We all run short of paper sometimes, and the great Michelangelo was no exception. Several drawings from the collection kept at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, appear in Michelangelo: A LIfe on Paper (Princeton, £34.95).
More than 200 scribblings have been deciphered by author Leonard Barkan, who points out, for example that a coiled dragon drawn over some carefully sketched profile heads resemble the angelic and demonic sides of the Master’s personality.
By the time of this drawing, Michelangelo was relatively rich and famous, head of a large studio, and the picture may have been part of his teaching process.
Most of the sheets of paper considered by Barkan contain words — poems, shopping lists and jokes. It is these that the author draws on to reveal the root of Michelangelo’s genius — a mind of conflict and exploration which made sense of the chaos and tension of everyday life, and encapsulated it in masterpieces such as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
The author will give a talk in Oxford University History Faculty, Old Boys’ High School, at 4pm on November 4.
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