An accurate red chalk copy of Michelangelo’s presentation drawing of Archers Shooting at a Herm (RCIN 912778).

The drawing is inscribed in pen on the verso, in two different hands: ‘M.B.CApn’ and ‘Copiato da Bernardino Cesari’. The ascription of the copy to Bernardino Cesari is presumably reliable. Bernardino was the younger brother and assistant of the leading painter Giuseppe Cesari, il Cavaliere d’Arpino, who had close connections with the Farnese family (for example, organising the catafalque for Cardinal Alessandro in 1589). Bernardino probably had direct access to Michelangelo’s presentation drawings while they were in the Farnese’s possession, and in this case before the original sheet was cut down on the top and sides. Giovanni Baglione (Vite, 1642, p. 147) stated that Bernardino copied some of the drawings that Michelangelo had given to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, and that the copies were so well done that they could not be told apart from the original – though the present sheet has a hardness of outline and smoothness of modelling that readily distinguishes it from Michelangelo’s drawing. (See P. Joannides, Michelangelo and his Influence, 1996, no. 17.)