Michelangelo – Life Drawing

Michelangelo, a compulsive drawer was being typically Florentine when he asserted that "Design, which by another name is called drawing . . . is the fount and body of painting and sculpture and architecture and of every other kind of painting and the root of all sciences." The preliminary drawings of artists are here seen as essential to the advancement of learning as the technical drawings made or commissioned by mathematicians, engineers, doctors and scientists.

Michelangelo was an artist who worked on projects in various disciplines. One of the commonalities that relate each of his works in the different fields together is that they all start with a drawing. Whether designing a tomb, planning a colossal sculpture, or beginning a fresco, they all begin with the initial sketches. Michelangelo would sketch what was to be painted or sculpted. Often, these sketches are of single figures that will make up the finished composition. In order to get the anatomical detail that renaissance painters, and especially Michelangelo are known for, they would work with models. Seeing the models in the various poses would show the artist how the body moves, muscles are defined, and all the parts of body relate to each other in contorted poses.

What makes these unique from the works the artist intends for people to see is that the drawings are very often not finished works. As can be seen in Michelangelo’s study for the Creation of Adam, it is a study of the torso of what would become Adam painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The drawing shows a figure without a head, and no definition of one arm or leg. Scattered about on the same paper is repetitive representations of aspects of the figure. You can see the hands drawn multiple times as Michelangelo studies the positions. The only part of the figure with any real detail is the torso, and it becomes obvious that Michelangelo was drawing this purely for him to see and to prepare for the final work. It was drawn from a live model. Michelangelo manages to make the impossible position of Adam's upper body look convincing, because his observation of his muscular form and the play of light on it is compellingly realistic.

Michelangelo must have made a number of further drawings of Adam before the production of the cartoon (the full-size drawing which would have been transferred onto the ceiling). The head and the hands are only in outline here so would have needed refining.

Occasionally Michelangelo would produce finished drawings. As is the case for Head of an Ideal Woman, also known as Study of a Head. The amount of detail shown in the woman’s hair and helmet indicate that this was not just a preliminary sketch for another work, but was intended to be a piece in it’s own right. Many of the drawings not done as sketches, but as final drawings, were given to friends as gifts.

Whether the initial sketch or finished drawing, the medium Michelangelo used would be familiar to people today drawing. Both the Study of Adam and the Head of an Ideal woman use chalk on paper. It is also common to see sketches using pen and ink on paper or charcoal – all mediums that artist’s and students still use.

 This drawing is for Michelangelo's 'Bathers' scene, which was designed as the centrepiece for a never-executed fresco of the 'Battle of Cascina' for the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. The drawing relates to the pivotal seated figure at the centre of the work. A combination of pen and lead white describe the model's glistening limbs in a highly effective way. The figure is of crucial importance in the larger scene because his turning body directs attention to the bodies behind. Close inspection of the figure reveals that, despite the remarkably realistic three-dimensional rendering, his pose is unnatural. This is particularly true of the upper body, which has been twisted to impossible limits.

This is a life study for the crucified figure of Haman, painted about 1511-12 on one of the corner sections of the altar wall of the Sistine chapel. The finished figure appears to stretch out his left arm into the real space of the chapel.

The model for the life drawing would have had to maintain a dynamic pose for a considerable length of time. He must have had his left leg supported in some way, perhaps by a loop suspended from the ceiling, and have held on to ropes to keep his arms aloft. The small circles visible on Haman's right thigh, and on the separate study of his bent left leg on the same sheet, are a notation used by Michelangelo to denote the most highlighted area.