Kathleen W. Christian
Raffaele Riario, Jacopo Galli, and Michelangelo’s Bacchus, 1471–1572
On Michelangelo’s first day in Rome, in June 1496, Cardinal Raffaele Riario asked him if he could create “something beautiful” in competition with the antique. The twenty-one-year old sculptor responded to this unique challenge with the marble Bacchus now in the Bargello museum. This statue, as well as the Sleeping Cupid which first brought Michelangelo to Riario’s attention, have long been shrouded in mystery, and the Bacchus as well as its patron have long suffered from critical censure.
Through a comprehensive analysis of overlooked and previously-unpublished sources, this study sheds new light on the Sleeping Cupid, the Bacchus, and a fascinating period in the history of Renaissance Rome when the careers of Riario, the merchant-banker Jacopo Galli, and Michelangelo were closely intertwined. It considers the rise of the Riario dynasty starting with the election of Pope Sixtus IV in 1471, Riario’s partnership with Galli in the reconstruction of the palace now known as the Palazzo della Cancelleria, the attempted sale of Michelangelo’s Sleeping Cupid in Rome as an antiquity, Riario’s patronage of the Bacchus, and the Bacchus‘s display in the house of the Galli up until its sale to the Medici in 1572. Taking a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, it offers a fundamental reassessment of Cardinal Riario’s career as a patron, of Jacopo Galli’s role as an intermediary for both Riario and Michelangelo, and of Michelangelo’s collaboration with Riario and Galli.
This book appears in the Harvey Miller series All’Antica, edited by Cammy Brothers and Kathleen Christian
It is published in print and is available for download as an open-access PDF
DOI: 10.1484/M.HMANTICA-EB.5.135830
print ISBN: 9781915487117
e-book ISBN: 9781915487247
