Folesani Giovanna Perini
University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy
Three as yet unpublished Latin epigrams by an unknown Italian poet of the early to mid-16th century named Giovan Francesco Fabri celebrate Michelangelo as a marble sculptor. In particular one of them praises his statue of a youth nicknamed Ligdamus. The only possible identification of this work in Michelangelo’s extant oeuvre is with his Hermitage statue, a view which has been taken up by Sergej Androsov (Ermitage Italia — Museo statale Ermitage, La scultura italiana dal XIV al XVI secolo. Catalogo della collezione, Milan, Skira, 2008, p. 66) on the basis of the information I passed on to him after the Roman conference (2002) where I delivered a paper on this subject (its proceedings have never been published). This finding would definitely fix the wavering attribution of the statue and remove the work from its alleged context in the funeral monument for Pope Julius II, hinting to a private destination instead, possibly in relation to the ambience of Pope Julius III when still a Cardinal. This would also help explain its diminutive size, obviously unfit for the decoration of the upper storey of a huge funeral monument.
Since 2002 I have gathered some new information on Fabri and his poetical work, and discovered a few facts about his biography. This sheds further light on the intellectual circle of Michelangelo’s admirers in Northern Italy in the late thirties to late fourties of the 16th century. It has got a lot to do with revived humanism, lay values and homosexual relations, disguised as alliances on religious issues. Giovan Francesco Fabri seems to be very much part of it all. His death as a young man, as well as his somewhat embarassing connections, may well explain the long puzzling silence on him and his oeuvre (including his poems on Michelangelo) in terms of damnatio memoriae.