Michelangelo Buonarroti
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was a sculptor, painter, architect and poet whose career helped define the Italian Renaissance. Born in Caprese and trained in Florence, he worked for powerful patrons in both Florence and Rome. The David, the paintings of the Sistine Chapel and his later architectural projects belong to different media, but all disclose a sustained engagement with the expressive possibilities of the human body.
Drawing was fundamental to that engagement. A study could test the turn of a torso, the placing of a limb or the distribution of weight before a figure entered a larger composition. Repeated contours and changes of emphasis record decisions in progress. The body is rarely a neutral object of description: its tension, balance and direction give physical form to thought and feeling. Even a preparatory fragment can therefore possess a strong independent presence.
The Sistine studies represented here offer access to this working process at the scale of the sheet rather than the scale of a fresco. They should be encountered as drawings, with their particular marks and unfinished passages, not as miniature substitutes for the completed ceiling. Looking between the studies on the two sides of the paper reveals how an artist can reconsider a figure through successive attempts. Their economy and force make visible the connection between close anatomical attention and the monumental invention for which Michelangelo is best known.
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