The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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CATALOGUE 49 WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY AUTOGRAPH SHEETS 239

option. Hirst ( 1988 ) suggests that both were once parts

of a single sheet, a plausible hypothesis that could, how-

ever, only be verified by a comparison of both in the

flesh. A third drawing, which is probably connected, is

the study of a right arm and shoulder seen from the front

on Cat. 55 verso; this would fit readily enough with the

ex–Gathorne-Hardy drawing.

The obvious role for a torso such as this in Michelan-

gelo’s late work would be for that of Christ in aPieta`, per-

haps one similar to the UbedaPiet`adesigned by Michelan-

gelo for Sebastiano del Piombo, with the left arm being

raised by an attendant figure. However, the legs sketched

lightly in the lower half of the page, which are presum-

ably for the same figure, indicate a standing pose. The

right knee, very faintly sketched and barely visible on

the recto, is studied again in more detail and much more

clearly on the verso, and the right thigh and its junction

with the groin is sketched again on the verso of the ex–

Gathorne-Hardy sheet. Furthermore, although the head

drawn on the recto of the latter is bent downwards to the

figure’s left, it does not loll, as it would on a corpse, and

it seems that the left arm is lifted by the figure’s own voli-

tion, not by an attendant as in theLamentationin Haarlem

(A 35 verso/VT 65 /Corpus 434 ;black chalk, c. 300 × 305

mm, fragmentary). Both drawings, therefore, would be

for a heavily muscled standing man, seen from the front,

supporting some burden with his left arm, probably an

attendant figure in aDeposition.

Apossible qualification is introduced, however, by

a fourth drawing, a torn fragment in Casa Buonarroti