3

1969

LA NUOVA ITALIA EDITRICE/FIRENZE

Storia dellarte 3
1969
 Storia
dell'arte
diretta da Giulio Carlo Argan
redatta da Maurizio Calvesi, Oreste Ferrari, Luigi Salerno

INDICE 257 Esodo autorizzato

260 Creighton Gilbert, The Drawings now associateti with Masaccio's
Sagra
279 Herwarth R"cittgen, Giuseppe Cesaris Fresken in der Loggia Orsini
296 Rosario Assunto, Un filosofo nelle capitali d'Europa
338 Giuliana Zandri, Un probabile dipinto murale del Caravaggio per il
Cardinale Del Monte

344 Struttura e architettura (Luigi Russo)

345 Teoria e storia dell'architettura (Marcello Fagiolo Dell'Arco)
351 Rinascimento. Fonti, monografie (Antonio Pinelli, Paolo Venturoli)
353 Seicento: mostre monografiche (Maurizio Fagiolo Dell'Arco)
355 Architettura del Seicento a Roma (Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco)
356 Pittura del Seicento a Roma (Maurizio Fagiolo Dell'Arco)
359 Scultura del Seicento a Roma (Maurizio Fagiolo Dell'Arco)
361 Ceramica (Oreste Ferrari)
362 Centri, monumenti, raccolte (Maurizio Fagiolo Dell'Arco, Marcello
Fagiolo Dell'Arco, Paolo Venturoli)
3 / 1969
luglio-settembre
Responsabile: Maurizio Calvesi
Segretario di redazione: Oreste Ferravi
Progetto grafico: Paolo Lecci
Redazione: La Nuova Italia Viale Carso 46 Roma.
Amministrazione: La Nuova Italia Piazza Indipendenza 29 Firenze
Autorizzazione del Tribunale di Firenze N. 2017 del 16/6/1969.
Abbonamento anno: Lire 6500. Estero: Lire 7000.
Un fascicolo ordinario di pp. 96 di testo e pp. 48 di illustrazioni Lire 1800.
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Spedizione in abbonamento postale Gruppo IV.
L'abbonamento decorre da gennaio. Ogni cambiamento di indirizzo dovrà essere segnalato alla
Amministrazione della rivista allegando Ia fascetta dell'ultimo numero.
Stampato nella Tipografia Giuntina - Firenze
Un numero all'anno di Storia dell'arte è dedicato all'Annata storico-artistica che è specialmente
curata da G. C. Argan. Gli altri fascicoli sono particolare cura della redazione.
The Drawings now associateti
with Masaccio's Sagra
Creighton Gilbert
Five drawings, according to the findings of
current Masaccio scholarship, can be associat-
ed without question with his lost Sagra, the
fresco representing the consecration of S. Ma-
ria del Carmine. The position may be summar-
ized in a few quotations, e. g. from the most
distinguished author of a recent monograph :
« Si conoscono alcuni disegni di artisti del
cinquecento... che riproducono parziali gruppi
di personaggi della grande processione di cit-
tadini e di religiosi »; from the most recent
serious encyclopedia a virtual repetition of
those terms: « Si conoscono alcuni disegni del
cinquecento... »; from the most originai recent
essay, referring to one of the five: « Il foglio...
è una copia... di alcune parti della perduta Sa-
gra ». It is a measure of the firmness of this
position that in none of these or other recent
writings is there any presentation of the proofs
of this identification '. The present enquiry has
the purpose of testing the evidence for it,
and following whatever implications then
emerge.
These five drawings include: two drawings
showing a small group of men facing to our left,
the same group in both drawings; two other
drawings showing a large group of men facing
right, likewise the same group in both draw-
ings; and one last drawing showing both the
preceding groups on one sheet. Most of our
attention can be concentrated on this fifth draw-
ing, cince with slight exceptions it includes
all the elements seen on the other four. It is
an anonymous sneet of the late sixteenth century
in the Folkestone Museum [1]. The two draw-
ings of the small group facing left consist of
the famous one by the young Michelangelo in
the Albertina [5] and a less important one
in the Casa Buonarroti sometimes attributed to
Antonio Mini. The two drawings of the large
group facing right consist of a pen and wash
sketch by Andrea Boscoli in the Ufig7i [3] and
' The anonymity of these statements is designed to suggest that, whether they are right or wrong, the credit or blame
attaches not to the particular writers but to art historíans in generai. The sources are: U. Procacci, Tutta la pittura di
Masaccio, 1952, pp. 11, 35; U. Baidini, in EncUA, 1958, s. v.; M. Chiarini, Una citazione della ' Sagra ' di Masaccio nel
Ghirlandaio, Paragone, 1962. no. 149, p. 55.
a less important anonymous drawing in a priv-
ate collection. The first pair is referred to in
what follows as the « Michelangelo type » and
the second pair as the « Boscoli type » as a
method least likely to permit confusion bet-
ween the small group facing left and the large
group facing right. Ali five drawings are
reproduced on one page in the monograph
by Berti (Masaccio, English edition, 1967,
[43-47]).
The Masaccio scholarship always alludes to a
sixth drawing, which in the past was identified
as a copy of the Sagra, and should thus be
considered briefly before we become involved
in the main topic. It was mentioned by Lanzi
in his first edition (Storia, 1796 ed., I, p. 53)
and rediscovered in 1900 by F. Knudtzon
(reported in his rare monograph in Danish, En
brochure om Masaccio). It was then discuss-
ed and rejected, particularly by Fiocco in one
of the landmark studies for our problem (La
Sagra di Masaccio, in Rivista Storica Carmeli-
tana, 1929, 103-106). It was actively support-
ed by Salmi and reproduced in his mono-
graph of 1932, but the second edition of 1948,
while retaining the support, removes the re-
production, and this seems symbolic of its stili
more negative treatment in recent study, reject-
ed or passed over in the monographs of Stein-
bart, Procacci and Berti. It represents the plac-
ing of a miter on the head (or perhaps the
lifting of a miter from the head) of a centrai
enthroned figure. Salmi and Fiocco discussed
whether or not such a figure with a miter
could be a Pope, followed by Berti, but it
seems to me more important to notice that
eight other bishops are present, as Berti has
also remarked. At the actual consecration of
the Carmine in 1422 only three Bishops took
part, and it is always agreed that Masaccio's
fresco in the same precincts painted before
1428 was authentic. It would seem to me
rather to represent probably the enthronement
of a new bishop and its style seems to be
between Pesellino and Gozzoli. Its importante
for us is its proof that in Lanzi's time a reli-
able public tradition about the appearance of
the Sagra no longer existed.
Along with the five drawings, one other set
of sources for our knowledge of the Sagra is
always quoted. These are the descriptions of
fifteenth and sixteenth century observers, print-
ed herewith in full, including the comments of
praise, but excluding the explanations of the
location of the fresco. They have been reprint-
ed before, but it seems typical that the latest
reprinting in an article of 1932 coincides with
the first book (Salmi, Masaccio, 1932) to pres-
ent one of the five drawings to a wide circle of
readers. Hence the descriptions, which assert
the Sagra to be their theme, have never been
inspected side by side with the drawings, which
we regard as copied from it. In fact our accep-
tance of the drawings can only be based on
their similarity to the descriptions, as seems
well understood though rarely stated. It will
now be our concern to test this similarity.
1. Manetti, 1494 97 (for the date see P.
- crete descriptions from Vasari's rather than
Murray, Burl M. 1957, p. 335): « di verde-
terra una storia maravigliosa d'artificio a ogni
intendente dove si rappresenta la piaza del
Carmino con molte fighure ».
2. Albertini, 1510: « per mano di Tho. Ma-
sacci ».
3. ' Libro di Antonio Billi ca. 1516-30:
« una processione con grande artificio ».
4. Codice Magliabecchiano, ca. 1537-42: « una
processione ».
5. Vasari, 1550: « di verde terra dipinse, di
chiaro, et scuro... tutta la sagra come ella fu.
Et vi ritrasse infinito numero di cittadini in
mantello, e ín cappuccio, che vanno dietro a la
processione; fra i quali fece Filippo di Ser
Brunellesco in zoccoli, con Donato scultore, et
altri suoi amici domestici ».
6. Vasari, 1568, as above up to zoccoli, and
then: « Donatello, Masolino da Panicale, stato
suo maestro, Antonio Brancacci, che gli fece
far la cappella, Niccolo da Uzzano, Giovanni 261
di Bicci de' Medici, Bartolomeo Valori... Ri-
trassevi similmente Lorenzo Ridolfi, che in que'
tempi era ambasciatore della repubblica fioren-
tina a Venezia. Et non solo vi ritrasse i gen-
tilhomini sopradetti di naturale, ma anco la
porta del convento, et il portinaio con le chiavi
in mano.
Questa opera veramente ha in se molta per-
fezione, havendo Masaccio saputo mettere tanto
bene in sul piano di quella piazza, a cinque et
sei per fila l'ordinanza di quelle genti che van-
no diminuendo e con proporzione e giudizio,
secondo la veduta dell'occhio che è proprio
una meraviglia: et massimamente vi si cono-
sce, come se fossero vivi, la discrezione che
egli ebbe in far quegl'huomini non tutti di
una misura, ma con una certa osservanza, che
distingue quelli che son piccoli et grossi dai
grandi et sottili: et tutti posano i piedi in sur
un piano, scortando in fila tanto bene, che non
fanno altrimenti i naturali ».
Two more published descriptions, by Borghini
and Bocchi, were written before the fresco was
destroyed in 1598-1600, but derive their con-
from observation.
One further record, less well known, is a lost
drawing reported by two nineteenth century
observers, the Carmelite Padre Mattei in his
Ragionamenti intorno al Carmine, (1869, p.
15) and Cavalcaselle in the Italian edition only
of his History of Italian painting (1883, II, p.
315). In slightly different ways they report
that it was inscribed: « di mano d'Annibale
Mancini da Masaccio nel chiostro del Carmine
hoggi mandato a terra (or hoggidi gettato a ter-
ra) o coperto dall'intonaco ». We incline to
accept that this claim was justified, yet also to
suppose that it was not written in dose relation
to the destruction, because of its careful hesit-
ation between destruction and whitewashing,
and also because of the attribution to a painter
so obscure that he is not known to Thieme-
Becker. (This Mancini was apparently at work
ca. 1600)'. The drawing, which was in pen

