Study of a Flayed Torso (verso)
1554
Bartolommeo da Arezzo
Bartolommeo da Arezzo (Italian, active about 1550–80)
Drawings
Study of a Flayed Torso (verso), 1554. Bartolommeo da Arezzo (Italian, active about 1550–80). Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over traces of black chalk; incised; sheet: 40.5 x 27.6 cm (15 15/16 x 10 7/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, L. E. Holden Fund 1975.26.b In order to understand the movement of the human form, Michelangelo was known to have studied flayed bodies (cadavers with their skin removed) and in fact made several drawings of them. Bartolommeo da Arezzo—a follower of Michelangelo working a generation after the master—became obsessed with studying corpses, even stealing them from local graveyards. On one side of this sheet (verso), he drew a flayed torso.
- Maker/Artist
- Bartolommeo da Arezzo
- Classification
- Drawing
- Formatted Medium
- pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over traces of black chalk; incised
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 40.5 x 27.6 cm (15 15/16 x 10 7/8 in.)
- Inscribed
- Inscription: signed, lower right, in brown ink: demano de bar / tolomeo aretino / 1554 ; by artist(?), upper right, in brown ink: [5?] [over- and underlined] ; by artist(?), lower left, in brown ink: N° 9 ; by artist(?), lower right, in brown ink: [N. 15?]
- Departments
- Drawings
- Accession Number
- 1975.26.b
- Credit Line
- L. E. Holden Fund
- Rights Statement
- CC0
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