Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 105. (Budapest, 2006)

LOUIS A. WALDMAN: A Drawing by Tribolo for Montorsoli's Lost Hercules and Antaeus at Castello

to spew forth from the mouth of Antaeus as he exhales his final breath; he also claims that Ammannati produced his bronze replacement "according to Tribolo's design". It would be dangerous, however, to assume that the statue we see today is nothing more than a literal "translation" of Tribolo's invention, or that we can interpret it as a faithful replica of the lost statue begun by Montorsoli.

4 No extant visual documentation records the appearance of the statue Montorsoli began under the supervision of Tribolo. But a newly discovered sketch by Tribolo, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, seems to represent a primo pensiero for the work's composition, and thus offers a tantalizing glimpse both of the ill-fated statue's possible appearance, and of the creative process involved in its design (fig. 3). The Budapest drawing, catalogued under the inventory number 1944, shows Hercules lifting and crushing Antaeus, in a pose that is almost a mirror image of the composition adopted by Ammannati decades later (fig. 1). In contrast to the fully nude bronze group, however, the hero in the drawing wears his traditional attribute, the lionskin. And Antaeus in the sketch lifts his right arm with vehemence, making it the vertical apex of the design, while Ammannati's bronze figure pushes against Hercules's head, and it is his elbow that forms the topmost peak of the composition. Instead of curling his left arm behind his own back in a vain attempt to pry away Hercules's fingers, the Antaeus of the drawing pushes diagonally out against the hero's bulging biceps. And the wonder is that all this drama transpires in a drawing which is, in reality, only a minuscule fragment. It is a noble fragment, however, certainly powerful enough to inspire one of the greatest drawing collectors, Sir Joshua Reynolds, to mount it on one of his typical French-ruled mattes.

1 The sheet itself (not including the mount on which it is laid down) now measures a mere 64x44 mm. Along with the collection mark of Reynolds (Lugt 2364), appear those of Jonathan Richardson (Lugt 2170), Antonio Cesare Poggi (Lugt 617), and Prince Nikolaus Esterházy (Lugt 1965). The sketch is executed with brisk strokes in brown ink, with a fairly broad-nibbed BARTOLOMEO AMMANNATI AFTER DESIGNS BY NICCOtO TRIBOLO. HERCULES AND ANTAEUS OF THE VILLA CASTELLO