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His only surviving portrait drawing.
According to Giorgio Vasari, one of Michelangelo's biographers,
he was most reluctant to make portrait drawings 'unless the subject
was one of perfect beauty'. This is the only surviving portrait
drawing by Michelangelo. Drawn in black chalk, it shows the head
and shoulders of a young man, Andrea Quaratesi (1512-85) who was
one of several noble youths much admired by Michelangelo. Though
from a noble Florentine family, it is possible that Michelangelo
tried to teach this young Florentine how to draw, as the artist
wrote on a drawing now in Oxford: 'Andrea, have patience'. The
young man wears contemporary dress, a cap flat on his head, as
he looks out to his left. The drawing is lit from the left so that
the delicate shadows are formed by small, careful parallel strokes
of chalk.
Michelangelo rarely gave his drawings away, other than to close friends
or pupils. He presented these carefully finished 'presentation drawings'
only to those whom he admired and loved. In his own words, they were
carried out 'for love rather than duty'.
Further Reading/Sources:
PD 1895-9-15-519 Department of Prints and Drawings, Italian
Roy XVIc
J.A. Gere and N. Turner, Drawings by Michelangelo in the collection
of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, The Ashmolean Museum,
The British Museum and other English collections, exh. cat.
(London, The British Museum Press, 1975), p. 111, plate 25
J.
Wilde, Italian drawings in the Department of Prints and
Drawings in the British Museum: Michelangelo and his studio (London,
The British Museum Press, 1953), pp. 96-8, no. 59
N. Turner, Florentine
drawings of the sixteenth century, exh. cat. (London, The
British Museum Press, 1986), pp. 121-2, no. 85
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