MADRID.- For three months, the Museo del Prado will be exhibiting The Young Saint John the Baptist, the only sculpture by Michelangelo in Spain. It can now be seen in Room 47 of the Museum’s Villanueva Building. This is an early work by the artist dating from prior to the Vatican Pietà and the Sistine Chapel frescoes. It was given by the Duke of Florence, Cosimo I de’ Medici, to Francisco de los Cobos, secretary to the Emperor Charles V. Cobos had it sent to his villa in Sabiote (Spain) then after his death it adorned the funerary chapel that he had built in his native city of Úbeda.

On display in the chapel of the Salvador in Úbeda (Jaén) from the 16th century, it was published in 1930 as a work by Michelangelo. A few years later at the outset of the war in 1936 it was seriously damaged and was reduced to pieces.

The Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli-Sevilla, which owns the work, commissioned its restoration from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure e Laboratori di Restauro in Florence, a project that began in 1994. Following a lengthy and delicate restoration process using the most advanced 3-d laser volumetric reconstruction and after the display of the sculpture in Florence and Venice, The Young Saint John the Baptist is now returning to Spain to be shown at the Museo del Prado within its “Invited Work” programme, after which it will return to its original location in Úbeda.

The work

The biographies of Michelangelo by Vasari (1550) and Condivi (1553) recount that following the artist’s return to Florence from Bologna in 1495, his first commission was for a marble sculpture of a “San Giovannino” for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’Medici (cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent), now identified as the present work. Rather than following the model of Donatello’s Saint John the Baptist (Florence, Museo del Bargello) as other Florentine sculptors had done, Michelangelo depicted the Baptist as much younger, no more than a boy of six or seven. Looking to the example of Hellenistic Greek sculpture, he supported the left leg against a rock, creating elegant oblique lines through its slight bend, an aesthetic resource that he would deploy in other works. The bent arms, slightly tilted head and emphasis on the nude body all recall models from the classical sculpture so admired by the artist. There are evident compositional similarities between this figure and other works by Michelangelo, including the small Saint John the Baptist in the unfinished painting known as The Manchester Madonna (London, National Gallery, ca.1496) and the sculpture of Bacchus with a Satyr in the Museo del Bargello (1497-98).

History

In 1498/99 this Young Saint John the Baptist was in the Florentine palace of Lorenzo de Pierfrancesco de’Medici, the patron of Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510). Its next owner was Cosimo I de’Medici, who assumed power in Florence in 1537 with the support of Charles V. After acquiring the Palazzo Vecchio and Pierfrancesco’s collections, Cosimo honoured Francisco de los Cobos with the gift of this statue by Michelangelo. According to a letter from Cosimo, that same autumn the sculpture was sent directly to Spain, to Cobos’s villa in Sabiote. After his death it adorned the funerary chapel that he had built in his native city of Úbeda, a large construction completed in 1568. It is described as housing “A free-standing alabaster Saint John the Baptist”. The sculpture remained on display there until 1936, in a niche beside the gilt-wood high altar by Alonso de Berruguete (ca.1488-1561), which was also seriously damaged that year.

Restoration

In an act of vandalism that took place at the start of the Civil War, in July 1936 the sculpture was smashed into pieces and the head burned. Only fourteen fragments could be salvaged, equivalent to 40% of its original volume. The delicate and complex project of restoring the work began in 1994 at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure e Laboratori di Restauro. Innovative methods were employed, including laser to clean the burned and blackened surface of the head, and a virtual 3-D reconstruction of the sculpture based on photographs taken shortly before its destruction. Once it had been reassembled using the original fragments of marble, the lost areas were reconstructed using fibreglass then coated with stucco, toned with tempera and sealed with wax and varnish. The restored work went on display in Florence in 2013.