This simple iconography was long ago proposed by P. N. Ferri in a note on drawings attributed to Masaccio, in Miscel-
lanea d'Arte, 1903, p. 181. He was unaware of the connection suggested by Lanzi and Knudtzon with the Sagra, which
was an advantage. Conversdy later writers have been unaware of him, which was not.
The only certain fact about Mancini was noticed in the dictionary of artists of the admirable Ticozzi (1818) and thence
by Nagler and some modem scholars: Marino published a poem about a painting by him in his Galleria, 1620. A fiale
more may be speculated about. Marino seems not to celebrate the youngest artists; aside from old masters his favorite is
Cambiaso, and others appearing most often are Palma Giovane, Bernardo Castello, the Cavalier d'Arpino, Baglione and
Guido Reni; the youngest I have noted is Lanfranco (born 1580). Among Florentines he includes Santi di Tito, Boscoli,
Poccetti, Passignano, and Cristofano Allori. A fair likelihood that Mancini was a Fiorentine is implied by the inscription,
which assumes that the « chiostro del Carmine » refers to Florence, and would perhaps mention an unknown painter's
origin if it were foreign. Colnaghi, whose Dictionary of Fiorentine Painters from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth
Centuries, 1928, p. 19, is very thorough in listing all who joined artists' organizations, mentions just one Annibale who
262 and bister, represented three figures of whom
one wore zoccoli. We recali that one of the
figures in the Sagra is described in the same
unusual way by Vasari, which further attracts
us to the belief that the drawing really did
represent part of the Sagra, as the inscription
claimed. Since this man in zoccoli was Bru-
nelleschi, according to Vasari, the drawing may
well have had the typical purpose for its date
of recording the interesting portraits. This
« Brunelleschi » figure in the drawing, Cavai-
caselle mentions, was in profile and was the
furthest to our left of the three figures on the
sheet. He telis us something else about the
drawing which no one has noticed, obviously
because he says it while incorrectly identifying
as the Sagra the then recently recovered fresco
in this cloister of the Carmine (which today
we generally associate with Fra Filippo Lippi).
While trying the reconstruct the whole Sagra
composition by connecting the drawing with
this fragmentary fresco, he proposes that a
standing figure in the fresco at the edge of a
destroyed section, who is turning to our left,
may be « in atto di conversare coi tre » men
in the drawing. This means obviously that the
three in the drawing were all turning toward
our right 4. Thus the Brunelleschi figure, the
furthest to our left of the three, was at the
back of the group, which puts him in the
same pattern as the Brunelleschi figure identifi-
ed by Meller in Masaccio's Peter Enthroned:
also at the back of a group of three spectators
in pure profile, though facing our left 5.
We should take note that this series of des-
criptions reflects the style changes of their own
dates. The piazza, emphasized in 1494-97 when
Perugino was the most fashionable painter in
Florence, has disappeared in Vasari's accounts,
which resembie one of his own frescoes filled
with historic portraits, such as Leo X entering
Florence. This concern is greater in his second
edition and grew further in writings after the
destruction. All this warns us to discount the
varying emphases in the descriptions, particul-
arly the slight notice given to the piazza by
Vasari, whose description of course is the most
attractive.
When we now start to check the descriptions
detail after detail with our five drawings, we
find that the Manetti text does not permit such
a comparison. The omission of the piazza from
the drawings is perhaps natural, since most of
them are dose to Vasari's time.
Next Billi and the Anonimo label the Sagra
as « una processione ». This fits the Boscoli
drawing very well. But when we carry its
group of figures further toward the right, as
we can in the minor related drawing and in the
Folkestone drawing, the procession seems to
collapse. It is odd that dose to its head, near
the míddle of the fresco, where we should ex-
pect the officiating Bishops to be the focus of
interest to the spectators, who would be cho-
reographed by the artist to assist his Brama, ins-
tead they turn around toward their approach-
ing companions. Our feeling that the proces-
sion ought to be more orthodox may be fur-
ther encouraged slightly by Vasari's descriptive
phrase: « vanno dietro alla processione ». But
these spectators are distracted, as if they had
come to the ceremony but found it would not
begin for a while yet, and so they scatter a
link. That is evidently not the case with the
Sagra, which showed the event « come ella
fu », presumably with the Bishop sprinkling
holy water or knocking at the door. Stili this
disparity should not in itself be pressed too far;
we may say that these are processional figures
if we allow some looseness in our terms.
Next the details mentioned only by Vasari,
and first those that he mentions in 1550, begin
with the costumes. « Mantello e cappuccio »
match the drawings of the Boscoli type very
well, but there are no zoccoli. Nor is there
any figure who matches what we know to have
been Vasari's idea of what Donatello looked
like °. He provided him with a full beard, but
in the drawings the two or three beards shown
are all slight ones.

might be the same, Annibale d'Antonio who joined the Accademia del Disegno ín 1564. All these consistent possibilities
would indicate that he saw the Sagra before it was destroyed.
If as seems probable this man in zoccoli facing right was really the Brunelleschi figure, then Jeno Lanyi's very
different theory of the Sagra is disproved (Bur1M, 1944, p. 87-95). He proposed to find remnants of it in the Louvre
Five-Part Portrait of Giotto, Donatello, Uccello, Manetti and Brunelleschi, three of the people having had their names
changed. But this figure of Brunelleschi is in profile to our left, and thus is ruled out. Lanyi's hypothesis in generai has
been respected for many acute observations but not adopted.
P. Meller, in Acropoli, 1960-61, p. 304-306.
Vasari's idea of Donatello's appearance is indicated by the woodcut portrait of his Vita, which thus must have a generai
likeness to the figure in the Sagra. The woodcut has been persuasively related by Meller (p. 300-301) to a head in the
Brancacci Chapel. It had previously been related to a different one, and a third has now been suggested by Berti (note
61), but this seems less likely since no reason is proffered why Donatello should appear with a pure white beard at
forte-two.
Vasari's additions of 1568 account for most
of the details we know. We cannot of course
decide whether the five citizens he mentions ap-
pear in the drawings or not, but we are better
off with the porter. The drawings show no
person with keys in his hand. There is one
figure in Michelangelo's drawing with keys at
his belt, but Berenson's proposal to cali him
the porter has never been endorsed. It is re-
futed by a comparison with the same figure as
he appears in two of our other drawings (Casa
Buonarroti and Folkestone), which indicates
that the keys did not appear in the originai,
but are a free invention by Michelangelo. Sal-
mi has pointed out that he was free in this
way in his whole drawing.
Salmi has also hinted at another excellent point
about the porter, when he refers to him stand-
ing in the door. We can confirm this by notic-
ing how Vasari brings the porter into his ac-
count; he does not contrast the porter with
the gentlemen, as a hasty reading would sug-
gest. He contrasts the gentlemen as a group
with the door and the porter as a group: « non
solo i gentilhuomini, ma anco la porta, et il
portinaio ». Hence door and porter are a unit.
This idea is stili more attrattive because it is
the sort of thing Masaccio did. He liked the
expressive effect of figures framed as in doors,
not only in the Expulsion, but Peter paying his
tax, the three cripples healed by the shadow
each with his own door (as Berti has noted),
King Theophilus, Peter Enthroned. With this
frame he labels the person in his social drama
and places him geometrically, a potent blend in
Masaccio. All this suggests that figures and
buildings are closer to each other in the Sagra
than we had guessed, and like many of Masac-
cio's other works. In any case it emphasizes
that the porter is not seen in the drawings.
Vasari's second paragraph contains his most
specific visual comments. The first observation,
that the figures are « a cinque et sei per fila »
seems never to have been compared with the
drawings (except in 1896, as we shall see). The
Folkestone drawing, which has the longest
rows, shows, starting from our left, five, four, 263
and five. At the upper left there are two, then
two again, at the upper right five, then one.
There could not be any more; the figures are
tightly packed, and the furthest ones are hardly
visible, just a hat and a part of a face. There
is no row of six. This discrepancy cannot easily
be solved (as we may with the porter and the
zoccoli) by supposing that the draftsman has
not shown that part of the fresco. We have
twenty-two spectators bere, counting only the
groups in the Folkestone drawing that recur in
the other drawings; with the third group, at
the upper right, there are twenty-eight. one
cannot imagine somewhere else a row of six
more spectators, before we come to the main
actors. We have to say that there is a mistake
by Vasari or a change in the five drawings, yet
they are not dependent on each other, but
each separately on the originai'.
Vasari's next specific observation is that the
people « vanno diminuendo con proporzione e
giudizio secondo la veduta dell'occhio ». Since
they stand tightly together, they shouid appear
as they recede with heads slightly lower and feet
slightly higher, as indeed they do with great
elegance in Masaccio's Adoration of the Magi
predella panel in Berlin. But most of the fi-
gures in the drawings do not do this. A cons-
picuous violation is in the most clearly shown
figure, the third from the left in Folkestone
and Boscoli. His head and feet are both higher
than his neighbours' who seem to have the same
physique, but are in front of him. In the over-
lapping figures second and third from the right
in Folkestone, the feet are approximately on
the same piane although one of the figures is
on a smaller scale and clearly is supposed to
be far back. But these special cases are less
notable than the obvious fact that the drafts-
man is not concerning himself with this kind
of question, which in Vasari's description is
emphasized. We may thus accept the descrip-
tion but with the same sense of looseness and
inaccuracy as before.
Then Vasari tells us that the spectators vary in

