, he made, in the house of the Galli, oppo­site the palace of San Giorgio, a marble Bacchus larger than life, with a satyr next to it [Appendix ii.27].

Vasari’s Vita is riddled with errors and omis­sions. It is surpri­singly precise, however, in pinpoin­ting the iden­tity of the ‘Bald­as­sare’ who features so promin­ently in Michelangelo’s letter. ‘Baldessarre [sic] del Mila­nese’, Vasari writes, bought the Cupid, brought it to Rome, and buried it in a vigna, from which it was excavated. It was believed to be antique and sold at a ‘high price’. Here his version of the story of the Slee­ping Cupid is, overall, quite close to the events described in Michelangelo’s letter of 1496: Michel­an­gelo was offended by the sale of his Cupid as an antique, travelled to Rome to prove his author­ship of the statue, but faced diffi­cul­ties in proving his claim. Vasari’s narra­tive then lapses, however, when he sepa­rates these events from the commis­sion of the Bacchus. Michel­an­gelo took another trip to Rome, Vasari writes, moti­vated by his desire to ‘see the marvels he had heard of from the anci­ents’. Once there, he made the Bacchus with a satyr ‘in the house of the Galli, across from the Palazzo San Giorgio’. In 1550, Vasari knew the Bacchus in the house of the Galli first-hand since, in 1546, he worked at the Palazzo San Giorgio, execu­ting the Sala dei Cento Giorni for Cardinal Ales­sandro Farnese (see Fig. 204). Although present in Riario’s palazzo, and despite pain­ting over the deco­ra­tions Riario had commis­sioned for its prin­cipal recep­tion room, Vasari seems to have been fully unaware that Riario had purchased Michelangelo’s Cupid and had commis­sioned the Bacchus.

Circum­s­tances sket­ched out in Vasari’s biography of 1550 evolved into an elabo­rate fiction and a deli­be­rate effort to distance Michel­an­gelo from Riario in a biography published three years later by the artist’s asso­ciate Ascanio Condivi (1525–1574). The painter Condivi, Michelangelo’s pupil, wrote his Vita with guidance from the master and in response to Vasari’s text. In his version of the events, Condivi used the episode of the Cupid to condemn Riario’s judge­ment of sculp­ture, a move the artist himself must have supported. Condivi pres­ents a detailed account of both the Cupid and the Bacchus: Michel­an­gelo made a Slee­ping Cupid so close to the antique that Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco de’ Medici suggested he bury it and pass it offas a genuine anti­quity in Rome. Follo­wing his patron’s advice, Michel­an­gelo deli­bera­tely aged the figure. An unnamed agent in Rome then sold the Cupid as an anti­quity to Riario on Michelangelo’s behalf, recei­ving 200 ducats for the work, but paying the sculptor only thirty. Condivi avoids naming Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese, thereby suppres­sing details that Vasari had already exposed in 1550. Instead, he trans­fers the initial idea for the ‘ruse’ away from Michel­an­gelo (refu­ting Giovio), and away from Bald­as­sare (refu­ting Vasari), attri­bu­ting it instead to Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco. After the news reached Riario’s ear that the Cupid was made by a living artist in Florence, Condivi conti­nues, the Cardinal sent ‘un suo genti­luomo’ to reveal the sculptor’s iden­tity, on the pretence of sear­ching for an artist who could work for him in

Rome. Michel­an­gelo proved his abili­ties to this genti­luomo by drawing a hand so exqui­site as to leave the agent ‘stupe­fied’. After disco­ve­ring Michel­an­gelo to be the author of the Cupid in this manner, the genti­luomo invited the sculptor to Rome ‘to recover the rema­inder [of what he was due] and to make things right with the patron, who knew that the situa­tion would be troubling’. At this point in the narra­tive, Condivi portrays Riario as a sympa­thetic character. He even draws a parallel between the emotional states of Michel­an­gelo and the Cardinal, who are both victims of an unscru­pu­lous art-dealer: while Cardinal Riario was sdignato d’esser gabbato, Michel­an­gelo was moti­vated by his isdegno d’essere stato fraudato.

Once in Rome, Condivi conti­nues, Michel­an­gelo lived in the house of the genti­luomo, near Cardinal Riario’s palace: with this detail he reve­aled indi­rectly that the genti­luomo who had disco­vered the artist on Riario’s behalf was Jacopo Galli.³² The Cardinal ‘got his hands on’ the disho­nest merchant who had sold him the Cupid, returned the figure, and retrieved what he had paid for it. Because he demanded a refund, Condivi asserts, Riario was ‘cursed by some’ (da alcuni biasi­mato). At this point in the narra­tive, the sympathy Condivi expressed for Riario comes to an abrupt halt, as the biographer takes direct aim at the Cardinal. Despite his great wealth, Condivi writes, Riario was unwil­ling to spend 200 scudi on the Cupid, a sculp­ture ever­yone judged to be bellis­sima. ‘That the Cardinal unders­tood little and delighted little in statues’, Condivi conti­nues, ‘is demons­trated suffi­ci­ently by the fact that in all the time that Michel­an­gelo was with him, that is, about a year, he never commis­sioned anything from him’. Condivi then mentions Jacopo Galli by name for the first time:

[Michel­an­gelo] did not lack someone who would offer this favour and who would make use of him, since Messer Jacopo Galli, a Roman gentleman of parti­cular genius, asked him to make a marble Bacchus in his house. It was 10 palmi high, and in its form and appearance corre­sponds in every way to the inten­tions of the ancient writers.

