The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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MICHELANGELO’S DRAWINGS 55

byCosimo I, Duke of Florence. In these drawings, con-

tinuity of form is greater than before, textural differences

are less, and Michelangelo has aimed at a minimalism cor-

responding to the surfaces of his late finished sculptures.

Only two reasonably secure preparatory drawings sur-

vive for the Pauline Chapel frescoes (Cat. 43 , Corpus 358 ),

and no firm conclusions can be inferred from so small a

sample. What is most interesting – and surprising – is the

cartoon fragment for theCrucifixion of Saint Peter(Cor-

pus38 4). This is finished to a miniaturist level, with every

detail defined and then pounced, a precision not found in

the fresco, where the forms are depicted relatively impre-

cisely. Although the present condition of the frescoes is

partly the result of over-cleaning – it seems likely that

in the Pauline Chapel Michelangelo made greater use

ofa seccoretouching than previously – it is evident that

his preparation was deliberately more exact than his exe-

cution and that he was reaching for a softer and more

painterly style in which the aggressive presence of plastic

form would play a diminished role in the generation of

meaning.

This pictorial style, making use of wavering contours

played against broadly evoked central body areas, seems

to have become the dominant mode of the155 0s. The

effect is finally to reduce the importance of contour and

expand that of mass (Cat. 50 ). And this development is

pursued both in the architectural and figurative drawings

that Michelangelo made in his last years, from the later

155 0s until his death in15 6 4.Inthis period, Michelan-

gelo made use of multiple media (Corpus 435 , Cats. 55 ,

56 ). This was natural for ground plans, in which wash

wasfrequently used in conjunction with line, and even

in the151 0s, Michelangelo had employed more than one

medium formodelliof architectural elements seen in ele-

vation, particularly windows and doors, as well, of course,

as tombs. But the pictorial effects of the late phase are sur-

prising, as though Michelangelo were anticipating “soft”

architecture (Corpus 612 , 618 ,and 619 ).

The figure drawings of this phase are also remarkable.

The thickening and simplification of forms seen in the

Pauline Chapel is extended. Preparatory studies of the

nude tend to be treated in the most diagrammatic man-

ner, and it is in draped figures where intensity of feeling

is most fully exploited: Bodies fuse with their draperies

to produce spectral forms anticipating the experiments

of proto-Romanticism (Cat. 53 recto). The draped figure

becomes the primary vehicle of Michelangelo’s expres-

sion, but in those elaborated compositions in which the

nude still plays a part – the lateCrucifixionscenes in which

the body of Christ is displayed in apparently infinite per-

mutations of suffering – definition is deliberately reduced.

Michelangelo had always made use of soft drawings in

the primary stages of developing figural forms and the

Crucifixiondrawings are softened further by layers of wash

and white heightening to create images that seemingly

arise from another artistic culture, that of Venice, as seen

in the latest works of Titian (Corpus 417 and 418 ). It is

probable that, in part, the broad and soft handling reveals

Michelangelo’s failing eyesight as well as his shaking hand,

but such disabilities were paradoxically beneficial in that

Michelangelo’s effort to overcome them produced an

internal calvary, opening for him a vision intensified

bythe sacrifice of the forms that he had loved most

deeply.