A pen-and-brown-ink diagram of a block of marble drawn by Michelangelo with an estimate of $6,000-8,000 will come up at Christie’s in New York on April 17 as part of A Park Avenue Collection. This sale will comprise French furniture, Old Master paintings, drawings and Chinese works of art, representing more than 40 years of passionate collecting. This small work depicts a block of marble, with the word ‘simile,” or ‘similar’ in English. It comes attached to a letter by Michelangelo’s descendant. The diagram was known in the literature, but recently identified by Christie’s Old Master Drawings Department, who found the letter and diagram attached to the back of a different drawing that had been in a private collection for decades. When Christie’s specialists saw the letter last year they immediately realised the small drawing on the back was by Michelangelo. Subsequent research has confirmed that attribution. The diagram and letter will be offered as a single lot.
A tiny number of works by Michelangelo remain in private hands; perhaps fewer than 10. The current piece is one of a group of diagrams of marble blocks in Michelangelo’s hand, most of which are housed in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, founded by Michelangelo’s last direct male descendent, Cosimo Buonarroti, who died in 1858. It was was given in 1836 to an English tourist, the future governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Bowring. It is likely that Cosimo Buonarroti would occasionally be moved to cut these diagrams from a larger sheet of such drawings for presentation to honored guests.