It was Galli, Condivi states, who commis­sioned the Bacchus from Michel­an­gelo, while Riario, an igno­rant patron who unders­tood nothing of sculp­ture, never commis­sioned any work from the artist. Galli, by contrast, supported Michel­an­gelo with commis­sions not only for the Bacchus, but also for another figure, a statue of Cupid (that is, the Young Archer, Figs 5 and 187). Both the Bacchus and this Cupid were still visible in the coll­ec­tion of Galli’s heirs, ‘cour­teous and good men with whom Michel­an­gelo has always kept a close friend­ship’. The sudden swerve against Riario in Condivi’s Vita condemns the Cardinal as a way of prai­sing Galli: Riario is a foolish character who was first duped, then refused a work by Michel­an­gelo, allo­wing the genti­luomo Galli to emerge as the hero of the story.

In his account, Condivi is espe­ci­ally atten­tive to Michelangelo’s finan­cial loss, which he is careful to contrast with Cardinal Riario’s reco­very of the fee he had paid to Bald­as­sare. While Riario was not disad­van­taged by this inci­dent, ‘no one suffered more than Michel­an­gelo’, ‘who other than what he received in Florence [30 ducats] earned nothing’. The effect of Condivi’s version of the story is to unders­core the chal­lenges the artist faced in recei­ving fair pay, one of the over­ar­ching themes of his Vita. The story high­lights a domi­nant theme in Condivi’s biography, namely, the misfor­tunes the artist suffered because of the failed commis­sion for the tomb of Julius II. Michelangelo’s grie­vance over what Condivi famously called the

‘tragedy’ of the tomb was a signi­fi­cant reason to write the biography in the first place. Condivi’s story about the loss of profit on the Cupid empha­sises the problems Michel­an­gelo faced throug­hout his career due to penny-pinching patrons. By high­lighting Riario’s igno­rance, Condivi unders­cores the specific problem of patrons who pay much more for antique statues than for contem­po­rary works.

In 1568, Vasari published a second edition of his Lives [Appendix ii.34] that incor­po­rated many of Condivi’s incon­sis­ten­cies and red herrings. Vasari insists, however, on correc­ting Condivi by once again naming the Slee­ping Cupid’s seller, Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese: after Bald­as­sare showed the Cupid to Lorenzo, Lorenzo advised Michel­an­gelo to bury it, age it, and sell it in Rome as an antique. ‘They say’, Vasari writes in refe­rence to Condivi, that Michel­an­gelo followed Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s advice and deli­bera­tely aged the Slee­ping Cupid. Vasari then offers other possible versions of the events: Bald­as­sare may have been the one to age the figure, burying it and then selling it as an anti­quity to Riario for 200 ducats, or another, unnamed agent carried out the ruse on Baldassare’s behalf, pocke­ting 200 scudi and sending Michel­an­gelo only thirty, while ‘clai­ming he didn’t receive any more for the Cupid’ and thus ‘defrau­ding the Cardinal, Lorenzo, and Michel­an­gelo’ at the same time.

Follo­wing Condivi’s lead, the central points of focus of Vasari’s narra­tive in the Vita of 1568 are Riario’s igno­rance, his failure to reco­g­nise the value of modern sculp­ture, and his lack of support for Michel­an­gelo. Although Michel­an­gelo lived with Riario for ‘around a year’, the Cardinal commis­sioned nothing at all from him. For Vasari, the story of the Cupid exposes powerful and prospe­rous men like Riario who, since they were concerned only with surface appearances, failed to appre­ciate modern works that were just as excel­lent as anti­ques.³³ Adding a new detail, Vasari writes that Riario’s barber, an amateur painter skilled at colou­ring, had befri­ended Michel­an­gelo, reco­g­nised his talents, and used one of Michelangelo’s cartoons for a pain­ting. This humble man saw the value in the Florentine’s art that Riario was unable to appre­ciate. Like­wise Jacopo Galli, a gentleman and ‘persona ingegnosa’, reco­g­nised Michelangelo’s talent and commis­sioned a marble Cupid from him—the Young Archer (Figs 5 and 187)—as well as the Bacchus. While the patro­nage of the Bacchus, and Riario’s barber, will be discussed in the next chapter, it now remains to consider how the letters of 1496 square up with Vasari and Condivi’s biogra­phies, and how all of the sources taken toge­ther, despite their contra­dic­tions, offer insight into the Slee­ping Cupid and its attempted sale in Rome.

