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"Ché ultima mano!": Tiberio Calcagni's Marginal Annotations to Condivi's Life of Michelangelo*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Caroline Elam
Caroline Elam*
Affiliation:
The Burlington Magazine
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Abstract

This article discusses the authorship and content of a number of marginal annotations made to a copy of Ascanio Condivi's 1553 Life of Michelangelo. The annotations are shown here to be the work of the artist's last assistant, Tiberio Calcagni, and were probably written into the book c. 1563-64, some of them predating and some postdating the master's death. They record Michelangelo's reactions to mistakes in Condivi's account, as well as confirm the veracity of some of the "tall stories" found in the biography.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , Summer 1998 , pp. 475 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1998

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Footnotes

*

I should like to express my gratitude to Michael Hirst for proposing that I write this piece and for making many astute suggestions; to Giovanni Nencioni for sharing his new readings of the postille; to Pina Ragionieri and the staff of the Casa Buonarroti for giving me generous access to the Archivio Buonarroti and help with obtaining photographs; to Walter Kaiser and Patricia Rubin for kind hospitality at Villa I Tatti, making this research possible; and to Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt for supporting the project in every way.

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