Beskrivning: Motivkategori: Arkitektur, profanarkitektur, allmänna byggnader
Plats: Rom, Italien

Catalogue raisonné: Bortolozzi, Italian Architectural Drawings from the Cronstedt Collection, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2020 (cat.no. 111)

Anon. late 16th century French draughtsman, Hand B of the Cronstedt Collection
Pen and brown ink over black chalk, drawn with straightedge, compass and freehand, 
55.8/55 × 41.9 cm
NM H CC 1378r

PAPER: middle weight, folded in the middle. The upper half of the sheet has been lined on to a secondary support of thick rough late 16th-century paper using a starch paste and subsequently trimmed to the size of the mount 

WATERMARK: Tree 28
WATERMARK OF THE SECONDARY SUPPORT: Pilgrim 7 

INSCRIPTIONS: porte pio .4 (at lower edge) 

MEASUREMENTS: Roman palmi; scale at the lower edge with 10 units [palmi] = 7 cm PROVENANCE: Carl Johan Cronstedt and descendants; Eric Langenskiöld; gift to the Nationalmuseum of Stockholm 1941 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: unpublished 

The cornerstone of the new gate of Porta Pia, one of Michelangelo’s last architectural commissions, was laid on 18 June 1561. According to Vasari (1568), Michelangelo submitted three designs that were “totally extravagant and most beautiful, from which the Pope [Pius IV] chose to have the least expensive one made”. Work proceeded rapidly. By Michelangelo’s death in 1564, the construction had reached the attic level. Scholars have expressed many doubts concerning the autography of the attic. Ackerman (1961, p. 127) suggests that the upper portion of the gate was probably not completed in 1568 since a print by Faleti published the same year shows features that were not executed. By contrast, Argan and Contardi (1990, 350) argue that the gate was very likely completed in 1565, since no more payments are recorded after the summer. Maurer (2006, 132–136) agrees with Ackerman, convincingly demonstrating that by the end of 1565 the crowning section remained unfinished. In 1853, Virginio Vespignani reconstructed the attic of the gate in an arbitrary manner. Michelangelo’s design process for the Porta Pia cannot be reconstructed since most of the surviving drawings are for the central portal only (for a list of the drawings, see Ackerman 1961, 128–130). The Stockholm drawing is a less accurately drafted replica of a drawing in the Metropolitan (Scholz Scrapbook 49.92.56r), most likely a preparatory drawing for an engraving made in the workshop of Étienne Dupérac (according to Schwager 1973, it was Dupérac who prepared the plate for the Faleti print). A large size drawing, it shows the portal almost as it was executed, with no measurements but with exact proportions and a drawing scale. By contrast to the drawing in the Metropolitan, the mask on the keystone is missing and the rendering of the garland in the pediment is less accurate. The flowers and fruit garland represented by the New York draughtsman, and roughly reproduced by the Stockholm copyist, recall those in the “working drawing” by Tiberio Calcagni in the Uffizi (2148 Ar) and not the slender, stylized garland that was built. This may be evidence that the drawing in New York and its Stockholm copy record the portal when it was still under construction, c. 1565. On the verso of both the New York and Stockholm drawings is the elevation and profile of one of the “kneeling” windows on either side of the portal (Cat. no. 112). An engraving of the portal, fairly similar to Scholz Scrapbook 49.92.56r, appeared in the 1602 Orlandi edition of Vignola’s Regola delli cinque Ordini, with another two plates representing gates along the Via Pia (not by Michelangelo): the gate of the villa of Cardinal Ridolfo Pio da Carpi and of the villa of Cardinal Grimani, patriarch of Aquileia (here Cat. 116). 

LITERATURE: McDougall 1960; Ackerman 1961, Catalogue, 125–131; Schwager 1973; Pontani, Tramutola 1989; Argan, Contardi 1990, 350–353; Maurer 2006; Maurer 2009; Ruschi 2012; Hemsoll 2013
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Porta Pia, Rom. Elevation av inre porten | Nationalmuseum

Rome: Porta Pia, elevation of the portal, c. 1565 | Nationalmuseum

Titel (sv): Porta Pia, Rom. Elevation av inre porten
Titel (en): Rome: Porta Pia, elevation of the portal, c. 1565
Tidigare: Porta Pia, Rome. Elevation of the inner gate

Title (sv): Porta Pia, Rom. Elevation av inre porten
Title (en): Rome: Porta Pia, elevation of the portal, c. 1565
Previous: Porta Pia, Rome. Elevation of the inner gate