Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Michelangelo Anselmi, citizen of Parma

Michelangelo Anselmi
Putti playing with a mask
before 1544
drawing
British Museum

Michelangelo Anselmi
Studies of heads
before 1556
drawing
Rijksmuseum

Michelangelo Anselmi
Putti playing with hoops
ca. 1548
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

In Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Painters (1568) the biography of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) comprises about 150 pages. The biography of his contemporary Michelangelo Anselmi (1492-1556) occupies one paragraph 

"Parma also has had at various times many excellent craftsmen and men of fine genius, as has been said above, for, besides one Cristofano Castelli, who painted a very beautiful altar-piece for the Duomo in the year 1499, and Francesco Mazzuoli, whose Life has been written, there have been many other able men in that city.  Mazzuoli, as has been related, executed certain works in the Madonna della Steccata, but left that undertaking unfinished at his death, and Giulio Romano, having made a colored design on paper, which may be seen in that place by everyone, directed that a certain Michelangelo Anselmi, a Sienese by origin, but a citizen of Parma by adoption, being a good painter, should carry that cartoon into execution, wherein is the Coronation of Our Lady.  This he did excellently well, in truth, so that he well deserved that there should be allotted to him a great niche  one of four very large niches that are in that temple  opposite to that in which he had executed the above-mentioned work after the design of Giulio.  Whereupon, setting his hand to this, he carried well on towards completion there the Adoration of the Magi, with a good number of beautiful figures, making on the flat arch, as was related before in the Life of Mazzuoli, the Wise Virgins and the design of copper rosettes; but, when about a third of that work remained for him to do, he died, and so it was finished by Bernard Soiaro of Cremona, as we shall relate in a short time.  By the hand of that Michelangelo Anselmi is the Chapel of the Conception in S. Francesco in the same city; and a Celestial Glory in the Chapel of the Cross in S. Pier Martire."

Michelangelo Anselmi
Putti supporting coat of arms
ca. 1532-35
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Michelangelo Anselmi
Studies of seated men
ca. 1532-35
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Michelangelo Anselmi
Young David playing the harp
ca. 1548-50
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Michelangelo Anselmi
Dead Christ supported by angels
ca. 1540-50
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Michelangelo Anselmi
Expelling demon from a woman
1520s
drawing
National Gallery, Prague

Michelangelo Anselmi
Legend of St Anselm and Abbot Helsin
ca. 1532
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Michelangelo Anselmim
Sheet of sketches with figures of Europa and St George
ca. 1525-30
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Michelangelo Anselmi
Cupid throwing flowers at sleeping nymph
ca. 1525-30
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Michelangelo Anselmi
Study of seated man
before 1544
drawing
British Museum

Michelangelo Anselmi
Apollo and Marsyas in a landscape
ca. 1540
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Michelangelo Anselmi
Virgin in Glory, St John the Baptist, St Stephen
1530s
oil on panel
Louvre