Michelangelo’s Slee­ping Cupid and the Art Market

The version of events presented in the letters of 1496 funda­men­tally contra­dicts the later biogra­phies and leaves no doubt that Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese was acting against the will of Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco de’ Medici and Michel­an­gelo by offe­ring the Cupid in Rome as an

anti­quity. They imply that a loss of profit and honour drove Michel­an­gelo to confront Bald­as­sare, with the help of Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco. As a young and as yet unestab­lished artist, he could not let Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese defraud him, and the desire to defend his repu­ta­tion was appar­ently so acute that it prompted the artist’s trip to Rome.³⁴ While a tempo­rary state of inganno might have been a desired response to the Slee­ping Cupid, it was essen­tial for Michel­an­gelo to receive credit for having made the work and for having imitated the antique so successfully. By clai­ming the sculp­ture as his own, he hoped to break any ‘substi­tu­tional chain’ that might give the Slee­ping Cupid value only as a copy of a lost antique original, insis­ting instead on its modern point of origin.³⁵ The episode reso­nates with the famously promi­nent signa­ture he carved in the Pietà (Fig. 193), which followed soon after the affair of the Cupid.³⁶ The artist’s anxie­ties regar­ding the Cupid also signal a reluc­tance to allow his work to enter the free market—a situa­tion echoed by what is known of his giant Hercules. As Fran­cesco Caglioti first proposed, Michel­an­gelo may have had the Hercules restored to him in August 1495, after clai­ming it from Medici property seized after the family’s exile.³⁷ Before 1506, the sculp­ture came into the posses­sion of his Strozzi friends, a proven­ance that seems to reflect the artist’s desire to control the display and recep­tion of his own crea­tions.³⁸

In his account of the Slee­ping Cupid, when describing promises made by the gentil­uomo to Michel­an­gelo to persuade the artist to come to Rome, Condivi states:

He promised, if [Michel­an­gelo] were willing to go with him to Rome, to pay back the rest and to settle the matter with his patron, who knew that this would please him. Michel­an­gelo, ther­e­fore, in part because of his indi­gna­tion at having been defrauded and in part to see Rome […] went with him.

At this junc­ture, where Condivi touches on Michelangelo’s sense of having been wronged, an anno­ta­tion (postilla) appears in a copy of Condivi’s text now in a private coll­ec­tion. The anno­ta­tions in this copy of the biography, written in a sixte­enth-century hand, have been convin­cingly attri­buted to Tiberio Calcagni, Michelangelo’s assistant. They have been unders­tood as Calcagni’s records of the artist’s own comm­ents on the narra­tive and are written in the first person, as if they were quota­tions from the artist himself. The anno­ta­tion to the passage cited above reads, ‘and he also said that he had asked the Cardinal not to mention this, and that he had been wrong to speak of it’.³⁹ The genti­luomo, in other words, told Michel­an­gelo in Florence he had asked Riario not to speak about the Cupid, knowing it would embarrass the artist. If the voice of this short postilla is indeed Michelangelo’s, the note unders­cores the artist’s profound concern for his own repu­ta­tion; evidently, Michel­an­gelo perceived the Cupid’s sale as an anti­quity as an affront to his honour.

Driving the sale of the Cupid in Rome as an antique was not Michelangelo’s hope of maxi­mi­sing profits, but the emer­gence of a thri­ving market for ancient marble statues and its

inter­fe­rence with prac­tices of imita­tion and copying that had long been part of Floren­tine work­shop tradi­tion.⁴⁰ As Wood and Nagel have written, ‘it was the art market that even­tually created the cate­gory of the forged work of art’,⁴¹ and in 1496 it was the acce­le­rated market in marble anti­qui­ties that allowed the Cupid to become a ‘forgery’. At a time when marble anti­qui­ties were incre­asingly traded by merchant-bankers, the Cupid became a fake anti­quity, against the artist’s will. The episode marks a colli­sion between two Quat­tro­cento novelties—the inven­tive response to the antique in sculp­ture deve­loped by Donatello, Bertoldo, and Michel­an­gelo in Florence, and the profi­table trade in antique sculp­tures within the banking networks of Florence and Rome. In the late fifte­enth century small anti­qui­ties in marble were, like jewels or tapestries, acquired and exch­anged on the Rome-Florence axis via pawning, buying, and resel­ling.⁴² The finan­cial system of the time was based not only on the posses­sion of currency but also to a large extent on the posses­sion of valuable objects; since objects were needed as a form of finan­cial secu­rity, the tempt­a­tion to exag­ge­rate or falsify their value was constant. Setting a price on objects of uncer­tain age and value was part of the busi­ness of dealers and ‘coll­ec­tors’, who could, on the one hand, patro­nise artists skilled in imita­ting or resto­ring anti­qui­ties, or on the other, misre­pre­sent modern objects as anti­ques. In this manner, the over­lap­ping pheno­mena of all’antica art, the art market, and merchant-banking prac­tices deve­loped in tandem. Critical to these deve­lo­p­ments was a network that included the Medici in Florence, Riario, Galli, and Giovanni Ciam­po­lini in Rome.⁴³ Michel­an­gelo aspired to win fame in these circles with objects that seemed antique, but were actually modern. At the same time, his ambi­tions meant he was threa­tened by the possi­bi­lity that his works could be frau­du­lently repre­sented as costly antiquities.

