The Flagellation, c.1540 (chalk on paper)

A copy by Clovio of a lost drawing by Michelangelo, made as a model for Sebastiano del Piombo’s mural in the church of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome. The commission by the Florentine banker Pierfrancesco Borgherini to decorate his family chapel was probably allocated to Sebastiano on Michelangelo’s advice. Michelangelo and Sebastiano had become friends in the years following the latter’s arrival in Rome in 1511, and Michelangelo provided him with drawings as models for his paintings – most notably the Raising of Lazarus for Narbonne cathedral, painted in competition with Raphael’s Transfiguration for the same destination. In that same year, 1516, Michelangelo also sent Sebastiano drawings for the Flagellation, though Sebastiano did not complete the Borgherini chapel until 1524. Clovio probably made this copy when the original – about which nothing further is known – was still in Sebastiano’s possession, for, according to Vasari, the two men were close friends. It must provide a reasonably accurate record of the original, but the areas of shadow are more even in tone than might be expected in a drawing by Michelangelo, and the contours are dully regular. The drawing probably appears in Clovio’s posthumous inventory as ‘Un Χρο alla colonna in lapis rosso con tre figure di Michelagniolo fata da D. Giulio’ (A. Bertolotti, Don Giulio Clovio, Modena 1882, p. 14).