7All students take for granted the independent derivation of each drawing from the originai, and this can be systema-
tically confirmed. The latest drawing in Folkestone, accepted as from the end af the sixteenth century, cannot be taken
from any of the other four since it combines the elements of both earlier types of drawings; nor can it be a biend
taken from both of them, since its third and Iast group of figures as we shall see later also comes out of the same
originai source The Boscoli drawing, ca. oso, cannot derive from the earlier drawing of the same group of men, since
it includes more figures; these extra ones are also present in Folkestone, which we have seen is independent of Boscoli,
and thus must have been in the source rather than an invention of Boscoli's. The Iater drawing of the Michelangelo
group of men shares some qualities with these men seen in Folkestone, such as the types of faces, which thus were in
the originai (since again Folkestone does not copy from this drawing); these qualities are quite different in the earlier
and evidently lesa faithful Michelangelo drawing, so that the later drawing does not derive from it. It may indeed be
that these five drawings derive from other lost ones, not directly from the originai, but this does not seem to make any
differente in the conclusion that five independent copies derive separately from the originai, which, therefore, we may
suppose to have shown the qualities shared by all the versions.
264 physical type: « non tutti di una misura... di-
stingue quelli che son piccoli e grossi dai grandi
e sottili ». To test how well this statement
fits the drawings we must look at all of them,
since they differ greatly among themselves in
this respect (unlike all those observed so far).
The Folkestone and Boscoli figures are all tall
and slender in type, so that the drawings have
often been related in style with a Fontormo
revival in their own period, quite rightly. In
the other one of the Boscoli type they are all
short and solid. Michelangelo's are all large
men, but those in the other drawing of the
Michelangelo type are all stocky. Nothing here
tells us which is faithful (one tends to favor
the two « minor » drawíngs, which seern to
treat their diverse groups similarly) but presum-
ably they are faithful where they all agree, i.e.
in presenting all the figures as of only one
type, just the opposite of what Vasari says!
Berti (who almost alone has kept Vasari's re-
port in mind while looking at the drawings)
does not, therefore, seem justified in making
the figures as various as Vasari says by compar-
ing one of Boscoli's with one of Michelangelo's;
their variety decreases when one looks at the
two same figures both treated by the Folke-
stone draftsman. One head, fourth from the
left at Folkestone, really is different, and Berti
calls him a « short man » (as had, we shall see,
one earlier observer) But one very different
figure among a dozen similar ones cannot be
what Vasari saw (« distingue i piccoli e grossi
dai grandi e sottili »). He is so deariy an ex-
ception, and so much smaller than everybody
else, that a special explanation seems needed.
The logical one seems to be that this is a boy
accompanying his father, dressed up like the
adults, a type often seen in the processione and
crowds of fifteenth century Fiorentine paint-
ing. This view is confirmed by the Boscoli
drawing which shows that his facial expression,
clear only in the originai, is excited, not res-
trained like all the resi. But even if this is a
short man, there is not one « piccolo et grosso »
in any of our five variant drawings g. Again
either Vasari was mistaken or all our draw-
ings are loose copies.
The final remark about all the feet on one level
ín perspective is approximately confirmed, with
the exceptions already noticed.
The exception is a sixth drawing, in the Procacci collection in Florence, which runs trae to form in that all its figures
are short and thick. Among them is our special short figure, who naturally, being thick, here does not appear as a boy.
But Iater we shall find that unlike all the other five drawings this one is a false record of the originai in one respect,
and that it may well be derived from one of the other five, so that its evidente is not of value. A seventh drawing in
the Alfred Scharf collection is not known to me (mentioned by Berti, note 216).
Finaily we should compare our five drawings
with what we know of the lost one by Anni-
bale Mancini, considering it probable that it
was a reliable document. Salmi (followed by
Berti) suggested that the three figures there
might be the same as those that Michelangelo
drew, adding that if so it would « corrobore-
rebbe la validità della identificazione del sog-
getto ». But we have seen that the Mancini
figures faced to our right, so that they are not
the same. None of the five drawings, with
much variety in costume, shows anyone in zoc-
coli, so that no confirmation on this order is
to be had.
From these tests we find that the relationships
between descriptions and drawings, including
all elements of the description except the names
of the five citiziens which are impossible to
judge, can be classified as of four kinds:
(1) some aspects of the descriptions are absent
in the drawings, but may have appeared in an-
other part of the fresco: the piazza; Brunel-
leschi in his zoccoli; his two cornpanions drawn
by Mancini; the porter with his keys (whether
or not in the doorway).
(2) some aspects of the descriptions may be
paralleled in the drawings loosely, though not
if observed precisely: the decreasing size of
the receding figures; the feet allon one piane;
the arrangement of the figures in a procession.
(3) some aspects of the descriptions contra-
dict the drawings: rows of six and five figures;
the variety of types between short and fat and
tali and thin.
(4) the descriptions correspond to the drawings
in substantial part in the costumes of « man-
tello e cappuccio » which appear in the large
group of figures facing to the right.
This surprisingly weak correlation seems to
justify our enquiry. The drawings now seem
to be unfaithful copies, and indeed have been
so called in Procacci's careful study: « copie o
meglio interpretazioni, e spesso molto libere »
(pp. 11, 35). But this definition does not dis-
pose of a difficulty. It would be indeed normal
procedure to note some free copies, if we
began from the original. But here without any
originai, how is it determined in the first piace
that the drawings are in principle derived from
the Sagra? Some fixed point is needed to tie
them together. Our only fixed point so far is
the descriptions, from which they diverge so
much that they could be « free interpretations »
of some other originale As we have seen, the
modera literature does not concern itself with
noting the link, it merely takes the connection
as a postulate. We have to say that the idea
is far from being self-evident.
To be satisfied about it, we should evidently
survey the older literature for the moment
when the identification was first constructed,
where it might have been systematically sup-
ported. When we do this, the idea turns out
to be surprisingly recent for one so well accept-
ed. In the 1930's only one of the five draw-
ings, the Boscoli, is usually mentioned in the
books on Masaccio (Lindberg, Salmi, Pittalu-
dently by a slip of the pen since he credits 265
him in hís next paragraph (for rediscoveríng
the « Lanzi » drawing). In 1931 Lindberg and
in 1932 Salmiendorsed the idea, mentioning
Knudtzon, and this is now standard, e. g. For-
lani's catalogue of Boscoli drawings in 1959
offers Knudtzon's as the first name in her
bibliography of the drawing (stili without the
page reference). All this has to be emphasized
because Knudtzon had not in fact originated
this idea. He accepted it from Schmarsow, who
had just a few years earlier brought it forward
with a detailed analysis, a stili prior history
of the drawing,and even a reproduction, in hiS
large and well known, Masaccio-Studien (Vol.
2, 1896, pp. 52 53; second edition with the
-

ga), and in the 1920's not even that one ap-
pears in the monographs by Giglioli and So-
mare and the major book by Mesnil. Yet oddly
enough the identification has a prehistory
around 1900, in three studies ignored by the
Masaccio literature for the next thirty years
(the Boscoli drawing proposed twíce, in 1896
and 1900, and the Michelangelo drawing once
in 1903). After the Boscoli drawing was re-
accepted in the 1930's, four of the drawings
were systematically assembled in 1948 in Sal-
mi's second edition (the Folkestone drawing
was instantly grouped with them when dis-
covered in 1958). In 1948-49, sírnultaneously
with Salmi's assemblage of the set, three other
writers published studies calling the identificat-
ion doubtful, but all subsequent study has
omitted these even from bibliographical atten-
tion and treated the arrangement as settled.
The three earlier ídentifications around 1900
are so isolated that each has had to be recover-
ed separately. The Boscoli drawing was called
a copy of the Sagra in 1900 by F. E. Knudtzon,
but bis little book is so rare that today those
who cite it regularly omit any page reference,
presumably because they have not seen it. The
next writer to say the same thing was Fiocco
in 1929; he does not refer to Knudtzon, evi-
same material 1928). Knudtzon followed Sch-
marsow', but presumably the later writers who
followed Knudtzon used only the caption of
his reproduction, not reading his Danish text,
where Schmarsow is mentioned, while Schmar-
sow today is often cited today as rich in data
and ideas, but probably is unread in practice
because of being associated with the tag of a
false set of attributions
The re-introduction of the Boscoli drawing into
the discussion by Fiocco and Salmi did not
bring forward the justifications we are seeking
for its identification as a copy of the Sagra,
beyond its relationships with the descriptions.
Fiocco properly called it a procession and Salmi
briefly noted the « figure in file degradanti »,
the simple draperies, and the quattrocento cos-
tumes. Both added only an allusion to a « vec-
chia scritta » on the drawing connecting it with
Masaccio; Salmi reported that « vi è segnato il
nome ». But there is no writing on the draw-
ing and no reference to Masaccio on the mount;
the verso has been covered by another pasted
paper since before 1896, so that these writers
cannot have seen anything there ". What they
had in mind seems clarified by Schmarsow's
report on the earlier history of the drawing.
In contrast to bis own new attribution (to

9Knudtzon's book has eluded my search also. According to a bibliographical precis (Giglioli, in Bollettino del R. Istituto
di Archeologia e Storia dell'Arte, 1929, p. 65) it devotes much of its space to reporting Schmarsow's views on the Bran-
cacci Chapel. It thus seems safe to say that its views similar to his on the Boscoli drawing are derived and not inde-
pendently reached.
i° A vivid illustration of this tag is the phrase: « la celebre deviazione critica capeggiata dallo Schmarsow e intesa a rias-
sumere quasi tutto Masolino in un ipotetico primo tempo di Masaccio (R. Longhi, Presenza di Masaccio nel Trittico
della Neve, Paragone, 1952, no. 25, p. 10). The reference is glaringly untrue, since the same approach had been devcloped
earlier, by Cavalcaselle (whom Longhi mentions in the same sentente). Schmarsow merely follows the kad of Cavalca-
selle's « deviazione », only adding the related minor works that had emerged ín the interim.
" Forlani's allusion in her catalogue to the verso of this drawing (no. 4) is technically speaking an error, since it is
actually another sheet pasted on, obviously to reinforce the fragile paper with its many holes. The same pasted sheet
evidently was already in position before 1896, and the actual verso of the Boscoli therefore has not been inspected by any
modem observer. This date is deduced from two photographs mentioned by Schmarsow in 1896 (pp, 52-53), Philpot
556, which he reproduces, and Brogi 1681, which I reproduce bere, which through the holes appear to show the same
threadlines of the other sheet as at present.
266 Ghirlandaio copying the Sagra) it bore a current
official attribution to Masaccio, observable
where it was hung among the disegni esposti
of the Uffizi, on the Brogi photograph (so
labelled, he tells us, on the advice of Adolf
Bayersdorfer) and in the 1881 catalogue by
Ferri (Cornice 19, no. 76; by a slip Schmarsow
describes this as an attribution to Ghirlandaio).
Thus there was a cluster of late nineteenth
century labels and attributions of the draw-
ing to Masaccio — but not mentioning the
Sagra — and among these no doubt was the
« vecchia scritta » of Fiocco and Salmi '2. Quite
likely, as Dr. Forlani has kindly suggested,
it was on an older passepartout. It might go
back to the eighteenth century, the earliest
probable date I believe for a passepartout.
But it is universally agreed that attributions df
drawings to Masaccio in these centuries are
worthless; indeed Morelli (1891) and Ferri
(1903) were then devoting essays to eliminat-
ing them, and Salmi (p. 230) rightly notes
that they were mostly drawings of the late
fifteenth century. Hence this factor of the Fioc-
co-Salmi discussion, which seems to have play-
ed a definite role in establishing the present
viewpoint, must be excised.
However, we find that Schmarsow has also
discussed his reasons for calling this a copy
of the Sagra in much detail (naturally enough,
since he was the first to do so). They involve,
as apparently they must, a comparison with
the descriptions, and to our surprise he states
that the drawing fits « die Beschreibung ganz
genau ». He mentions the one short figure (in
the same vein as Berti has recently done), the
figures in « mantello e cappuccio », and the
suggestion of Masaccio's style in the « male-
rische breite, einfache » robes, a point later
elaborated by Lindberg. Then he describes
the drawing as a procession, and asserts that
the rows of « three, four and five » men fit
Vasari's « five and six ». This strange state-
ment contains, I think, a due to our whole
problem. Just as it was natural for Schmar-
sow to see the drawing as part of a procession,
it was natural for him to think that it would
continue in a similar way in other parts, and
easily expand to six figures. The later writers
who developed the identification resembled
Schmarsow in this way, in that they all work-
ed on the basir of the Boscoli drawing and
little else. Later, when the identification was
merely being repeated and no longer discuss-
ed, the other drawings appeared where, to be
sure, the « procession » was continued, yet
contrary to projections ceased to be a proces-
sion and never built up to a row of six
figures. Schmarsow's inference about the rest
of the scene seemed plausible, but turned out
not to be so. When the idea had become
established, the new evidence conflicting with
it was perhaps not noticed, and certainly not
brought up for discussion. Instead, the quant-
ity of added drawings in itself has seemed to
underline the importane of the composition
and evidently in that way the identification.
The isolated early identification of the Miche-
langelo drawing was made by Berenson ín 1903.
Before him it had been recognized as an early
Michelangelo and as a copy of an older master's
work, but as after Ghirlandaio. (notably by
Wickhoff) After Berenson, the older view
was restated by Karl Frey, but Berenson's was
otherwise adopted by all who wrote about the
drawing in the following decades. They were
all involved in the special literature of Miche-
langelo drawings, so that the idea remained
encapsulated there. It emerged into Masac-
cio studies in 1934, when Salmi, who had
missed it in his monograph, added it to the
French translation, an inconspicuous introduc-
tion. The second drawing of the « Michelan-
gelo type » was also discussed in the writing
on Michelangelo's drawings from 1927, when
it was introduced by Wilde, but he did not
provide a reproduction of it, so that it became
known even more slowly. (For all this biblio-
graphy see Gilbert, GBA, 1948, 391 ff.)
What Berenson suggested about the Miche-
langelo drawing was in fact rather modest.
He was sure that it was copied from a Ma-
saccio, but hesitant about the Sagra: « Per-
haps one may venture to be more precise,
and to suggest » the Sagra. This uncertainty
has vanished in the books on Masaccio and
the connection is treated as established, al-
though no further support is proffered, beyond
Berenson's allusions to the « massively digni-
fied people, with majestic draperies » that for