In the grey area between inven­tion and forgery, an emer­ging type of art object deve­loped, above all in the career of Michel­an­gelo: modern sculp­ture that aimed to command the level of atten­tion and rever­ence accorded to anti­qui­ties. One of the themes unders­cored by Condivi and Vasari’s discus­sion of the Cupid is the hard­ships the sculptor faced in his early career since patrons were willing to pay high prices for antique works, while turning their backs on modern sculp­ture. In this light, his crea­tion of the Cupid and the Bacchus seems to contest this situa­tion, while high­lighting the diffi­cul­ties it created for the profes­sion of sculp­tors gene­rally. The context of both works is, appar­ently, the chall­enge posed to sculp­tors by the trend of anti­qui­ties coll­ec­ting, which claimed too much of patrons’ atten­tion and spen­ding power.⁴⁴ The primary goal of the Medici sculp­ture garden at San Marco was, argu­ably, to combat this shift by nurtu­ring the art of bronze casting and marble-carving, enab­ling a new gene­ra­tion to prove their work worthy of patrons’ devotion.

The Roles of Jacopo Galli and Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco de’ Medici

While the biogra­phies offer conflic­ting scena­rios, Condivi’s narra­tive takes pains to empha­sise the role of Jacopo Galli in Michelangelo’s arrival in Rome. Condivi first tells the story

of Riario’s agent, a person referred to simply as a genti­luomo, who disco­vered the sculptor of the Cupid in Florence; later in the narra­tive, this gentleman is impli­citly reve­aled to be Galli. Galli is credited with reco­g­nising Michelangelo’s author­ship of the Cupid after the artist (who had no finished works of art to show him) drew a perfect hand; the episode bears all the hall­marks of what Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz have called the ‘tale of the disco­very of talent’, a trope of artistic biography seen in Vasari’s Lives of Giotto or Dome­nico Beccafumi. It is a topos drawn from Pliny’s story of how Proto­genes and Apelles reve­aled their iden­ti­ties by drawing lines of impos­sible accu­racy and deli­cacy.⁴⁵ In keeping with Condivi’s desire to under­play Michelangelo’s formal trai­ning, in this narra­tive the genti­luomo finds the artist in a state of inno­cence, so lacking in expe­ri­ence or trai­ning that he had no sample of his work to show. His talent was nevert­heless reve­aled when he succeeded in the quint­essen­tial artistic chall­enge of drawing his own hand. This story acknow­ledges the mano, personal style, or maniera of Michel­an­gelo that was—by the time Condivi was writing in the 1550s—the most cele­brated and reco­g­nisable of any artist.⁴⁶

With this episode, Condivi aims to give credit to Jacopo Galli for escor­ting Michel­an­gelo perso­nally to Rome. As is appa­rent from Michelangelo’s letter to Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco, a compa­nion did accom­pany the artist from Florence; he writes, ‘we arrived safely’ in Rome and ‘we bought a block of marble’. It has some­times been proposed that Michelangelo’s fellow traveller was Galli.⁴⁷ However, as Poggi first suggested, a more likely travel­ling compa­nion was the artist’s assistant, Piero d’Argenta: as Michel­an­gelo wrote, this person not only went to Rome with him, but also helped him to choose a marble block, an assistant’s task that the artist d’Argenta was quali­fied to under­take. Certainly by January 1498, d’Argenta was in Rome taking care of Michelangelo’s affairs.⁴⁸

Despite the signi­fi­cance Condivi and Vasari assign to Jacopo Galli, the banker’s name is conspi­cuously absent from Michelangelo’s letter. It is Bald­as­sare Balducci whom Michel­an­gelo mentions, as one of the fellow Floren­tines who were helping him buy back the Cupid (‘now I will try to settle it through the Cardinal, as Bald­as­sare Balducci has advised me to do’). The artist does not feel obliged to intro­duce Balducci to Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco, who must have already known him, presu­mably through Lorenzo’s dealings with the Galli-Balducci bank.⁴⁹ Balducci was part of a Floren­tine commu­nity in Rome which was centred on the Confra­ter­nity of San Giovanni dei Fioren­tini, of which both Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese and Balducci were members.⁵⁰ Given these connec­tions, it was ther­e­fore Balducci, not Jacopo Galli, whom Michel­an­gelo and Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco iden­ti­fied as a conduit to Cardinal Riario. There is good reason to believe that Galli was involved in hosting and supporting Michel­an­gelo after his arrival in Rome and, as is discussed in Chapter 7, Galli may have drawn up and coun­ter­si­gned the contract for the Bacchus. Yet the credit Condivi gives to Galli for brin­ging Michel­an­gelo to Rome is likely unme­rited. The story of Jacopo Galli’s Floren­tine trip tallies with Condivi’s broader aims—that is, to praise Galli for reco­g­nising Michelangelo’s talent when Riario failed to do so, and to bolster Galli’s status as a close friend and supporter of Michelangelo.

