SCRATCHINGS
To see Michelangelo’s drawings, on display now at The Met, is to see mastery. Even the tiniest, earliest studies for paintings and architecture projects – his scratchings – have an awesome sense of certainty. Michelangelo draws a lot, at different scales, and to different levels of finish, but he never draws incorrectly or unnecessarily. All his work, even his painting, is sculptural, about the expression of three-dimensional form. He seems to be continually pulling forms out of the air and pinning them down on the page.
Some drawings have a quick, off-the-cuff quality, as if noting an idea that might or might not be pursued. On a facade study for the
Church of San Lorenzo, the left half is expressed with light ink strokes in shadow and ornament, while the right half remains in outline, as was the convention when presenting symmetrical designs. Simple shadows pop columns and frames forward dramatically. Figural sculptures along the roofline, depicted in rough streaks of ink, spring to life. They are recognizably human,
and look as if they might jostle with one another or jump off the
ledge. Even a drawing this diagrammatically conceived, non finito, has a rich physical and emotional presence.
Among many gifts, Michelangelo has a gift to see the reality of a thing in its smaller parts. Many drawings on display are fragments, sometimes surreal, depicting a single arm, thumb, claw, doorway, or base molding. Though most are studies for larger realized works, each is rendered with such sculptural richness so that it is, in itself, fully realized. The paper these fragments are drawn on, small squares of faded parchment, act as a film between this and the next world, upon which the figures leave a swift, bold impression.