Arm Bones
early 1540s
Medium
pen and brown ink with incised lines
Dimensions
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Classification
Drawing
Department
Drawings
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Claude Cassirer
Accession Number
1964.379
Tags
About this artwork
Michelangelo was among the first artists in Europe to attend a human dissection and to adopt anatomical knowledge as a necessity for depicting the human figure. These drawings by Battista Franco reflect the increased—and slightly macabre—interest in the interior workings of the human body inspired in part by Michelangelo’s example. Here, the groupings of arm bones, though rendered accurately, are placed into decorative piles. The odd assembly vacillates between scientific study and a symbolic me...