Since the publishing history of this drawing has now been traced all the way back, it may reduce possible confusion
12
to repeat its attributions in seguente. Ferri 1881, and perhaps earlier tradition: Masaccio. Schmarsow, 1896: Ghirlan-
daio, and Knudtzon, 1900: school of Ghirlandaio. It was noted that the current official attribution was « school of Ghir-
landaio » by Fiocco in 1929, when he substituted: contemporary of Pontormo. He was followed by Salmi, 1932. Recent
consensus has been a later reflection of Pontotmo, near Jacopo da Empoli. Forlani, 1959: Boscoli. This latest name has
not been noted in the Masaccio literature, e. g. Berti does not che it but retains the description as a late Pontormesque
work (note 216).
him evoked Masaccio's style. This is the more
notable in that the drawing cannot be said
to involve the procession, the rows of five or
six, or even the « mantelli e cappucci » of the
descríption. Where it does have a relation,
its first proponents apparently thought, was
to the Boscoli drawing, whose broad and
simple draperies had already been noticed.
This connection was happily confirmed in 1958
by the discovery of the Folkestone drawing,
on which both groups of figures appeared.
It is a token of the complete acceptance of
the identity that no one has called attention
to their joint appearance there as a proof of
the concept; it was evidently regarded as
completely established anyway. Strictly speak-
ing, what is confirmed bere ís the interrela-
tionship of the two groups of figures with
each other, and not the source from which
they derive. The separate studies of both
groups had always regarded them as derived
from older compositions, and their linkage
here confirms they are alike in this respect as
in others, and should both derive from the
same older composition. We might now be
further influenced to agree that this source
is the Sagra, if the earlier separate studies
had indeed both proposed this idea indepen-
dently. But it is probable instead that Beren-
son's suggestion in 1903 was influenced by
Schmarsow's idea of 1896, which he certainly
knew. In the process of changing a hypothesis
about the Michelangelo drawing from « copy
of Ghirlandaio » to « copy of Masaccio's Sa-
gra », it seems inevitable that Berenson re-
membered at least Schmarsow's recent change
of a hypothesis from « Masaccio » to « Ghir-
landaio's copy of Masaccio's Sagra »; Schmar-
sow had emphasized « breite, einfache » robes,
Berenson emphasized « majestic draperies ».
In this case all the identifications continue to
depend on Schmarsow and bis projection of
the way in which the composition partly shown 267
in the Boscoli drawing should continue.
The attribution of the Folkestone drawing to
Masaccio was made in Florence in the cigli-
teenth century ". It thus has no intrinsic va-
lue, either as an attribution or as a possible
support for the relation with the Sagra (whose
appearance was no longer known in the eigh-
teenth century, as the « Lanzi » incident show-
ed). This attribution may derive from the old
attribution to Masaccio of the Boscoli draw-
ing in Florence, or vice versa.
While most writers have accepted the Beren-
son label, in an essay of 1948 I suggested
that the old Wickhoff-Frey theory, that Mi-
chelangelo was copying Ghirlandaio, was bet-
ter. I now find less valile in the second half
of my essay, using other drawings in an at-
tempt to reconstruct the composition ". My
main evidence, that the « caricatured » head
is more Ghirlandaiesque than Masacciesque,
fails since this head can now be seen as a
free invention of Michelangelo's, absent in the
other versions of the group of figures. What
apparently remains firm is the refutation of
Berenson's main argument for Masaccio, the
«majestic draperies». I pointed aut that Ghir-
landaio imitated this very aspect of Masaccio's
style, a fact that Michelangelo scholars them-
selves had often noted in surveying the be-
ginnings of Michelangelo (though without in-
ferring anything about this drawing). Earlier
scholars who had proposed Ghirlandaio as the
source of the drawing had indeed alluded to
the same majesty, at a time when Ghirlandaio
was more admired, that Berenson cited to
support Masaccio, when he rose in esteem.
When a generai approach is common to two
artists, and is in a copy by a very strong per-
sonality, it is not a good basis for preferring
one over the other as bis source. The many
allusions to the broad simplicity of the Bo-

" The Masaccio literature has not investigated the history of this drawing, for which the collector's mark is a valuable
due (Lugt 2099, see also Supplement). It always appears on Fiorentine sixteenth and seventeenth century drawings, the
latest artist represented being Gabbiani (1652-1726), and is regularly accompanied by printed labels as seen bere, with
« Di » and the artist's name. One may add that the style of typography seems assignable to the middle or later eigh-
teenth century or early nineteenth. Lugt's suggestion that the device of the lino holding the branch is a version of the
arms of Florence is an .error, but happily not important; it is actually identica! in forni with the arms of one of the
minor guilds of Florence, the Arte degli Oliandoli, which the collector perhaps took as his device. (See a convenient
rendering of this in TCI, Guida di Firenze, p. 19). Thus eighteenth century Florence certainly seems to be the locus of
the attribution label.
" GBA, December 1948, p. 389. I pointed out that a drawing ín Haarlem, a much debated attribution to Michelangelo,
has a composition reciprocal to this, and, further, that the versos of both have kneeling and costumed figures reciproca)
with each other. This strongly indicates that the four belong together in some way. My suggestion was that they all
formed part of one composition such as an Adoration of the Magi. The phenomenon of the particular likeness by way
of reciprocity might, however, also suggest that they are variant studies of single poses. Or again the rather generic
poses might mark a re-use of figures from an older composition in a later one of a different theme, the Magi possibly
taking either cole. Since the evidence does not seem enough to favor any one of these options, the criticai silente fallo-
wing my essay should perhaps be called suitable.
268 scoli drawing run finto the same difficulty.
Both underline the problem that only broad
generai. qualities relate the drawings to the
Sagra, while particular ties always fall down.
My essay was greeted with tentative approvai
by Pope-Hennessy (Bur1M, 1949, p. 234),
and Steinbart simultaneously called the Boscoli
identification with the Sagra «zweifelhaft» (Ma-
saccio, 1948, p. 77). But in following years
the acceptance of it that we have seen over-
bore this little chorus of doubt; this was
symbolized in a passing endorsement by Pope-
Hennesy without allusion to bis own earlier
remarks (The Portrait in the Renaissance, 1966,
p. 5).
The results of this survey are discouraging.
Seeking support for the identification beyond
the doubtful link to the descriptions, we have
gained only the « old » labels on drawings
attributing them to Masaccio, which are wor-
se than useless, and the broad simple style
of the drapery, which is even vaguer that the
connections we discussed before. Our only
real gain is an understanding of how the iden-
tification grew so firm despite the discrepan-
cies from the descriptions: it was first based
only on the Boscoli drawing, with a hope that
the fresco elsewhere had included the other
elements missing there. This viewpoint had
evidently become firmly rooted before the
other drawings appeared, so that the question
was not even reopened when they failed to
meet that expectation, and we see a set of
spectators that must be virtually complete,
but stili lacks the porter, the Brunelleschi, the
six-man row, and is less a procession than it
had seemed. Our inference must be that
drawings and descriptions share fewer like-
nesses than contradictions.
But at this sterile point Marco Chiarini in 1962
presented 'some new data, which has put the
problem on a more positive line and is the
stimulus for this essay. Of the three clusters
of figures in the Folkestone drawing, we have
seen that two were identica' with those in
drawings known previously, but the third was
new. Chiarini pointed out its identity with a
group of figures in a fresco, the « St Francis
Resuscitating the Spini Child » [2] in Ghir-
landaio's Sassetti cycle at S. Trinita (1485-
86). We may now cali this third cluster of
figures in the Folkestone drawing the « Spiri
group ». This positive link to Ghirlandaio is
remarkably interesting, recalling as it imme-
diately does the idea of Wickhoff and later
writers that the « Michelangelo group » carne
from Ghirlandaio, and even Schmarsow's that
the Boscoli drawing was a work of the same
artist. Thus alt three groups of figures on the
Folkestone sheet have been traced back to
Ghirlandaio independently by various observ-
ers (and in this instance the connections really
are independent). And the certainty of the
newest connection seems to reinforce the other
two. But of course Chiarirli was not familiar
(as far as his essay shows) with this older
group of analyses, and supposes that his ex-
cellent connection with Ghirlandaio is the
first shown for any of the groups of figures;
and of course he also accepts the connection
of the other two groups with the Sagra.
An itnportant sznall observation in his study
is that one of the painted heads in the Spini
fresco is absent in the corresponding Folke-
stone group of drawn figures. From this he
infers (correctly as I shall propose) that in
Ghirlandaio's fresco that head was a last-mi-
nute addition, and accordingly that the Folke-
stone drawing is not copied from the fresco,
but from its source.
Thus Chiarini has three postulates: (1) that
one group in the Folkestone drawing copies
the source of Ghirlandaio's fresco; (2) that
the other two groups in the drawing copy
Masaccio's Sagra; (3) that ali three groups on
the drawing belong to one set. (The third
idea is not stated, but assumed). These three
premises inescapably teli us that Ghirlandaio's
source is Masaccio's Sagra. The painted peo-
ple in the Spini fresco must be copied from
Masaccio's monochrome.
The conclusion is inescapable, but it is not
cornfortable; it is not among the startling
hypotheses that, once stated, clarify relation-
ships. On the contrary, it runs counter to our
understanding of the most instinctive qualities
of Ghirlandaio's art. His big frescoes are fre-
quently designed in two rather uncoordinated
parts, alrnost as if the artist shifted levels of
reality from one to the other. One, of sacred
narrative, is typically copied from a source in
the classic Fiorentine past such as Giotto or
Fra Angelico (the derivation of the composi-
tion of the Visitation at Santa Maria Novella
from Angelico's predella at Cortona seems not
to have been discussed). These borrowed sce-
nes he treats as pre-assembled wholes which
he sets down on his floors. But then he often
surrounds them with the people and streets
of Florence, the quite external scene of the
present, stared at directly and particularly
with a vivid empiricism. The fact that this
depends on immediate looking, that the people
are often portraits, makes it difficult for them
 tc
._ _,,_,:,
....,

Di casaccio .

