The same fate was in store for Michelangelo’s Cartoon.  All that remains to us of that great work is the chiaroscuro transcript at Holkham, a sketch for the whole composition in the Albertina Gallery at Vienna, which differs in some important details from the Holkham group, several interesting pen-and-chalk drawings by Michelangelo’s own hand, also in the Albertina Collection, and a line-engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi, commonly known as “Les Grimpeurs.”

We do not know at what exact time Michelangelo finished his Cartoon in 1506.  He left it, says Condivi, in the Sala del Papa.  Afterwards it must have been transferred to the Sala del Gran Consiglio; for Albertini, in his Memoriale, or Guide-Book to Florence, printed in 1510, speaks of both “the works of Lionardo da Vinci and the designs of Michelangelo” as then existing in that hall.  Vasari asserts that it was taken to the house of the Medici, and placed in the great upper hall, but gives no date.  This may have taken place on the return of the princely family in 1512.  Cellini confirms this view, since he declares that when he was copying the Cartoon, which could hardly have happened before 1513, the Battle of Pisa was at the Palace of the Medici, and the Battle of Anghiari at the Sala del Papa.  The way in which it finally disappeared is involved in some obscurity, owing to Vasari’s spite and mendacity.  In the first, or 1550, edition of the “Lives of the Painters,” he wrote as follows:  “Having become a regular object of study to artists, the Cartoon was carried to the house of the Medici, into the great upper hall; and this was the reason that it came with too little safeguard into the hands of those said artists:  inasmuch as, during the illness of the Duke Giuliano, when no one attended to such matters, it was torn in pieces by them and scattered abroad, so that fragments may be found in many places, as is proved by those existing now in the house of Uberto Strozzi, a gentleman of Mantua, who holds them in great respect.”  When Vasari published his second edition, in 1568, he repeated this story of the destruction of the Cartoon, but with a very significant alteration.  Instead of saying “it was torn in pieces by them” he now printed “it was torn in pieces, as hath been told elsewhere.”  Now Bandinelli, Vasari’s mortal enemy, and the scapegoat for all the sins of his generation among artists, died in 1559, and Vasari felt that he might safely defame his memory.  Accordingly he introduced a Life of Bandinelli into the second edition of his work, containing the following passage:  “Baccio was in the habit of frequenting the place where the Cartoon stood more than any other artists, and had in his possession a false key; what follows happened at the time when Piero Soderini was deposed in 1512, and the Medici returned.  Well, then, while the palace was in tumult and confusion through this revolution, Baccio went alone, and tore the Cartoon into a thousand fragments.