The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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88 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS CATALOGUE 8

account. Of course, Vasari and Condivi recount that in

his youth Michelangelo made replicas of earlier drawings,

artificially aged them, and returned them to their owners

as the originals; in principle, this drawing might be an

example of that practice. But such an explanation would

again presuppose that the style of the drawing is that of

the early quattrocento, and in the compiler’s view it seems

closer to the world of Ghirlandaio in its flexible and quite

dense cross-hatching. Nevertheless, because the young

Michelangelo copied work by Masaccio and Giotto, and