Michelangelo
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The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, 1511
Painting a ceiling wasn't the job he wanted — he thought of himself as a sculptor and took it on under pressure, then spent four years craning upward at it. This is one panel out of a long run of scenes across the whole ceiling, which I hadn't realised. Supposedly it all looked far dimmer until a cleaning in the eighties that people argued about for years afterwards.
Erisava: The colours look weirdly new for something this old. What's been done to it?
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Pietà by Michelangelo, 1530
This is chalk on paper — the kind of sheet that was a step towards something else rather than the thing itself. He's said to have burned a lot of his own drawings late in life, supposedly so nobody would ever see the working-out behind the finished stuff. Ones like this got out anyway, and now they're framed and lit the same way the paintings are.
Erisava: Does the red make him look warm when he's clearly meant to be dead?
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Studies for the Libyan Sibyl by Michelangelo, 1511
This is one of several studies Michelangelo made while working out the Libyan Sibyl for the Sistine Chapel ceiling — the same sheet has more sketches on the back, including a small seated figure that never made it into the fresco. Apparently he drew from a male studio model even though the finished sibyl reads as a woman, which is why the anatomy here looks so unmistakably male.
Erisava: Is this actually finished, or just a page of practice sketches?
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The Torment of Saint Anthony by Michelangelo, 1487
They say this might be Michelangelo's earliest surviving painting, made when he was barely a teenager — though whether it's really his is still argued over.
Erisava: He's getting torn apart by monsters and his face doesn't even flinch.