The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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

among the most complete and evocative nude studies ever

produced.

After completing the Sistine ceiling, Michelangelo

returned to work on the Tomb of Julius II and simultane-

ously accepted a commission for theRisen Christ, planned

for the Roman church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. His

single surviving study for theChrist(Corpus 94 )was made

in tightly hatched pen, akin to his drawings of the first

half-decade, and it has recently been shown that it must

be some four years later than previously assumed because

it was made for the second version of the statue, not the

first. But in preparing theprigioni,although not abandon-

ing pen, he seems to have made more use than hitherto

of red chalk, establishing rich surface modelling (Cor-

pus 62 ). Red chalk was also used for some compositional

drawings (Corpus 73 ).

Increasingly, however, Michelangelo’s sculptural ide-

als changed in the course of the second decade. Instead

of polished surfaces and exquisitely detailed musculature,

the mode of theBelvedere Torsoseems gradually to have

come to dominate his imagination. He had already reg-

istered its effect in the laterignudiof the Sistine ceiling,

in which contour plays a reduced role, and in which pre-

cise and crystalline modelling gives way to more massive,

less closely defined, and more rubbery form. And, with

the passage of the third decade, Michelangelo increas-

ingly came to see this as a mode for his sculpture as well.

As a result, he seems to have changed his employment

of media once more. He continued to use pen, in an

analytical mode equivalent to ́ecorch ́estudies in order to

establish the underlying structure of his figures (Corpus

209 and 224 ), and then he worked up the surfaces in black

chalk (Cats. 26 , 27 recto), as if to avoid the flesh-evoking

qualities of red chalk. Of course, no system was absolute,

but only one study in red chalk remains for a statue in

the New Sacristy, and this is specifically concerned with

establishing the qualities of the surface (Cat. 27 verso).

Throughout this time, Michelangelo frequently used

red chalk for architectural copies (Corpus 516 , etc.),

grasping in a single stroke both line and texture, but he

employed pen and black chalk for laying out architectural

sketches, the former when it was a matter of establish-

ing the main lines and relations of architectural elements,

the latter when it was the overall pictorial effect that he

wished to establish (Cats. 39 recto, 25 recto). Architecture,

which, from the mid-15 2 0s, came to occupy an increas-

ing amount of his time and imagination, was initially

for Michelangelo a support and frame for sculpture –

figures in the round and compositions in relief. For these

projects he continued to employ highly finishedmodelli

(Corpus 497 ) like those he had prepared for the Julius

Tomb (Corpus 55 and 489 ), following in this the lead of

his architectural master Giuliano da Sangallo.

Nevertheless, compared with those of Giuliano,

Michelangelo’s modelliare richer and more pictorial,

employing underdrawing in black chalk, generally used

with a ruler, ruled pen-lines, and chalk or pen out-

lines combined with wash and, sometimes, white height-

ening, to establish the forms of the statues and reliefs

envisaged for the project (Corpus 276 and 280 recto). It

is Michelangelo’s drawings of this type, particularly the

earlier more detailedmodellifor architectural–sculptural

projects, where the detailing can appear finicky and the

dynamism and inventiveness of the figures is apparent only

after close study, that modern criticism has found hard-

est to accept; but with expanding study of Renaissance

architectural drawings, they are gradually coming to be

appreciated at their true value.

From the mid-15 2 0sonwards, as Michelangelo became

more of a pure architect, reducing or even eliminating

figurative sculpture from his projects, drawings of this type

abandon the use of pen-lines, as the grander masses of the

architectural forms take precedence over details. Some of

his project drawings for doors and windows, employing

chalk, wash, and white heightening, are among the most

painterly drawings Michelangelo had produced up to that

time (Corpus55 0and 551 ). With characteristic ingenuity,

he saw the possibilities that the fusion of media created.

As the functional role of pen diminished, Michelan-

gelo used it in other ways. During the15 2 0s, he pro-

duced a number of drawings whose techniques, dense

cross-hatching or open parallel hatching, often combined

with rather rangy contour, look back to those of his

early pen-drawings. Some critics have indeed dated them

early, but they are coarser and more exaggerated both

in local modelling and in outline than the drawings of

the first decade. Several sheets of this kind are in the

Ashmolean (Cats. 22 , 23 , 33 ), and none of them can

be connected with a work in another medium. They

have an emotional exasperation, combined with a cari-

catural, satirical edge rarely seen in Michelangelo’s draw-

ings of other periods. They relate neither formally nor in

mood to projects that Michelangelo had under way at the

time, hence the temptation of another group of critics

to give them to draughtsmen like Baccio Bandinelli or

even Bartolommeo Passerotti, both of whom specialised

in vehement and “expressive” pen styles. It is not impossi-

ble that Michelangelo was actually responding to the work

of Bandinelli, which he knew well, but these drawings

may also have represented a private need – of a type famil-

iar from Leonardo’s work – to indulge in the grotesque

and brutal as a counter-balance to the sublimely beautiful