While the biographers fashion Galli as the primary inter­me­diary in Michelangelo’s move to Rome, the artist’s letter suggests that Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco de’ Medici, working in coope­ra­tion with Riario and the Floren­tine banking commu­nity in Rome, was the most important agent in these events.

Because Condivi and Vasari wrote their biogra­phies in the era of Cosimo I de’ Medici—a direct descen­dant of Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco de’ Medici’s brother Giovanni—it has been suggested that they exag­ge­rated Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s support for Michel­an­gelo in his early career.⁵¹ When the narra­tive presented in Michelangelo’s letter of 1496 is prio­ri­tised, however, the biogra­phies seem rather to down­play this support. Lorenzo il Magni­fico had raised Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco from the age of thir­teen and had cared for his educa­tion under Poli­ziano and other leading huma­nists.⁵² When Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco came of age, he was a patron of art and lite­ra­ture cut from the same cloth as the sons of the Magni­fico. It may have been for his marriage to Semi­ra­mide Appiano (1482) that Botti­celli painted the Prima­vera as well as the Pallas and the Centaur,⁵³ and it was via Botti­celli that Michel­an­gelo wrote to Lorenzo in the summer of 1496. Lorenzo’s sympa­thies for Michel­an­gelo, an artist whom he seems to have regarded almost as a family member, are clearly in evidence.

Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco provided the sculptor with nume­rous letters to help him meet his objec­tive in Rome, as well as the funds that were required to buy back the Cupid from Bald­as­sare. Clearly, de’ Medici and Michel­an­gelo were united in the efforts to stop the dealer, even if this scenario contra­dicts the version of the events presented by Condivi in 1553 and Vasari in 1568. Follo­wing Michelangelo’s letter, Bald­as­sare bought the Cupid through an anony­mous third party, a ‘person’ who had sent it to him. Once the Cupid was in Rome, Bald­as­sare attempted to sell it as an anti­quity for a high price. After hearing of the trick, Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco and Michel­an­gelo found a means of proving Michelangelo’s author­ship of the work. The artist went to Rome, accepted Cardinal Riario’s commis­sion of the Bacchus, and restored his repu­ta­tion when he was reco­g­nised as the sculptor of the Cupid. If this is indeed the basic plot line, the details remain elusive. When, and for what purpose, had Michel­an­gelo initi­ally carved the Cupid  ? If the Cupid was made in Florence for Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco, when and how had Lorenzo lost control over it?

Concer­ning these latter issues, Hirst has pointed to a payment for 200 ducats to the Cardinal in the Galli-Balducci accounts made on 5 May 1496 and suggested that it may repre­sent a reim­bur­se­ment from Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese to Riario for the Cupid. It is a theory that is now widely accepted in the lite­ra­ture.⁵⁴ Working back­wards from 5 May, it has been proposed that Bald­as­sare could have purchased the Cupid in Florence between 2 February and 12 March 1496, given his absence from meetings of the Compa­gnia of San Giovanni dei Fioren­tini in Rome during these weeks.⁵⁵ A closer exami­na­tion of the bank records, however, reveals that the payment on 5 May appears in a list related to the sale of grain from Pali­doro on Riario’s behalf and is undoub­tedly unre­lated to the Cupid.⁵⁶ In the survi­ving accounts of

the Galli-Balducci bank from the year 1496, no mention is made of a payment to or credit from Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese to Riario.

Several events described in Michelangelo’s letter—the artist’s arrival in Rome, Bald­as­sare del Milanese’s attempt to sell the figure to Cardinal Sforza, and Michelangelo’s bid to reac­quire it—occurred in rapid sequence. Michelangelo’s trip to Rome appears to have been a response to recent news that Bald­as­sare was attemp­ting to defraud him. It seems likely, then, that the time between Riario’s know­ledge of the Cupid’s moder­nity and Michelangelo’s arrival in Rome was also short. When Michel­an­gelo arrived in Rome, the Cardinal was already allied with him and, as Balducci advises, was even willing to help the artist recover his Cupid. Conside­ring Riario’s strong support of Michel­an­gelo in this matter, it is diffi­cult to avoid the conclu­sion that Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco had written to Riario to condemn Bald­as­sare and to praise Michel­an­gelo. Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco may have been the first to make Riario aware of Baldassare’s fraud and of Michelangelo’s author­ship of the Cupid, thereby winning the Cardinal’s sympa­thies and prepa­ring the ground for Michelangelo’s enthu­si­a­stic recep­tion in Rome. Previous corre­spon­dence between the Riario and de’ Medici is hinted at by the ‘lettere’ mentioned in passing by Condivi and by Baldassare’s asser­tion, reported in Michelangelo’s letter of 1496, that Lorenzo had ‘spoken badly’ of him. Riario’s reim­bur­se­ment, moreover, of Michelangelo’s expenses for his journey from Florence suggests that he had, in corre­spon­dence with Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco, offered to host and sponsor the artist.⁵⁷ That Riario had invited Michel­an­gelo to Rome is also made clear by the fact that the artist went to see the Cardinal as his first order of busi­ness, prio­ri­ti­sing Riario’s assign­ment on Saturday and Sunday over the pres­sing matter of the Slee­ping Cupid. Michel­an­gelo met Riario and agreed to a commis­sion for a new statue, leaving little doubt that Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco had set the stage for this commis­sion. The new, custom-made statue would compen­sate for the unfort­u­nate episode of the Cupid by taking full advan­tage of Michelangelo’s powers of inven­tion, chal­len­ging him to equal the stan­dards of the antique, and allo­wing him to earn an appro­priate fee. A prior proposal from Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco for a commis­sion to restore Michelangelo’s honour would help to explain why the artist wrote to Lorenzo about the Bacchus as if it were a matter that involved de’ Medici personally.