7) Ignoto fiorentino, sec. XVI, Gruppi di figure. Folkestone, Muscum and Art Gallery.
2) Ghirlandaio, Il miracolo del fanciullo di casa Spini (particolare di destra). Firenze, S. Tranzta, cappella Sassetti (loto Soprintel
denza Gallerie di Firenze).
 3

3) A. Boscoli, Gruppo di figure. Firenze, Gabinetto dei Disegni degli Uffizi (foto Brogi).
4) Ghirlandaio, Il miracolo deI fanciullo dí casa Spini (particolare di sinistra). Firenze, S. Trinita, cappella Sassetti (foto Soprinten-
denza Gallerie di Firenze).
5) Michelangelo, Gruppo di figure. Vienna, Graphische Sammlung Albertina (foto Albertina).
6) Ghirlandaio, Francesco Sassetti. Firenze, S. Trinita, cappella Sassetti (foto Soprintendenza Gallerie Firenze).
 7
Ghirlanclaio, San Francesco rinuncia ai beni paterni ( particolare). Firenze, S. Trinita, cappella Sassetti ( foto Soprintendenza Gal-
lerie Firenze).
to be tracings of the past. Ghirlandaio's com-
position drawings set up the officiai, traditio-
nal scenes with their perspective arder, with
the traditional inclusion of some onlookers in
similar robes (as in the drawing for the Visi-
tation, Berenson 871, or the remarkable one
for the Birth of the Virgin, B. 878, showing
a single visitor and servant who were in the
fresco to grow into the famous row of modern
Fiorentine ladies, in a different key of reality
from the resi of the scene). Or else he sets
up a full chorus of robed onlookers who in
the frescoes are turned into the bourgeois por-
traits in groups, keeping their locations and
poses but now distinct in focus from the
sacred scene they observe. Thus in the Con-
firrnation of the Franciscan Rule, the famous
groups of Pico and the children climbing the
stairs and Lorenzo il Magnifico with Sassetti
and others replace a staflage, in the drawing,
of cardinals and monks, normal attendants at
the event, and again the famous crowd of the
Tornabuoni and their friends in Zacharias in
the Tempie, at Santa Maria Novella, had been
ordinary robed watchers of the tempie ritual "
(Berenson 864 A, 891). That is, in ali these
cases the double level of reality is a late so-
lution, and the moderi citizens viewing the
fixed tableau are the level inserted late. (Furth-
er on this approach in Ghirlandaio see Gilbert,
BuriM, 1968, p. 284). Hence we expect that
the centrai sacred imagery should involve co-
pies from old masters, but we do not expect
it among the spectators, and indeed no instan-
ce is known. Not even the robed spectators,
monks, etc., from whom the bourgeois figures
are evolved, manifest such guotations from
past art. That is why Chiarini's conclusion
that the Spini spectators copy spectators in Ma-
saccio's Sagra seems contrary to Ghirlandaio's
procedures so far as we can observe them, and
has not been endorsed. If another reasonable 269
interpretation of Chiarini's evidence is availa-
ble, we would consider it more likely.
Berti (in his footnote 216) has offered an inte-
resting challenge to Chiarini's views. Since the
proposal was a conclusion from three premises,
and Berti rejects the proposal but accepts the
second of íts three premises as established
beyond discussion, he naturally doubts the other
two and offers reasons for his doubts.
As to the first, he suggests, the Folkestone
draftsman needed not have copied Ghirlandaio's
source showing one less figure, but may have
made a direct copy from the actual Ghirlandaio
fresco, skipping one figure because it was
« squeezed in virtually by force ».
But this alternative explanation for the omitting
of the figure is untenable. At Folkestone, the
draftsman includes figures more narrowly squee-
zed in at the far ends of his three rows of figu-
res, (where there is so Little room that they
were indeed skipped by another copyist, the
« minor Boscoli » draftsman), while there is a
definite gap available for this figure in the Spini
group, with some air at one side as in the fre-
sco. Since he did not pass over these more dif-
ficult cases, but put down all the figures he
saw, we must infer that he did not pass over
this figure of the Ghirlandaio group, butoznitt-
ed it because ít was not before him. His irto-
del therefore was not Ghirlandaio's fresco; pre-
sumably it was its source ".
In fact the Folkestone draftsman is a faithful
copyist, showing all figures found in any of the
other four drawings we have, except two. He
omits, as Michelangelo does, the monk at the
far left in the « minor Michelangelo » drawing.
And he omits a figure who would be fourth
from the right in his big group, who is seen in
the « minor Boscoli » drawing. These figures
are both, where drawn, faint, as if in aerial

