Daniele Ricciarelli

Daniele Ricciarelli was born in Volterra, in Tuscany, in 1509. The exact day and month of his birth are not recorded in surviving sources. He first learned to draw in Siena, according to tradition under Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as Il Sodoma, and then progressed under the architect and painter Baldassare Peruzzi. He then moved to Rome, where he worked with Perino del Vaga before entering the orbit of Michelangelo, who became his close friend, artistic guide, and the dominant influence on his mature style.

His major independent commission was the Descent from the Cross for the Orsini Chapel in the church of Santissima Trinita dei Monti, completed around 1545 and based on drawings by Michelangelo, still regarded as his masterpiece. He also worked on decorations for the Farnese Palace and the Medici palace at Piazza Navona, and began, but never finished, stucco and painted decoration for the Sala dei Re. Following the Council of Trent, Pope Paul IV commissioned him, in the years after Michelangelo's death in 1564, to paint draperies over the nude figures in Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, the task that produced his lasting nickname. Late in his career he turned increasingly to sculpture, leaving unfinished an equestrian bronze of King Henry II of France, his final project. Daniele Ricciarelli died in Rome on 4 April 1566, at about the age of fifty-seven.

Reference sources consistently describe Ricciarelli as an Italian Mannerist painter and sculptor noted for finely drawn, highly idealized figures in the manner of Michelangelo, and his critical reputation has always been bound up with that relationship, both its prestige and its complications. The Braghettone episode has made him a recurring reference point in discussions of censorship and artistic legacy, while the Descent from the Cross is treated by Italian art-historical sources as one of the most important examples of Mannerist painting in Rome. Modern curatorial attention, including the 2017 exhibition of the d'Elci panels at the Palazzo Corsini in Rome and their subsequent acquisition by the Uffizi Galleries, has reinforced his standing as a significant if underrepresented figure in public collections, and Uffizi leadership has indicated openness to further exhibitions of his work in Volterra and Siena.

Daniele Ricciarelli is a sixteenth-century Old Master rather than an artist with an active contemporary market. The confirmed auction record for a work attributed to him is the sculpture Dido reclining, asleep, sold at Christie's London in 2016 as part of the Brian Sewell: Critic & Collector sale for GBP 797,000 (about USD 1.03 million), which Christie's reported as a world auction record for the artist; the exact date of that 2016 sale is not confirmed. His most significant recent market episode involved two rediscovered panels from the Pannocchieschi d'Elci collection in Siena, Elijah in the Desert and Madonna and Child with Saints John and Barbara, which passed through the dealer Galleria Benappi and were subject to an Italian declaration of cultural interest restricting export, before being acquired directly by the Uffizi Galleries in Florence between 2017 and 2019 rather than sold at a headline public auction. That pattern, a rare discovery moving toward a museum rather than through the saleroom, is typical of how his surviving work tends to circulate.

There is no gallery or estate representing Daniele Ricciarelli and no catalogue raisonne. His only confirmed auction record, a 2016 Christie's sale of the sculpture Dido reclining, asleep for about USD 1.03 million, is now a decade old and reflects a single result rather than an active trading market. His known paintings are concentrated in museums, including the Uffizi, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Capitoline Museums, the latter holding a work only attributed to him, with additional works remaining in Roman churches and palaces. When an autograph work does surface, as with the d'Elci panels, Italian export law can restrict its movement and museums are typically the eventual owner rather than a private buyer. Verification of any purported work rests on documentary sources, principally Vasari, and on curatorial and provenance research rather than on a modern authentication body.