Michelangelo’s moti­va­tion, as was suggested, can be explained by his concern for his repu­ta­tion. He had appar­ently considered his trip to Rome to be of such imme­diate importance that he had missed the feast of San Giovanni in Florence on 24 June.⁵⁸ Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s sense of urgency, on the other hand, is more diffi­cult to explain. Why would Lorenzo have been perso­nally invested in protec­ting Riario from Baldassare’s ruse, and in secu­ring a place for Michel­an­gelo in Riario’s house­hold? What was his moti­va­tion for condem­ning Bald­as­sare and provi­ding Michel­an­gelo with his personal backing, as well as the funds needed to buy the Slee­ping Cupid ?

Argu­ably, not only Lorenzo’s personal friend­ship with Michel­an­gelo, but also a broader poli­tical stra­tegy was at play. In the summer of 1496, the Riario-Sforza faction in Rome was

excee­dingly important for Lorenzo. As was discussed, his second cousin Lorenzo ‘il Magni­fico’ had, after Girolamo Riario’s assas­si­na­tion, lent his support to the continued rule of the Riario-Sforza figlioli in the Romagna. After the French inva­sion of Italy in 1494 had laid bare the stra­tegic importance of Imola and Forlì, Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco continued and expanded the Magnifico’s stra­tegy. Conside­ring the poli­tical context, Lorenzo’s moti­va­tion in sending Michel­an­gelo to Cardinal Riario in the summer of 1496 was not only, as Wind wrote, to provide ‘favourable condi­tions for his genius’ away from Savonarola’s Florence.⁵⁹ It was also to streng­then a recent alli­ance between his brother Giovanni de’ Medici and Cate­rina Sforza, widow of Girolamo Riario. The Popolani had begun to curry favour with Cate­rina at least as early as 1495, when Giovanni and Lorenzo took out a loan from Sforza, assisted her in recrui­ting troops, and purchased grain from her after a dire harvest in Tuscany. By the spring of 1496, Giovanni de’ Medici was present at Caterina’s court as Floren­tine ambassador,⁶⁰ and letters from October of that year report on rumours that Cate­rina and Giovanni had wed. By November 1496, the couple had indeed secretly married.⁶¹ In 1497, Lorenzo pursued a union with the Riario further, visi­ting Imola in the autumn in an unsuc­cessful bid to marry one of his daugh­ters to Otta­viano, first-born son and heir of Count Girolamo.⁶²

In light of these deve­lo­p­ments, the good­will of Cardinal Riario and of the Sforza was crucial for the Popolani in the summer of 1496. While the Forli­vesi admired Giovanni de’ Medici as a ‘ricco signore de alcun castello’, Duke Ludo­vico Sforza, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza’s brother, was said to have been less impressed with this ‘citta­dino mercante’.⁶³ The need for an alli­ance with Raffaele Riario was acute given the Cardinal’s recent oppo­si­tion, in 1494, to Caterina’s marriage to Giacomo Feo, Castellan of the fort­ress of Raval­dino.⁶⁴ Through his alli­ance with Cate­rina, Feo became an immensely powerful figure in Forlì, whose status was cele­brated in the fres­coes of the Feo Chapel at San Biagio painted by Melozzo da Forlì and Marco Palmez­zano (Fig. 129).⁶⁵ Wary of the threats that Feo posed to the inhe­ri­tance of his young cousins, Riario joined a local group of nobles resentful of Feo’s autho­rity. A plot to assas­si­nate Feo took shape, condoned by the Cardinal and possibly also by Caterina’s son Otta­viano, resul­ting in Feo’s murder in August 1495.⁶⁶ Cate­rina Sforza took swift and brutal revenge for the deed, and her rela­tions with Cardinal Riario in this period were hostile, since she blamed Riario and his asso­ciate, Giovanni Battista Brocchi, for abet­ting Feo’s assas­sins and for conspi­ring to depose her.⁶⁷

The stakes of a Medici alli­ance with Cate­rina Sforza were high, and the rewards for the Popolani branch of the Medici family were signi­fi­cant: even­tually, the marriage between Giovanni de’ Medici and Sforza would produce a son, Giovanni ‘delle Bande Nere’, father of the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I. The poli­tical importance of the moment when Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco de’ Medici inter­vened in the matter of the Cupid cannot be unde­re­sti­mated. In this light, Lorenzo’s moti­va­tions for helping to prevent Bald­as­sare from tricking Riario become clearer. Lorenzo’s reso­lu­tion in the matter of the Cupid, and the assis­tance he offered to Riario, speak to a stra­tegy of Medici ‘cultural diplo­macy’.⁶⁸ The case of the Cupid, and

