Michelangelo, Jupiter, c. 1490

This Study of Jupiter represents one of the most exciting old master discoveries to have been made in recent decades, and is an extremely important addition to the small group of extant drawings by Michelangelo. Acquired at auction in Paris over thirty years ago as the work of an anonymous hand, this Study of Jupiter is now held by many leading scholars to be the Renaissance master’s earliest known drawing. The sketch, in two tones of brown ink, depicts a bearded man wearing a toga, seated and holding a staff, his feet bare. The distinctive antique throne on which he sits features ornamental carved arms with lyre-shaped volutes, embellished with animal skulls.

There has for some time now been a wide scholarly consensus that the author of this drawing was a young apprentice or assistant working in the studio of Domenico and Davide Ghirlandaio in late quattrocento Florence, as Michelangelo was. At this time, Michelangelo was also benefitting from the protection and patronage of Lorenzo de’Medici, who facilitated his access to antique sculpture and encouraged his ambition. Based on comparisons to other early drawings, and the telling presence of the distinctive two tones of ink, many leading scholars in the field, including Paul Joannides, Timothy Clifford, Zoltán Kárpáti, Miles Chappell, and David Ekserdjian, have argued that this drawing is the earliest known work on paper by the young Michelangelo.

The figure is based on a fragment of a colossal Roman marble, the lower half of a Jupiter Enthroned (1st – 2nd c CE), which was in the collection of the collector-dealer Giovanni Ciampolini (d. 1505) in Rome at the end of the 15th Century (now in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples). The survival of other contemporaneous drawings of Jupiter Enthroned is evidence of the wider fascination with recently-excavated ancient sculpture. Michelangelo’s drawing is not a straightforward copy of the sculpture, but instead presents some distinct differences, including in the position of the right foot and in the folds of drapery. The upper half of the drawing is evidently an invention, and as the marble fragment was in Rome, a city Ghirlandaio visited regularly, it may be that the invention of the upper torso was Ghirlandaio’s and Michelangelo then copied his master’s drawing. This would be in line with Florentine quattrocento workshop practice, and would account for the retention of certain Ghirlandaio-esque details in this drawing, such as the teardrop shapes of the folds.

The attribution to Michelangelo is based on a number of factors, and the subject, materials and style of draughtsmanship all accord with what we know of Michelangelo’s early development. The use of two tones of brown ink was a technique Michelangelo favoured, but not one that we ever see in drawings by Ghirlandaio himself. Joannides, Clifford and Ekserdijan have suggested that Michelangelo’s Study of Jupiter is his earliest extant work on paper, dating to around 1490. Prior to its discovery, the earliest known drawing was a Study of two figures, after Giotto today in the Louvre, dating to circa 1490-92. Slightly later still, dated circa 1492-93, is the Male figure after Masaccio now in Munich. By considering the progression from our drawing, through the Louvre example and to the Munich drawing, we can see how Michelangelo’s hatching technique is becoming more confident within even this brief period of time. Similar, too, are the bolder dash of ink beneath the nose, and the v-shape of the eye socket in profile, and the rounded, slightly bulbous chin.

Michelangelo began his career in the Ghirlandaio studio around the age of 12, running errands for the master and apprentices. The following year, he was enrolled as an apprentice himself for a period of three years, although he remained for only two. Not only was he quick to progress, but Michelangelo was conscious – particularly at the end of his life – of the myth of his own genius, which he sought to protect and perpetuate. According to certain estimates, only around 600 drawings survive from the entirety of Michelangelo’s career. Compare this to, for instance, the 4,000 or so drawings by Leonardo, or the 450 that remain from Raphael’s relatively short life.

Why are there so few? Beyond the obvious fact that drawings are fragile by nature to begin with, and were used as workshop tools rather than stored carefully, we have Michelangelo himself to hold accountable. Numerous reports confirm that Michelangelo ordered burnt, or burned himself, piles of his drawings towards the end of his life. He could not have thought them useless, as, by the end of his lifetime, drawings were beginning to be prized and collected. Vasari theorised that Michelangelo sought to destroy any evidence of the immense labour that went into his work, to lend credence to the notion that he emerged a fully-formed genius. But, as Hugo Chapman explains, we must also consider how secretive the artist was, and how jealously he guarded his ideas and innovations. Despite his success Michelangelo had no real studio for the instruction of apprentices, and certainly no close associates. Unlike, for instance, Raphael, who formed a successful partnership with the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi to print and disseminate his compositions, Michelangelo never authorised the printing of his works, fearing that others would steal his ideas. The burning of his drawings, therefore, would prevent them from being taken and used by other artists – a notion he seemingly could not bear, even if it were to happen after his death.