The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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50 THE DRAWINGS OF MICHELANGELO AND HIS FOLLOWERS IN THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM

varied than Ghirlandaio’s. Risking illegibility by excessive

application of ink, he went down densely in the shadows

and created greater range and flexibility in the mid-tones,

thereby imbuing his forms with more vitality and mobil-

ity than those of his master. Put thus, the process sounds

simple; in practice, it demanded extraordinary dexterity

and manual control. In one or two instances, Michelan-

gelo carried this technique to a pitch of extreme virtu-

osity, creating plastic form by the pure intersection of

hatching lines, without any bounding contours or inter-

nal guidelines, so that the forms emerge dream-like from

the paper (Corpus 35 ).

In a few instances, Michelangelo employed a form of

hatching somewhat different from that demonstrated in

his usual pen drawings (Corpus 34 and 35 ). In these, a

diagonal orientation of the strokes creates a sheen on the

forms, not unlike that sometimes found in Bandinelli’s

drawings, especially his studies for bronze statues. This,

however, probably related to specific commissions or spe-

cific effects and does not seem to have been a common

practice of Michelangelo’s.

Other artists who employed cross-hatched pen ap-

proached it in either a looser more sketchy way or else

amore systematic one, losing the vitality and substan-

tiality of Michelangelo’s stroke. Thus, Bandinelli creates

minimal textural variety within his figures, whereas in

Michelangelo’s there is great differentiation between flesh

and drapery and different types of flesh.

Because there is no guarantee that the survival of

drawings is proportional, it may be that the examples

of Michelangelo’s apparently characteristic type of pen

drawing are less representative than they seem. Neverthe-

less, although copies of lost drawings do not suggest that

any radical reassessment is required, it is wise to include

some caveats. For example, a group of drawings usually

distributed by art-historians over several years might in

fact all be for the same project and be drawn over a few

days, or weeks. Similarly it must be asked whether partic-

ular types of projects called for particular types of draw-

ings, and whether aspects of style considered to be essen-

tial were in fact contingent. Thus, one drawing, which

has been found to be particularly problematic, the study

for the Magdalen (Corpus 31 )inthe National Gallery

Entombment,isunusual in several ways. Its definition of

form differs from, and is, in certain respects, inferior to,

the modelling normally associated with Michelangelo;

and it is unique in his work in being drawn on rose-tinted

paper. If the dating of theEntombmentproject to15 0 1is

correct, it could be argued that these features correspond

to an early drawing style of which no other examples

have yet been identified, and that drawings commonly

believed to antedate15 0 1have been incorrectly placed.

On the other hand, it may be that Michelangelo con-

sciously drew in a particular way for a particular pur-

pose related to the tonal and colouristic qualities required

for painting rather than sculpture. The doubts that some

critics have had might therefore arise from a misappre-

hension of this drawing’s function and the application to

it of criteria derived from Michelangelo’s drawings for

sculpture.

Afactor that contributes to uncertainty in this case

however is one of the key features of Michelangelo’s art,

his reference to one medium as inspiration for another. It

has been universally remarked – and it goes back to state-

ments by the artist himself – that Michelangelo’s painting

is intensely sculptural; it has been less commonly noted

that some of his sculpture, the St. Peter’sPieta`,for exam-

ple, is intensely pictorial. His architecture too began with

afundamentally pictorial bias, as the project for the fac ̧ade

of San Lorenzo demonstrates, and only gradually matured

into a form of large-scale sculpture, increasingly shorn

of anything extraneous. Such cross-fertilisation among

media naturally makes a straightforwardly functionalist

approach hazardous. And while a supple functionalism

has proved most revealing and rewarding in the study of

Michelangelo’s drawings, it is necessary to be aware of a

possible pitfall: In attempting to fix a purpose for a partic-

ular type of drawing one might merely be inferring too

much from chance – either of survival or handling.

In another aspect of pen drawing, Michelangelo prob-

ably gained inspiration from a different Florentine tra-

dition. Someconcetti,orquick sketches, made in the

first decade are in pure outline (Corpus 40 and 46 ).

Michelangelo employed stressed pen line, with breaks to

evoke the swell of muscles or bones, and his achieve-

ments in this respect are quite remarkable. Pollaiuolo and

Botticelli – with whom he was personally acquainted –

had made use of pure outline, but Michelangelo’s com-

mand of anatomy and capacity for suggestion meant that

he could evoke a fully plastic form with the most mini-

mal means. In this respect, the artist who may most have

influenced him was Leonardo, some of whose drawings

he surely knew, despite the enmity between them. This

interest extended toconcetti,for although Michelangelo

produced very few of the “pentimento” drawings that

characterised Leonardo, he certainly developed some-

thing of Leonardo’s interest in movement and in char-

acterisation by movement.

The earliest chalk drawings that survive from

Michelangelo’s hand are in black chalk and are con-

nected with, or contemporary with, the cartoon for the

Battle of Cascina.Michelangelo probably made charcoal