Michelangelo’s transfer to Riario’s house­hold, recall other instances in which the family ‘gifted’ artists or works of art to heal poli­tical wounds or firm up new coali­tions. Later, in 1501, Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco would rely on Michel­an­gelo at another deli­cate moment, when de’ Medici was one of the Floren­tine ambassa­dors who attempted to appease the Maré­chal de Gié Pierre de Rohan by offe­ring him Michelangelo’s copy of Donatello’s David.⁶⁹ Argu­ably, rather than risk embar­rass­ment to Michel­an­gelo, himself, and Riario, Lorenzo acted quickly to resolve the matter of the Cupid by informing Riario that Michel­an­gelo was its author and, at the same time, easing Michelangelo’s entry into the Cardinal’s household.

Bald­as­sare del Milanese’s Stra­tegy and the Date of the Slee­ping Cupid

These conside­ra­tions beg the ques­tion of why Bald­as­sare targeted Riario and Sforza with his ruse. Was it a coin­ci­dence that the first custo­mers Bald­as­sare approa­ched in the summer of 1496 were two men of great poli­tical importance for Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco? Or did Bald­as­sare subvert a plan hatched in Florence by Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco? Could Lorenzo

fig. 129 Melozzo da Forlì and Marco Palmez­zano, Stories from the Life of St. James: The Miracle of the Birds, Cappella Feo, Forli, San Biagio (photo­graph taken before the chapel’s destruc­tion in 1944). 1493–1495. Photo © Biblio­theca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunst­ge­schichte, Rome.

have asked Bald­as­sare to present Michelangelo’s Cupid to Riario and Sforza, invi­ting them to use Michelangelo’s services as a ‘gift’ from the Popolani? Perhaps Bald­as­sare was acting as Lorenzo’s agent, and the tempt­a­tion to sell the Cupid as an anti­quity was too great for him to resist, setting in motion his conflict with Michel­an­gelo. This scenario would help to justify Condivi’s descrip­tion of Bald­as­sare as a disho­nest agent who defrauded Lorenzo and Michel­an­gelo when he thwarted their plans.

In the end, however, Michelangelo’s letter of 1496 excludes such a possi­bi­lity. State­ments passed on in the letter reveal that Bald­as­sare was acting on his own: he considered the Cupid to be ‘his’ to do with as he wished, and he had obtained it not from Lorenzo or Michel­an­gelo, but from an unnamed third party. Bald­as­sare must have had his own reasons for approa­ching these two patrons. Riario and Sforza were the two most powerful cardi­nals in Rome at the time and, even if Sforza was not known as a patron of art or coll­ector of anti­qui­ties, he was wealthy and well-connected.⁷⁰ When he approa­ched Sforza’s house­hold, Bald­as­sare was able to offer the Cupid not only to the Cardinal himself, but also to Tutta­villa, an agent of the Duke of Milan, and to Pico della Miran­dola, an agent of Isabella d’Este.

In deci­ding to sell Michelangelo’s Cupid as an anti­quity in Rome, Bald­as­sare banked on the unique popu­la­rity of this parti­cular subject. In Rome in 1496, aware­ness of and fasci­na­tion for antique examples of this type reached a fever pitch because of recent nego­tia­tions over one specific object: the Bonatto Slee­ping Cupid. In the spring of 1496, an exqui­site antique Slee­ping Cupid, thought to be by the hand of Praxi­teles, was offered for sale by the heirs of Guido Bonatto, a nobleman of Mantuan origins. Fran­cesco II Gonzaga very much hoped to win the figure, yet nego­tia­tions over the statue’s price and its export to Mantua proved diffi­cult to resolve. On 30 May 1496, a letter to Gonzaga from one of his agents in Rome, Flor­a­monte Brognolo, reported that nego­tia­tions had stalled. Before offe­ring the object to the Gonzaga, the Bonatto must wait for confir­ma­tion that the ‘Cardinal of Genoa’—Paolo Campofregoso—did not wish to purchase the statue. And he had heard from the proto­no­tary Ludo­vico Agnelli that Bonatto’s widow wished to sell the Cupid toge­ther with a diamond worth around 1200 ducats.⁷¹ Attempts to sell the Cupid continued for years until Gonzaga’s wife, Isabella d’Este, was at last able to acquire it in 1505. Isabella d’Este considered it a master­piece and, to the delight of her guests, juxta­posed the Bonatto Slee­ping Cupid by ‘Praxi­teles’ next to her modern Slee­ping Cupid by Michel­an­gelo.⁷²

This matter of the Bonatto Cupid is rele­vant for Bald­as­sare del Milanese’s ruse, espe­ci­ally conside­ring Riario’s role as a close ally of the Gonzaga. Over the course of decades, Riario assisted the Gonzaga in sourcing and exporting ancient objects from Rome, taking advan­tage of his role as Came­ra­rius.⁷³ Along­side Riario himself, another important inter­me­diary was the Mantuan ‘proto­no­tario’ and chierico of the Camera Apos­to­lica, Ludo­vico Agnelli.⁷⁴ Agnelli was one of the Mantuan cour­tiers who moved directly from the house­hold of Cardinal Gonzaga into the service of Cardinal Riario.⁷⁵ Agnelli also continued to serve as an advo­cate for Gonzaga inte­rests in Rome and as an agent who could acquire anti­qui­ties and other diffi­cult-to-find objects for them.⁷⁶ It seems no coin­ci­dence, then, that in the summer of 1496, at a time when an impasse prevented Fran­cesco II Gonzaga from procu­ring the prized antique Bonatto Cupid, Bald­as­sare approa­ched Riario with a substi­tute ‘antique’ Slee­ping Cupid. Bald­as­sare likely held out hope that Riario would purchase the Cupid himself, or that the object would be sold in Riario’s house­hold, either to Agnelli or another of the Cardinal’s Mantuan cont­acts.⁷⁷

If neither Lorenzo nor Michel­an­gelo gave Bald­as­sare the Cupid, how did the statue fall into Baldassare’s hands? Accor­ding to Condivi, Michel­an­gelo carved both the San Giovan­nino and the Cupid during his stay in Florence in 1495–1496, after his return from Bologna. The time he spent in Florence was brief, perhaps less than six months, and it is diffi­cult to explain how the Slee­ping Cupid could have left Michelangelo’s control and reached the merchant-banker Bald­as­sare del Mila­nese during this period, espe­ci­ally if the sculp­ture was made for Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco. Perhaps the Slee­ping Cupid was carved not in 1495–1496, but earlier, in Lorenzo ‘il Magni­fico’ de’ Medici’s sculp­ture garden at San Marco. Hypo­the­ti­cally, Michel­an­gelo might have created the Cupid in the garden in compe­ti­tion with Lorenzo de’ Medici’s antique Slee­ping Cupid. Michelangelo’s Cupid could then have entered the art market at the time of the family’s exile in 1494. The popu­lace widely looted Medici proper­ties after their expul­sion from Florence, and many of the Medici’s remai­ning artworks were confis­cated by the Signoria, or were put on sale, via agents or at auction.⁷⁸ The Slee­ping Cupid could easily have ended up with a dealer or merchant in this manner. After Michelangelo’s Cupid left the circle of the artist’s friends and supporters, it could have entered the free market where it could be decep­tively sold.

* * *

The episode of the Slee­ping Cupid unfolded amidst the rising popu­la­rity of coll­ec­ting and the incre­asing use of antiquities—especially smaller-scale objects that could be easily transported—in the banking system. It is no coin­ci­dence, then, that a number of promi­nent merchant-bankers such as the Medici, Ciam­po­lini, Galli, and Agos­tino Chigi became important coll­ec­tors and art patrons at a time when the roles of art dealer, anti­qua­rian, coll­ector, and merchant-banker over­lapped.⁷⁹ The circu­la­tion of falsi­fied antiquities—such as ‘fake’ coins or carved gemstones—was not uncommon in a system suscep­tible to forge­ries.⁸⁰ Michel­an­gelo spent his forma­tive years in a merchant-banking envi­ron­ment; during his trai­ning at the Medici sculp­ture garden at San Marco, he came to specia­lise in a type of artwork which appealed in this milieu with its explo­ra­tion of the boun­da­ries between antique and modern. Sculp­tures that seemed on a par with the excel­lence of anti­qui­ties delighted the Medici and their agents, who were tasked with sourcing valuable objects and asses­sing their authen­ti­city. At the same time, Michel­an­gelo was eager to make a name for himself and to insist upon the value of his own, modern crea­tions within this economy. In 1496, the Slee­ping Cupid became caught between the artist’s ambi­tion to prove his merits as a sculptor and a dealer’s hope to profit by selling a modern sculp­ture for the price of an anti­quity. A close reading of letters written by Michel­an­gelo and by Antonio Maria Pico della Miran­dola in 1496 has shown that the figure was not, as has often been asserted, passed offas an anti­quity by Michel­an­gelo or Lorenzo di Pier­fran­cesco. Once the Slee­ping Cupid left his network of allies and was put up for sale as antique, Michelangelo—with the stead­fast support of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco—set out to restore his honour by clai­ming the sculp­ture as his own. While the roles and moti­va­tions of the multiple prot­ago­nists in these events are complex, the over­ar­ching goal of an alli­ance between the Popolani in Florence and the Riario-Sforza in Rome played a signi­fi­cant role in Michelangelo’s move to the house­hold of Riario. At a turning point in Michelangelo’s career, Riario rallied behind the artist by offe­ring him a commis­sion for the Bacchus, allo­wing Michel­an­gelo to prove his talents and to assert empha­ti­cally the value of modern sculpture.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.