Standing male nude, c.1515-20 (chalk on paper) (verso of 3715476)

Recto: a study of a male nude, with proportions indicated. Verso: another male nude, with the figure partially outlined with the stylus. Michelangelo was primarily responsible for establishing the tradition in post-classical art that conceives of the body (and especially the male nude) as the physical manifestation of emotional and spiritual states. Intense feeling thus requires powerful form and his figures can on occasion be oppressively heavy, though they are always based on the most attentive study from the life. The main drawing here is finished with great care and ranks as one of Michelangelo's most majestic nudes; yet it seems to have had a didactic function, for it is statically posed and the proportions of various parts of the body are indicated. The unit used is inscribed as a testa (head), defined in the sketch at top right as the distance from chin to hairline or the length of a hand. Overall the model stands eleven and a half units tall, and while this would normally pertain to a gracefully elongated figure, this ratio is here due to an unnaturally small head which further emphasises the breadth of the shoulders. The musculature is anatomically accurate (though almost grotesquely massive in the torso) and reflects the artist's lifelong investigation of the subject, beginning with his reputed human dissections as a 17-year-old. Michelangelo had few pupils, most of whom were inept, but he was sporadically conscientious in providing instructional drawings for his protégés. The style of this drawing suggests a date around 1515-20, a period of close association with Sebastiano del Piombo (c.1485-1547), the most accomplished of Michelangelo's immediate followers, and it is possible that it was drawn for Sebastiano. The proportional indications are however obscure - it is difficult in most cases to discern what anatomical features Michelangelo was referring to, and the intervals thus defined seem trivial. Another drawing of a standing nude on the verso of the sheet is not didactic, and Michelangelo may have added the measurements on the recto for his own purposes. Though this is one of few surviving drawings to be so explicit, Michelangelo's biographer Ascanio Condivi stated that the artist was preoccupied with proportion, and indeed it would have been most surprising if the architect, sculptor and painter had not been interested in the subject. Annotated by the artist with proportional measurements