" A visible token of this alteration in process seems to have passed unnoticed. Two of the ordinary, robed, spectators
in the drawing of the Zacharias are inscribed with labeis « giuliano » and « giovarmi francese° » meaning that they have
now been chosen to be transformed into those two members of the Tornabuoni family, with new costumes and faces. In
fact the complete manuscript list written in 1561 of the portraits of family and friends in this scene includes a Giuliano
Tornabuoni and a Gianfrancesco Tornabuoni, and Milanesi's proposed system of identifying each name in that list with
a figure in the fresco located these two men in the very places where the labels occur in the drawing, confirming bis
reading perfectly (notes to Vasari, III, 266). The Albertina catalogue (1932, no. 26), merely describing the labelled fi-
gures as Tornabuoni and Tornaquinci, does not take into account that in the drawing they are not yet wearing the mo-
dern costumes of the fresco.
" Berti's belief that these drawn figures are not copied from Ghírlandaio's source, now that we have excluded Ms view
of their being copied from Ghirlandaio himself, might stili be maintained if they were copied from a copy of Ghirlan-
daio, one ín which this head had been left out. This theory would bypass the objection above that the Folkestone drafts-
man is unlikely to sldp a head of this sort if he saw it. But Berti does not invoke this logical but in practice unreason-
able alternative, and I think he is right in that. The hypothesized intermediate copy would have to be very faithful
(because Folkestone is stili faithful) in one figure's details of hat, folds, etc, but omit a complete figure next to it, and
then record all the remaining five; this is itnplausible. (The same objection applies against the Folkestone drawing as
a copy of the fresco). Further, Berti's and Chiarini's opposed ideas concur that the « squeezed head » is odd and almost
unplanned; this is most likely if it is a last minute addition, which would mean that the fresco's source did not show it,
and is thus the likely source of a drawing that does not show it.
270 perspective, and are behind figures who them-
selves are reduced to oudines, without the chia-
roscuro modelling normal in the others. These
two are the only sudi faínt, « third-plane » fi-
gures in any of our drawings. We may thus
say that it was the Folkestone draftsman's pro-
cedure to omit that type, but include all other
kinds of figures, including squeezed ones.
As to Chiarini's third implication that all the
figures in Folkestone belong to one compositio-
nal source, Berti suggests that this is not ne-
cessary. The draftsman might have « jotted
down on the same sheet » free and faithful co-
pies from Masaccio and from Ghirlandaio. This
view seems to be refuted by an examination of
the two smaller clusters of figures of this draw-
ing, the « Michelangelo group » and the « Spini
group ». They have a remarkable similarity,
being in fact two versions of the same com-
position. Stili more remarkably, these groups
are even more similar in the other versions,
i e. in the two « Michelangelo group » drawings
and in Ghirlandaio's fresco. Both composi-
tions consist of figures forming a V-shaped
group facing to the left, with the main figure
in front at the point of the V, a solid figure in
a big robe, in each case seen by us from a point
slightly past his shoulder. Further to our right
in each case we see just two other men, the
first showing only a head and the second a
whole figure; the first, with the head only, is
omitted by Michelangelo and in the Folkestone
« Spini group », but included in the other two
versions of the former group of men and the
other version of the latter. Further to our left
we see a man largely overlapped by the main
figure's arm, and beyond him again further
back a man looking away; this last man appears
in only one of our three versions of the Mi-
chelangelo group, the minor one, but in both
version of the Spini group. The two com-
positions diverge only in the addition of
a sixth and seventh minor figure in one of
them. This identity is not possible as a coin-
cidence; the draftsman dici not find one example
of this composition in Masaccio and another in
Ghirlandaio and happen to draw them both
en one sheet of paper. The fact that some of
the similarities of the two compositions are
omitted in Folkestone shows that they were re-
lated to each other before he drew them; we
cannot even presume, therefore, that he drew
two such groups because their identity intere-
sted him. Ile had a single collection of sources,
in which these two versions of a compositio-
nal group of figures existed. Thus Chiarini's
implied third premise is confirmed.
We do not care for Chiarini's conclusion, which
as Berti said is « highly unlikely ». But it is
the unavoidable inferente from three observa-
tions, two of which we have just confirmed
over Berti's objections. The remaining obser-
vation Berti accepted, but we need not: it was
the status of our five drawings as copies from
the Sagra.
The favorite luxury among art historians, of
maintaining a well-worn opinion by saying « not
convincing » to amendments without offering
a reason, now confronts a dilemma. To retain
the status of the five drawings as copies of the
Sagra, we must also swallow Chiarini's conclu-
sion that Ghirlandaio's figures are literal paint-
ed copies of it. If we turn down this novel
proposal, we must also discard the familiar la-
bel of the five drawings as derivations from the
Sagra. But this second alternative is really
quite easy, since we have just observed how
weak the bridge from the drawings to the Sa-
gra really is, surrounded as ít is by old as-
sumptions that failed to be confirmed; indeed
the corollary need to adopt the Ghirlandaio
figures is simply another objection to the stan-
dard conception.
We can also abandon their attachment to the
Sagra more readily, because we now have so-
mething positive as a replacement. The five
drawings have their source — a single source
as we have found — where one of their sets
of figures has its visible source: in the same
source that Ghirlandaio used for his painted
figures, whatever it is.
But we have also noted that these spectator
figures in Ghirlandaio are not derived from
older compositions, but are bis own creations.
If that is correct, there is only one source of
these painted figures of Ghirlandaio, a drawing
by Ghirlandaio. We are thus led to a drawing
by Ghirlandaio as the most probable source of
our five drawings. It seems to be a logica!
step, but not an abstract logic of theory, rather
the connections between a number of direct
visual comparisons.
Once this idea is considered, it quickly re-
minds us to a surprising extent of other aspects
of the drawings that have been mentioned.
A Ghirlandaio drawing had been proposed as
the source of another of the five drawings long
ago by Wickhoff, and endorsed in various ways
by Portheim, Frey, the present writer and
Pope-Hennessy. Another of them had been at-
tributed to Ghirlandaio by Schmarsow, so that
all three elements of our figure groups had
been attached to Ghirlandaio before.
Certain qualities of our five drawings again a sud-
den illumination when we think of them as de-
rived from other drawings (by any older artist)
rather than from paintings. These are qualities
that have never been explained, but either no-
ticed as puzzling or not noticed at all. One of
these is the repetitiousness of the groups. We
have just considered this in comparing the « Mi-
chelangelo group » and the « Spini group ». To
see the same set of poses twice in looking at
a fresco, both times among the spectators on
the right hand side, is very dull, and usually
happens only with uninspired artists. The im-
plication should in itself be a grave doubt
against the connection with Masaccio. But to
see the same set of poses, with secondary chan-
ges, twice on the same sheet of drawings, is
normal and rational, and that is surely the trae
significante of the relationship of the « Spini
group » and the « Michelangelo group » at
Folkestone.
Once this idea is before us, it suddenly be-
comes clear that it is also the key to the larger
group of figures, the « Boscoli group ». Here
again the mechanical repetitiousness of the
rows is contrary to anything painted by Ma-
saccio, and can be matched even in Ghirlan-
daio only in one work, in the Sistine Chapel.
Patterns recur almost as simply as between the
two small sets of men we have just inspect-
ed. In cadi of three rows the front figure in
profile is always tagged by the gesture of
his nearer arm at a right angle, so that he
holds the robe up. The second figure is always
in profile, the third varies, the fourth always
turns to look at us. Finally, the rows as a whole
are always the same, strictly lined up in diagonal
to the right. Mechanical in a fresco, they be-
come comprehensible as variant projects for a
group of five figures, as commonly seen in draw-
ings and as already seen in the other two parts
of this drawing.
Such a reading is fully confirmed, in the best
possible way, when we identity the row of
five painted figures for which these are sket-
ches, in just the work where it ought to appear
on this theory [4]. It is the row of spectators
at the left side of the Spini fresco, the same
storia whose right hand group of spectators is
prepared on the rest of the Folkestone sheet.
Ghirlandaio paints them with the same rigi-
dity, set up in an echelon toward the right.
Again the foreground figure is marked by the
gesture of lifting his arm at a right angle. They
have changed to modem costumes, but other-
wise they differ from the drawings only as the
drawings differ among themselves, in the choice
of which face shall be in profile and which turn
to us; only two are now in profile, against 271
three in the drawings, a change perhaps in-
fluenced by inclusion in the fresco with its
other figures. The third man in profile, and in
cappuccio, is as like some of the drawn figures
as a portrait. Unlike the right spectators, we
do not have a final draft bere. We presume
that, since the right hand groups include an
identity, the similarity in the left hand groups
is not a coincidence. The odds against coincid-
ence are suggested by the fast that the left
spectators in the rest of the Sassetti cycle in
no case consist of five men, in any pose. The
connection is real.
This result, linking both types of groups in our
drawings to both sets of the Spini spectators,
might at first glance appear to reinstate the
Chiarini hypothesis: it could be proposed that
both sets of frescoed spectators are copied from
the Sagra. What cancels this possibility is that,
in establishing this relationship, we have in
the process shown incidentally that the draw-
ings contain no procession at all. What ap-
peared to be one is the variant repetition of a
single row of figures. Hence there is no cor-
relation between the drawings and the Spini
fresco, on the one hand, and this basic quality
of the Sagra, on the other.
Another unnoticed quality of the drawings,
which makes sense for the first time when
we understand that they derive from an earlier
drawing, is the visual treatment of the groups
in isolation. Whenever we see the « Michelan-
gelo group » which is drawn three times, It
consists of the same people, it does not extend
beyond this cluster, but leaves a blank in front
of itself and a frame behind. The same effect
of a closed total group applies to the Boscoli
group, as we see it twice; in the third case,
the Boscoli drawing itself, we do not see the
whole group at the right edge of the drawing,
but know that it continues, of course with
the same figures we see in the other versions.
The only exceptions to this pattern are strik-
ingly petty, the faint head of a monk in the
minor drawing of the Michelangelo group,
behind the others, and the smallest figure sep-
arate from all the others on the Folkestone
sheet. It is natural to presume that these fi-
gures are transitional between mass and void,
and are optional. But what these circumstan-
ces mean for the original source of our draw-
ings has not been considered. It is rightly ac-
cepted that all five drawings derive indepen-
dently from the source, and it is understood
that factors seen in all independent copies must
be seen in the original. But we then deduce
272 that the originai also showed these detached
closed groups. But for these groups such
self-enclosed unrelated dusters in a storia is
difficult, and notably difficult in Masaccio. Ali
his spectators are naturaily involved in air and
dramatic impact with the centrai action. The
most completely detached, in the Enthroning
of Peter, are overlapped by the foreground fi-
gures, so that if sudi a pattern applied we
would have to imagine all five of our com-
pany separately filling in the lover parts of the
robes. Even in Ghirlandaio, the right hand
Spini group has this detachment but the left
one is mixed with other people. In short, this
quality of the drawings draws us away from
seeing a fresco as their source, or any finished
storia. On the other hand, such partial groups
are normal in and serve the function of dra-
wings.
The discussion of the edges of the groups prov-
ides the occasion to consider the sixth drawing
