Attributed to Giulio Clovio

This drawing is one of numerous versions of a composition by Michelangelo described as (The Dream) by Giorgio Vasari, who thereby coined the title still in use today.¹ The work has come down to us through many other copies—drawn, painted, and engraved— most of which were done during Michelangelo’s lifetime. The version of the subject in the Courtauld Gallery is generally considered to be Michelangelo’s original.² In its highly finished technique and compositional completeness, the Courtauld drawing belongs to a group of works called presentation drawings, a term first used by Johannes Wilde in 1953. Michelangelo made presentation drawings from the 1520s through the 1540s. The most important group consists of three sheets that were given to the young Tommaso de’ Cavalieri in the 1530s, these being the Fall of Phaeton,³ the Punishment of Tityus,⁴ and the Rape of Ganymede.⁵ In style and technique the Courtauld Sogno is closely linked to the Cavalieri group, though its recipient remains unknown.

The Cavalieri group of presentation drawings—and by extension Il Sogno— have been dated to around 1533, since Michelangelo met the young Roman aristocrat in the winter of 1532. Michelangelo’s original must have been executed by 1537, when Battista Franco used the main figure in his allegorical painting of the Battle of Montemurlo (Palazzo Pitti, Florence), which is dated to that year.

Il Sogno is conceived as an allegory and has been interpreted as representing the struggle between the intellect and the passions⁶ or the exaltation of the purifying force of love.⁷ It shows a nude youth seated on a box and surrounded by vignettes illustrating the vices. Starting from the bottom left, the scenes represented are Gula (gluttony), Luxuria (lust or voluptuousness), Avaritia (greed), Ira or Invidia (wrath or envy), and Acedia (sloth). A winged nude boy descends from above through the circle of vices, blowing a trumpet that he directs toward the forehead of the young man on the box.

The prototype drawing was reworked in the scenes at upper left, where there was originally a large hand holding a phallus, as can be seen in the engravings by Nicolas Beatrizet and Antonio Lafreri. The present drawing was made after the original had been censored. Sold in 1908 as by Michelangelo, the sheet was attributed to Marcello Venusti when it entered the collection of the Morgan. Linda Wolk-Simon later proposed it could be by Giulio Clovio,⁸ who is recorded as having made two copies of Michelangelo’s Il Sogno. Stephanie Buck, who in 2007 closely examined the work, noted a watermark, only visible in raking light, of a fleur-de-lis inside a circle, suggesting to her a date of around 1560 to 1580 and possibly an attribution to Alessandro Allori. The date, however, is only approximate and would not in any case rule out the possibility of an attribution to Clovio. Paul Joannides too had once considered an attribution to Allori, which he then rejected in 2003. Yet, a recent exhibition dedicated to Giulio Clovio returned to that attribution.⁹ Nonetheless, highly finished copies after Michelangelo such as this one will presumably remain difficult to attribute with any certainty to a specific artist.

—REP

Footnotes:

1. In the Life of Marcantonio Raimondi, Vasari lists works made by Michelangelo that have been engraved: “the Phaethon, the Tityus, the Ganymede, the Archers, the Bacchanalia, the Dream, the Pietà, and the Crucifix, all done by Michelangelo for the Marchioness of Pescara [Vittoria Colonna].” See Vasari 1996, 2:94; Vasari 1878–85, 5:431.
2. Courtauld Gallery, London, inv. d.1978. pg.424. See Buck 2010.
3. Teylers Museum, Haarlem, inv. a31.
4. Royal Collection, Windsor, inv. rl 12771. See Buck 2010, no. 2, and New York 2017–18, 153–54.
5. Four versions of this composition are known today. An attribution to Michelangelo has been rejected or considered problematic. See Joannides 2003, no. 85.
6. See Panofsky 1939.
7. See Marabottini 1956, 1:349–58.
8. Oral communication, 2000. Two drawings after Michelangelo’s Il Sogno are listed in Giulio Clovio’s detailed inventory of possessions, which is kept in the State Archives, Rome (“Il sogno di m. Micchel Angelo fatto dal sopradetto Don Giulio”). For a transcription of this inventory, see Pelc 1998, 216.
9. Milan 2016, 192–93.