The muscles of the left leg, seen from the front, and the bones and muscles of the right leg seen in right profile, and between them, a patella. Drawing by Michelangelo Buonarroti, ca. 1515-1520.

Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564.

Date:: [1515?-1520?]

Reference:: 26058i

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Credit

The muscles of the left leg, seen from the front, and the bones and muscles of the right leg seen in right profile, and between them, a patella. Drawing by Michelangelo Buonarroti, ca. 1515-1520. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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About this work

Description

On the left is a drawing of the front or anterior view of the left thigh and leg, in which each of the major muscles is carefully drawn in outline and then hatched diagonally to emphasize its shape. Anatomists refer to the swelling central part of the muscle as its "belly", and the swelling and tapering shape of muscle is clearly delineated by the draughtsman, as is the compact way in which the muscles interweave each other. On the right is a side view of the same structure after the muscles have been cut away from the front of the limb

Publication/Creation

[1515?-1520?]

Physical description

1 drawing : red chalk ; sheet 27.3 x 20.2 cm

Contributors

Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564.

Lettering

Michel Angelo Buonaroti The attribution to Michelangelo is inscribed on the verso in brown ink

Creator/production credits

The draughtsman was the artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), whose studies of anatomy are recorded by his earliest biographers Vasari (1550) and Condivi (1553). According to them, Michelangelo first dissected a cadaver in Florence around 1495, when he had been commissioned to sculpt a crucifix of wood for the church of Santo Spirito: the prior of the church gave him rooms in which he could, by dissection, learn how to render convincingly the muscles of the dying Christ. His last witnessed dissection occurred in Rome in 1548. He was not alone in such studies, but they were particularly apt as training for his typical subject matter, the muscular male nude in contorted action

References note

W. Schupbach, The Iconographic Collections of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London 1989, pp. 33 and 56

London, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, A mirror for medicine II : some resources of the Wellcome Institute Library, 12 June - 29 September 1989 (catalogue p.31, no.1)

London, British Museum, Drawings by Michelangelo, 1975, catalogue no. 82

London, P. and D. Colnaghi, Loan exhibition of drawings of old masters from the collection of Mr Geoffrey Gathorne-Hardy, 1971-1972, no. 10

A. Blunt, Supplements to the catalogues of Italian and French drawings, in E. Schilling, The German drawings in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, London and York 1971, pp. 99-100

L. Dussler, Die Zeichnungen des Michelangelo, Berlin 1959, no. 592

J. Wilde, Michelangelo's Victory, London 1954, p. 16

London, British Museum, Summary catalogue of an exhibition of drawings by Michelangelo, J. Wilde, exh. cat., 1953, nos 116-119

A. Condivi, Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti, Rome 1553

G. Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori (Florence 1568), ed. G. Milanesi, 8 vols, Florence 1878-1885, repr. Florence 1981

Reference

Wellcome Collection 26058i, presented in memory of Dr Robert Heller (1907-1980) and Mrs Anne Heller, 1982