of our group, in the collection of Ugo Procacci
(recently published by Berti, in Antichità viva,
1966, Marci, p. 3.) It represents part of the
« Boscoli group », but is strange in one res-
pect. It begins at its left edge in the same way
as the other three representations of these
rows of men, and shows the first ten, but then
stops, leaving a space of air behind the tenth
figure where the eleventh and twelfth figures
should appear. This allows us to observe that
it is false to the originai, since it gives the
impression that the tenth man is at the head
of a procession by himself. This lack of fidelity
permits us to exclude it from our study in
generai. Its ten figures include two missing in
the minor drawing of the Boscoli group, but
are identical with the first ten in the Folke-
stone and Boscoli drawings, so that it seems
to teli us nothing new. From this we must
consider that, unlile any of the other five, it
might be a copy of one of the others. Specifi-
cally, it might be a copy of the Boscoli draw-
ing, which ends at exactly the same position;
that is, it includes all the figures in the Boscoli
drawing except that it omits the fast two who
begin to be sliced off at its right edge. Since
it is also agreed that its date is later than the
Boscoli drawing, this hypothesis explains it
reasonably. In any case we need consider it
no further.
Another unobserved oddity of our five draw-
ings is clarified by regarding the source as a
drawing. This is the surprising series of con-
nections of the copyists with each other, par-
ticularly when considered in chronological
order. Michelangelo's is the first, and the se-
cond is the one in the Casa Buonarroti by
some member of the Michelangelo cirde. The
third is highly anonymous, and the poorest,
and the faci that its closest links of style are
with the second need not be insisted upon.
But the fourth and fifth again belong to a
single group of artists in one period, the re-
form movement at the end of the sixteenth
century test known in the work of Jacopo da
Empoli. What sort of work would produce
a series of copies by just these people in this
order? Not the Sagra, or any other « classic »,
which should produce a random scattering of
copies by divergent observers, including foreign
visitors. The actual sequence rather suggests
an originai available in succeeding periods to
a limited group or a single studio, and the
most usual such originals are drawings. A
drawing available to Michelangelo in his stu-
dent days would most usually be one by Ghir-
landaio.
Of the five drawings, the three attributed to
individuai artists are in ali cases youthful or
student work. Besides the famous case of the
Michelangelo, this is the view held of the Bo-
scoli by Forlani in her catalogue of • the draw-
ings. The minor drawing of the Michelangelo
group is sometimes labelled Antonio Mini, but
irrespective of its particular authorship, its loc-
ation in the Casa Buonarroti guarantees that
it is a student's or assistant's exercise. This
correlation is natural in any case, since copies
of older drawings and paintíngs are both char-
acteristic of students' activity, but the former
is far more common. The copying from the
Brancacci frescoes that Vasari describes is fa-
mous precisely, one may speculate, because
it was an unusual tribute, while the apprentice
drawing from other drawings is part of a daily
habit of workshops.
With Boscoli in particular, copies from old
masters play a large role in his early work.
« Old masters » mean, as we learn from For-
lani's catalogue (Mostra di disegni di A. Bo-
scoli, 1959, p. 6-7). the Fiorentine masters of
the High Renaissance beginning with Fra Bar-
tolomeo and by an extension the slightly earl-
ier Ghirlandaio. But Boscoli, she adds, also
copied « addiritura » from Masaccio, and we
are not surprised that as the one example of
this further reach she cites our very drawing.
Hence when we remove it from the area of
Masaccio into the area of Ghirlandaio, we are
also removing from Boscoli's activities what
seemed to be exceptional behavior and reinforc-
ing his usual behavior. In generai we shall see
that, contrary to what might be guessed, inter-
est in Masaccio appears to decline after about
1520.
One of the most curious ways in which the
drawings diverge among themselves is in the
costumes, as is always pointed out. It is inferr-
ed, surely rightly, that the artists in this way
were bringing the image up to date. It is ge-
nerally considered that copies from works like
the Sagra might well be subject to this sort
of amendment, but there are reasons to doubt
this generai hypothesis. In Vasari's description
it is conspicuous that the record of old cost-
umes was one of the elements that made the
Sagra interesting, as is true for him of other
works. Other writers after Vasari increasingly
treat these works as interesting relics of old
Florence, particularly because of the portraits.
The drawings made in this vein in the early
seventeenth century in Rome after Cavallini's
frescoes retain the old costumes, and the copies
of Leonardo's Anghiari cartoon carefully repeat
the originai armour. Pending a survey of this
matter, I would hazard that copies are likely
to modernize costumes more often in hypothe-
tical copies of unknown originals than in defin-
ite copies of real ones; thus in sixteenth cent-
ury Ferrara, the supposed copies of Piero della
Francesca battle scenes show modem costume,
while the assured copies of Ercole de' Roberti's
frescoes show authentic ones. In short, modern
costume may be a negative mark against such
hypotheses as the identification of these draw-
ings with the Sagra.
On the other hand, such a procedure is normal
in the re-use of a drawing, and specifically in
Ghirlandaio. We have already seen that Ghir-
landaio redresses his own figures in the process
of executing bis frescoes, changing them from
robes to moderi costume. We have seen the
« before » and « after » stage in speaking of
the Zacharias fresco at Santa Maria Novella
and its preparatory drawing. Here on the Fol-
kestone drawing, in the two smaller groups
of figures which are two versions of the same
group, one version wears robes and the other
wears modem dress. It is thus plausible that
the two versions represent a copy of an originai
Ghirlandaio drawing in which this particular
reworking was to be seen in process. (It is of
course also implausible that both groups in
different costumes appeared as spectators in a
single fresco).
Since the originai drawing, as represented in the
Folkestone copy, manifested both these altern-
ative types of costume, the interest of its copy-
ists in both types is natural. While some
draftsmen copied the robed group, others r3
copied the modern-dress group. Under these
circumstances it is hardly surprising that one
of the copyists extends the prototype by re-
costuming some of the modem dress figures in
cappucci. (Minor drawing of the Boscoli group).
We seem now to have built up a picture of the
source of our five drawings, which turns out
to be the Sagra. It was a sketch drawn by Ghir-
landaio in 1485, while he was working on the
Spini fresco. It contains varying solutions of
the arrangement of the two groups of spectators
in the fresco; in the left group, none of these
variants is fully identical with the one that
was used, but in the right group, one of them
is virtually the final draft. One of the variants
dresses the figures in robes, and its originai
must have looked very much like the surviving
originai drawing of two women spectators in
robes, who appear in the Naming of the Bap-
tist at Santa Maria Novella. When the chapel
frescoes were finished, the drawing became
available for copying by students, and was so
used by the boy Michelangelo who became an
apprentice in 1488. He made a free copy of
one of the groups of figures, and also retained
possession of Ghirlandaio's drawing, or else
of a duplicate of it made by a fellow-student.
This he in turn made available to students of
his own as a practice model, and it continued
to be used until the end of the sixteenth cent-
ury, a period during which Ghirlandaio remain-
ed interesting to artists like Boscoli, for study-
ing robes and the grouping of figures. Its dis-
appearance after that marks the decline of such
interest, and perhaps also the loss of a by now
tattered drawing (the fate of the Cascina
cartoon).
The only objections that, so far as I can obser-
ve, can be made to the reasonableness of this
sketch, turn out in my opinion to have more
to do with the conventions of art history today
than with the ascertainable circumstances. In
reading the discussions on the drawings in re-
lation to the Sagra, one is often reminded of
the famous account of the many student draw-
ings made after the Brancacci frescoes. This
link becomes explicit in one casual remark by
a careful scholar (L. Dussler, Die Zeichnungen
des Michelangelo, 1959, p. 216) who comments
that the existence of so many copies of the
Sagra is understandable, in view of the record
of many copies being made of the Brancacci
frescoes The idea that our drawings are being
regarded as a surrogate far the famous student
renderings from the Brancacci frescoes seems to
274 be implicit, however, in much else that is
written. Hence it is worth observing that the
Sagra never had this status as a work pointed
out to be copied, and, beyond that, that the
Brancacci frescoes Iost this status themselves
about 1520, which oddly enough is just
about the date when our drawings become more
numerous. This relationship becomes, then, a
point of implausibility in the relationship of
the drawings to the Sagra.
The declive in fashion of the Brancacci fres-
coes emerges from Vasari's account of the ad-
miration for them. His long list of artists who
have Iearned from drawing after them, beg-
inning with Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi,
continues iato the sixteenth century and ends
with the following: Andrea del Sarto, Rosso,
Franciabigio, Baccio Bandineili, Alonso Spa-
gnuolo, Jacopo da Pontormo, Pierino del Vaga,
and Toto del Nunziata! Although he had pre-
ceded this with an inclusive reference to artists
« da lui in qua » he finds none to mention
whose apprenticeship occurred after 1520, and
the most conspicuous omission is Vasari him-
self, which means that he did not make this
pilgrimage, nor did his contemporaries like
Salviati or the pupils whom he himself ins-
tructed. The excuse that he gives of omitting
additional artists because they are minor does
not cover this omission, and indeed it is hard
to irnagine whom it might cover, when Toto
del Nunziata is included as the last of the major
ones! (Berti was showing a natural sensitivity
to the absurd anticlimax of Toto's name when
he quoted seven out of eight of this last part
of the list, but omitted this very last one, on
p. 1 of his monograph). The appearance of
Pierino as the youngest artist to visit the chapel,
as well, must be read in connection with the
other passage in which he and it are associat-
ed. In this anecdote Pierino, newiy returned
from Rome, was asked by the Fiorentine ar-
tists whether the new Roman painting could
attain the heights of the Brancacci chapel, and
answered that he thought he himself could im-
prove on it. (Milanesi ed., V, 604) {17]. Penino
and Toto thus in different ways stand sym-
bolically at the end of a list, all of whose
other members are older. We should thus
expect to find surviving drawings of the Bran-
cacci frescoes up to this date but not later (we
have just one), while if the Sagra were the
object of a similar taste, we should expect the
same to a minor degree, but of course our
drawings do not fit that pattern, but belong
mainly to the period when the Brancacci fres-
coes apparently had ceased to be copied. The
small evidence we have is to the effect that
in fact admiration of the Sagra, in a minor
key, declined along with the admiration for
the Brancacci frescoes. The Sagra in 1494 was
called « maravigliosa d'artificio a ogni inten-
dente », and in a conservative text of 1516-30
is stili called a work having « grande artificio »,
but it is notatile that in another text of
1537-40 this praise disappears, even though
the latter text is largely a copy of the preceding
one. This omission might be an accident, and
yet it is one of three works described in the
same paragraph, of which the first is the Bran-
cacci chapel, praised for the « mirabile » trem-
Ming man, and the second is the Saint Paul,
praised for its « mirabile arte », while praise
is withheld from the Sagra. This seems more
meaningful when we notice that Vasari in
1550 likewise has no praise for the work,
which he simply reports as ari accurate record
of the event and of the individuals portrayed.
The long additional comment in 1568 makes
up for this coolness, by expressing admiration
(although, of course, it is trivial in comparison
with the praise of the Brancacci frescoes). Yet
even here, at the peak of the Sagra's criticai hi-
story, there is striking restraint. Besides the
additional list of portraits, every remark has to
do with the accuracy of measurements in the
scene, in anatomy and linear perspective. In
the monochrome painting Vasari evidently
could find no indication of the color perspec-
rive which he admired elsewhere in Masaccio.

