Magazine: Fall 2010

When I look at this remarkable five hundred-year-old object, I am less interested in determining whether every single line of chalk was executed by the Master than I am in unlocking different sorts of enigmas. Was the artist memorializing a real person‚—friend? pupil? lover?‚—or was it rather his vision of an imaginary classical ideal? How might we understanding the nasty little hook-nosed caricature that hovers around the young man's left sleeve? And what about the fact that x-rays have revealed a tiny architectural sketch on the back of this drawing, probably relating to a project in a much later phase of Michelangelo's career, which suggests that he held on to this drawing for thirty years before using its flipside?

--Leonard Barkan Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature and Director, Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts