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traces of saint anne
85 Michelangelo, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known as (Caprese 1475–Rome, 1564) Virgin and Child and the Young John the Baptist, known as the Pitti Tondo 1503–1504 Bas-relief, marble 82 5 85.5 cm Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale Fiorentino, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, Inv. n. 1068 (1825) Prov. Executed by Michelangelo for Bartolomeo Pitti, then given by his son, Fra Miniato Pitti de Monte Oliveto, to Luigi Guicciardini; Varchi sees the tondo at the home of Pietro Guicciardini, Luigi’s nephew; bought by the Florence gallery, 1823; placed in the Museo del Bargello, 1873. Bibl. Vasari [1550] 1991, II, p. 888; Vasari [1550 and 1568] 1966–1987, VI, pp. 21–22; Wölfflin 1891, p. 43; Thode 1908–13, I, p. 114; Justi 1909, p. 184; Weinberger 1967, I, pp. 100–23; Tolnay 1968a, p. 354; Tolnay 1969, I, pp. 101–02, cat. VIII; Baldini 1973, no. 17; Hartt 1976, pp. 124–29; Barocchi 1982, pp. 3–13; Echinger-Maurach 1998, pp. 274–310; Barolsky 2003.
According to Vasari, in 1504, having just completed his David (Galleria dell’Accademia,
emulation and imitation in florence
Florence) and while in the process of preparing the fresco of The Battle of Cascina—two works commissioned by the gonfaloniere of the new Florentine Republic, Piero Soderini— Michelangelo executed two tondi, one for Bartolomeo Pitti and the other for Taddeo Taddei.1 Although he came from an important Florentine banking family who were allies and then rivals of the Medici, not much research has been done on Bartolomeo Pitti. The only element shedding light on how he came to know Michelangelo and, perhaps, commissioned the tondo is a document found by Michael Hirst.2 On July 1, 1503, Bartolomeo entered the fabrica of Florence cathedral as one of the operai. This was less than a month after Michelangelo first showed his almost finished David. The importance to Michelangelo’s career of the Pitti Tondo, a work intended for private devotions, was a late discovery.3 Together with the Bruges Madonna (Notre-Dame, Bruges, 1504), the Taddei Tondo (fig. 185) and the Doni Tondo (fig. 179), it effectively constitutes part of the artist’s response to Leonardo’s cartoon and work on the Saint Anne theme. Michelangelo probably used the tondo in order to make his work closer to painting.4 This circular bas-relief form, which originated in
Fig. 185. Michelangelo, Virgin and Child with the Young St. John, known as the Taddei Tondo, c. 1503–04, The Royal Academy, London.
Quattrocento Florence, was traditionally employed for private uses. However, according to Vasari, Michelangelo “roughed out but left unfinished” both the Pitti Tondo and the Taddei Tondo. He left them in an incomplete state called non finito,5 which art historians have compared to Leonardo’s art of sfumato in painting. Whether intentional or not, Michelangelo’s non finito enhances the unity of the figures with their ground and gives a strong impression of movement, both these effects being due to the vibration of the light over the roughly worked surface of the stone. As a painter, however, Michelangelo ignored Leonardo’s technique in favor of the kind of sculptural modeling and linear contours found in the Doni Tondo. For the Pitti Tondo, Michelangelo represented a Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John. The theme of Virgin with a book was a familiar one in Florence. As in the Doni Tondo, which he painted later, and in several drawings, Michelangelo relegates the young Saint John to the background of the scene.6 For Charles de Tolnay, the only known study for this tondo is the small drawing in Chantilly (c. 1503, Musée Condé, Chantilly).7 However, the posture of the Virgin is similar to that of the Virgin in drawing INV. 6858 at the Louvre (cat. 86).8 According to Tolnay, Michelangelo used the same gradine for the Virgin’s head, bust and drapery, for the whole of Christ’s body and for the young Saint John, but worked with a broader gradine for part of the Virgin’s right sleeve. To obtain the parallel lines to the left of the Virgin and the right of the Infant, he used a chisel, leaving the marble around the Virgin’s head roughly worked. While the prototype for Michelangelo’s Taddei Tondo is to be found in Donatello’s Virgins in sculpted profile,9 for the Pitti Tondo he used the pyramidal composition and monumentality of the figures in Leonardo’s work. The Virgin here sits at the center of the composition, her body in profile, her face in half-profile. On her lap is an open book on which the Child is resting his elbow. Her head is in high relief and rises above the upper edge of the tondo, while her very fine, rectilinear facial features recall those of the David and Saint Pius (c. 1504, cathedral, Piccolomini Chapel, Siena). Her androgynous features, her clothes, and her hair evoke the antique statuary, teste ideali (“ideal heads”) and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel,10 which heightens the premonitory quality of the scene and the importance of the figure of the Virgin.11 According to Tolnay, her posture and drapery are similar to those of the Prudence by Jacopo della Quercia (Fonte Gaia, Siena).12 The figure of Faith sculpted by Donatello for the baptistery in Siena was another model for the Virgin’s face and hair. The ruched drapery round the small of her back may come from the Virgin in Leonardo’s Saint Anne. Unlike other Madonnas with the book, such as Raphael’s La Belle Jardinière (cat. 88), this Virgin is not preventing the child from reading. His
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