" The Masaccio literature has virtually excluded this story from its discussion, perhaps because it seemed to limit his
influente, but unjustifiably. Vasari gives it extraordinary emphasis, considering how marginai it is in Pierino's life. It
occupies two pages in the Milanesi edition, out of forty-four in the biography of Pierino. The artists of Florence gave
Pierino a tour of churches, to see old and new paintings, and ai the Carmine they gave Masaccio praise partly for what
he baci done in his time, but also saying that « nel rilievo e nella resoluzione e nella pratica non ci era nessuno... che
ancora lo avesse raggiunto ». Pierino replied: « dirò... che molti conosco... Ie cose de' quali sono... molto più belle ».
A plan was then evolved for Pierino to paint a frescoed figure in the Carmine, and thereupon: (emphasis added) « molti
dicevano, che egli sarebbe cagione di levar loro dal capo questa fantasia, tenuta nel cervello tante decine d'anni, e che
s'ella fosse meglio, tutti correrebbono a le cose moderne »4
The plan was then crowded out by the commission for the cartoon for Camaldoli of the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand,
which « gli artefici giudicarono non aver visto pari bellezza e bontà in disegno dopo quello di Michelangelo Buonarroti
per la Sala del Consiglio ». This incident was of 1523, and in relationship to the list of copyists in the Brancacci
Chapel, which ends with Pierino and Toto, could hardly be more emphatic.
But of course we can best understand Vasari's
emphasis in terms of his own strong concerns
with the collecting of historical portraits, on
the one hand, and on the other, the construct;
ing of a history in which Masaccio illustrates
the « second period » which solves the pro-
blems of accurate drawing but not those of
unione. Yet even as a repository of portraits
the Sagra is not of strong interest. It ought
to be noticed that Vasari makes no use, for
his own collection of woodcut portraits of ar-
tists, of the portraits he reports in the Sagra
of Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masolino, even
though it is the only portrait of Masolino he
records. He takes them all from other places.
All this is relevant to the question of how we
happen to have so many drawings of this com-
position. It is not reasonable that we should
have more drawings of the Sagra than we do
of the Brancacci chapel, and then of the wrong
period, (and I take it that in reality we do
not). If we appear to have them, the reason
is inevitably that art historians efficiently seek
drawings after lost works but not of surviving
ones, so that we also seem to have more draw-
ings of Michelangelo's Cascina cartoon than
of the Sistine ceiling, which we certainly do
not. We appear to have, because we have
looked for them. In the case of our compos-
ition the same pattern is made clear when we
notice that as the identification with the Sagra
was more and more accepted, more and more
drawings were found. Only two have long
been known; after many discussions of the Mi-
chelangelo drawing, its minor version appeared
in 1927, and after many discussions of the
Boscoli drawing in the 1930's, four more ver-
sions appeared from 1945 onward. The ori-
ginai two were in great print rooms, the third
in a lesser one, the latest four all in extremely
small museums (Folkestone!) or small private
collections. This means a very thorough search,
implying that no others exist in major collec-
tions. How many copies from the Sistine
Chapel would a similar scouring produce? It
has not been undertaken, since the originai
exists. It would probably produce hundreds,
so that the idea that our five drawings, or
rather seven, are too numerous to be the reflec-
tion of a forgotten drawing by Ghirlandaio,
seems to have a false basis in a comparison
with other quantities of copies, without allow-
ing for the major factor of the different energy
with which they have been hunted.
After Vasari in 1568, attention to the Sagra
declined again. Borghini simply copied out
part of Vasari's account without looking (at
the date of the Boscoli and Folkestone draw- 275
ings!). His life of Masaccio has one freshly
added sentence, recording a portrait of Baccio
Valori (again the portrait of a historic figure),
yet he does not notice a connection with the
presence of Valori in the Sagra, having omitted
that part of the description. Thus his attention
to the Sagra and even to Vasari's words on
it must have been extremely slight. Bocchi's
guidebook is a similar copy, and there is
nothing else.
All this may prepare us for the casual wanton
destruction of the fresco in 1598-1600. It was
one of the less noticed works of an artist now
looked at, if at ali, mainly for his historical
interest in the progress of art, as we shall
see further. Berti properly notes his own sur-
prise at the destruction « of a work by Masaccio
at that date and in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany
which was so respectful of its artistic patrim-
ony » (note 210). But in fact, just as we have
no indication that anyone had looked at the
fresco recently, so no one protested at all and
no one was sure whether or not it had even
been destroyed. Thus, the context of the time
was such that the destruction was not strange,
and our surprise must be kept distinct as our
own. It is easy to deceive oneself about this.
Procacci (Studi in Onore di L. Venturi, Roma,
1956, I, p. 214) is perfectly right when he
says that it was destroyed without grasping
what was happening, regarded as « l'abbati-
mento di un antico affresco cosa senza parti-
colare importanza ». But then he goes on to
suggest that others did object, indeed with
a « reazione violentissima », and here he seems
to proceed without foundation. One text is
cited from the first half of the seventeenth
century and three from the second half. The
first is simply the note on the Annibale Man-
cini which describes the fresco as now either
destroyed or covered with whitewash. From
this phrase, and nothing else, Procacci deduces
that a rumor to the effect that the fresco was
not destroyed, but merely whitewashed, may
have been intentionally circulated to « placare
le ire ».
The only possible allusion to such « ire » oc-
curs sixty years after the destruction, in the
manuscript compilation of tombs (Sepultuario)
of Rosselli, of 1657, who reports that it was
« mandata in terra in dispiacer grande di tutti
gli amorevoli del disegno ». This is clear, if
belated; its only difficulty is that Rosselli then
reports a wrong location for the lost fresco.
This is more significant with him than it would
be ordinarily, since Rosselli was a collector and
276 recorder of tombstones in churches, which he
describes among other things by their loca-
tion. From this we learn that when he asked
(as he undoubtedly did) he was not told by
anyone who knew about it, nor, to be sure,
provided with the placating rumor against the
anger that only he reports. It is thus possible
to guess that his remark may be in substantial
part a stock response, a rhetorical lament cali-
ed for in similar situations.
But Rosselli's manuscript is much more im-
pressive than the note of Cinelli, who in 1677
was the first to mention the Sagra in print
since its destruction in 1598-1600. He comp-
lains that it was « scortesemente imbiancato »,
but when we read to find what has been so
treated, ít is a group of portraits of Brunel-
leschi and other notables, which is not men-
tioned as being a work of Masaccio at all!
This is the mentality of one who might regret
the disappearance of an authentic portrait of
Erasmus, while not pausing to mention that
Holbein was the painter, a not uncommon
kind of approach, but one which should re-
move our surprise at the destruction of Ma-
saccio's work. This absence is a genuine fac-
ctor, because in the same sentente the fresco
is compared to a portrait of Dante by Giotto,
and there Giotto is mentioned. Thus Masac-
cio in 1677 had ceased to be a name that be-
longed in such company. Finally Baldinucci,
shortly before his death in 1696, said that
the lost work « mi dolga in estremo », whe-
ther it is result of time that consumes ali, or
men's lack of love for « le antiche memorie »
which allowed a « ricordanza si bella » to
perish. Baldinucci knows nothing either of the
rumor of whitewashing nor of the intentional
destruction that had actually occurred, and his
regret is purely antiquarian. Masaccio is a tes-
timony of ancient times, but this is not sur-
prising. In 1723 the Brancacci Chapel itself
was tagged with the single adjective « antichis-
sima » in a manuscript that praised nearby
pictures of Passignano for their beauty. (E.
Schaeffer, in Repkw, 1904, p. 56). Thus if the
quantity of the drawings surprises us, it should
surprise us more that, at the date of their execu-
tion, they should be considered in relation to
the Sagra.
Besides our sense that Masaccio ought to have
been admired, and our sense that lost works
ought to be recoverable in the drawings we
have, one other art historical instinct has
powerfully supported the standard hypothesis.
This is the idea of Michelangelo's youth, and
it goes back to the ideai image that Michelan-
gelo himself held of it in his old age, trans-
mitted to us by Condivi. Partly this is mani-
fested in comments that Michelangelo was
fated to make drawings after his greatest pre-
decessors, Giotto and Masaccio (as remarked
in 1938 by Baumgart), but its force is in the
legend of Michelangelo's relationship to his
master Ghirlandaio.
We know that he was his master from the
contract of 1488, published by Vasari. It is a
curiosity, in that Vasari practically never prints
documents; he was not that type of art histo-
rian! He was impelled to print this one for. a
special reason. He wished in his 1568 edition
to justify his own report in 1550 that Miche-
langelo had been Ghirlandaio's pupil, which
Condivi in the meantime had vigorously attack-
ed. His method worked, so that today we
have an image of the young Michelangelo in
Ghirlandaio's workshop, but as unhappy there
and already feeling that it was unsuitable. Yet
without the document I suspect we would pre-
fer Condivi's version, as we tend to do. We
generally think that Michelangelo was mainly
in the right in his famous quarrels, with Ra-
phael, with Julius II, and generally we have
better records of Michelangelo's side of the
story.
Vasari in 1550 referred to the apprenticeship
with Ghirlandaio only briefly. In 1553 Con-
divi described Michelangelo as self - taught in
drawing and painting, only encouraged by his
friend Granacci. « I cieli e la natura lo ritira-
vano alla pittura (sicchè)... corresse a disegnare
or quà or là, e cercasse pratica di pittori » to
wit, Granacci who helped him « accomodan-
dolo di disegni, or seco menandolo alla bot-
tega del maestro ». Thus he visited the Ghir-
landaio shop, eliciting only envy, and an at-
tempt by Ghirlandaio to take credit for his
copy of the Schongauer engraving: « solea dire
essere uscita dalla sua bottega, come s'egli n'a-
vesse avuta parte ». He then refused to lend
Michelangelo a notebook of his own drawings.
Finally « Or ritraendo il fanciullo or questa
cosa or quest'altra, non avendo nè fermo luogo,
nè studio, avvenne che un giorno fù dal Gra-
nacci menato al giardin de' Medici a San
Marco ».
This whole astonishing passage, anticipating
Courbet élève de la nature, is unfamiliar today
because we know that in this instante Vasari's
report is truer. Condivi, who musi have got
this story from Michelangelo, also says that
someone else, i. e. Vasari, has given a wrong
account, and to that Vasari replies with his
document. Commenting on the argument, Ba-
rocchi in her edítion of Vasari's Vita (II, p.
69) remarks that the contract is important but
not really enough to overcome Condíví's
sketch, since it merely proves a business rela-
tionship with Ghirlandaio. But she then mo-
difies this response, which seems to illustrate
our tendency to adopt Michelangelo's self-ima-
ge, when she notes that for unknown reasons
Michelangelo « devalues » his own disciple-
ship of Ghirlandaio. This is the serious point:
the Condivi story definitely reduces the Mi-
chelangelo-Ghirlandaio relationship to some-
thing less than its reality. As there was an
apprenticeship, there were certainly apprentice
drawings after the master; in this sense we
must agree that Michelangelo was fated to draw
after Ghirlandaio, although it goes somewhat
against the grain. Even Condivi reports, in-
cidentally to his profile of the jealous master,
that Michelangelo wanted to copy his draw-
ings. Vasari contributes the following on Mi-
chelangelo's drawings after Ghirlandaio:
« Avvenga che uno de' giovani che imparava
con Domenico avendo ritratto alcune femine
di penna, vestite, dalle cose del Grillandaio,
Michelangelo prese questa carta e con penna
più grossa ridintornò una di quelle femine di
nuovi lineamenti... giovanetto così fiero e ani-
moso che gli bastasse l'animo correggere le
cose del suo maestro. Questa carta è oggi ap-
presso di me, tenuta per reliquia, che l'ebbi
dal Granaccio per porla nel libro de' disegni
con altri di suo, avuti da Michelangelo: e l'an-
no 1550 che era a Roma, Giorgio lo mostrò a
Michelangelo, che la riconobbe ed ebbe caro
rivederla... ».
We really cannot reject this account, so delight-
fully like the way a curator of modern paint-
ing might speak of his method for authenti-
Riassunto
In questo studio viene per la prima volta isti-
tuito un confronto puntuale tra le descrizioni
antiche (di Vasari e altri) della perduta Sagra
di Masaccio al Carmine, ed i disegni che sono
oggi normalmente considerati copie di tale ope-
ra. Dal confronto risultano notevoli differenze
e nessuna analogia tanto precisa da confermare
la relazione dei disegni con la Sagra. Se ne po-
trebbe dedurre che i disegni siano soltanto
libere copie, poco attendibili come tali; tutta-
's In a separate complementary essay I hope to indicate some acceptable copies of parts of the lost Sagra.
cating a Matisse, acquired with an excellent 277
provenance and then checked during a visit
to the artist's studio. The Michelangelo draw-
ing in our group of five belongs in the same
context as the one Vasari owned, criticizing
his teacher's robed men instead of his wo-
men. Yet if we compare it with Ghirlan-
daio's fresco of Francesco Sassetti in our same
chapel [6], the likeness of approach to forni
and to humanity tells us that Michelangelo,
when he re-drew his teacher's robed men and
gave them new caricatured heads, did so in a
Ghirlandaiesque way. To be sure, combining
the massive robe from his model drawing and
the new head, even while using his master to
modify his master, he also adds his own new
correction, his « penna più grossa », so that
we should not be reluctant to admit a real
discipleship. Setting Michelangelo in the Ghir-
landaio context shows his distinctiveness more
clearly. The generai allusion to Masaccio's
sober power has in Ghirlandaio become more
fieshy and particular, then in Michelangelo dy-
namic and thrusting. The only detail of the
robe not seen in Ghirlandaio's figure of Sas-
setti, its angular folds, appears in another fi-
gure in the chapel [7]. Both have been miss-
ed because we were thinking only of the 1110-
dern-dress spectators when we queried and re-
jected a Ghirlandaio source. With these com-
parísons, one can never say that Michelan-
gelo's drawing can only come from Masaccio,
whose most comparatile figure, the donor of the
Trinity, lacks so intimate a similarity. If thus
we lose the lost Sagra" and the bridge back
from Michelangelo to Masaccio, we gain the
reality of the workshop and its energies of
continuity and renewal.
via, poichè l'affermazione della loro relazione
con la Sagra poggia unicamente sulle descrizioni
letterarie di questa, il problema si allarga fino
a sollevare il sospetto che tra gli uni e l'altra
non sussista, di fatto, relazione di sorta.
La moderna storiografia artistica ha accettato
tale relazione senza mai produrre argomenti de-
finitivamente probanti in proposito, e pertanto
questo studio risale alle origini della relazione
stessa, rintracciandola in un dimenticato brano
278 dello Schmarsow. Questi aveva rilevato una cer-
ta consonanza tra il solo disegno della serie a lui
allora noto, e le descrizioni letterarie: proba-
bilmente egli sostenne questa ipotesi ritenendo
che — come quel disegno riproduceva, con
qualche differenza solo una parte della compo-
sizione — altri disegni della stessa serie avreb-
bero potuto eventualmente mostrare più strette
analogie. Tuttavia anche nei disegni di cui si è
successivamente venuti a conoscenza si riscon-
trano sensibili discordanze rispetto alle descri-
zioni letterarie: poichè tuttavia la ipotesi dello
Schmarsow era stata universalmente accettata,
il problema posto da tali discordanze non venne
più affrontato.
Una nuova considerazione è stata avanzata nel
1962 da M. Chiarini, il quale ha dimostrato
che in una parte di uno dei disegni della serie
sono copiate alcune figure di spettatori dell'af-
fresco del Ghirlandaio raffigurante S. Francesco
che risuscita un fanciullo di casa Spini nella
cappella Sassetti in S. Trinità. Il Chiarini, ac-
cettando al tempo stesso la connessione del di-
segno con la Sagra, concludeva affermando che
anche le figure dell'affresco del Ghirlandaio de-
rivano da Masaccio. La cosa sembra tuttavia
all'A. del presente studio poco probabile, dato
che se Ghirlandaio si ispirò spesso a composi-
zioni di soggetti religiosi di antichi maestri, non
risulta abbia fatto altrettanto per le sue tipiche
figure di spettatori che compaiono nelle scene
stesse.
Può invece esser dimostrato che varie parti del
disegno derivano da una medesima fonte, e che
quindi si tratta di varianti di una stessa compo-
sizione del Ghirlandaio, connesse di fatto con
altre figure di spettatori che sono nell'affresco
sopra ricordato. In definitiva, potrebbe trattar-
si di copie di uno studio preparatorio nel quale
tali figure erano state ideate in modo diverso
da come furono poi realizzate nell'affresco.
Concludendo, si pone in rilievo come il disegno
del gruppo di mano di Michelangelo abbia una
sua collocazione logica proprio in quanto ela-
borazione di un allievo del Ghirlandaio, il qua-
le ne rispecchia strettamente i caratteri di quel
determinato momento.