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The Young Sculptor-Designer and His Sources
Michelangelo considered himself first and foremost a sculptor in marble. His emphasis on the three-dimensional form in drawings emerged alongside his practice as a marble sculptor, informed by his close study of classical sculpture and the work of Donatello. Contemporary biographers agree that Michelangelo's friend Francesco Granacci introduced him to Lorenzo de' Medici's Garden of San Marco (probably around 1490–91), which featured a lauded collection of antique and Renaissance sculptures curated by Bertoldo di Giovanni, a student of Donatello's.
Michelangelo's marble Young Archer, carved in the late 1490s, is the focal point of this gallery. His precocious understanding of the figure is wholly personal and innovative, yet the young artist has not fully unified the different parts or synthesized the lessons learned from his predecessors. Works by classical sculptors and Bertoldo here illuminate certain aspects of Michelangelo's approach to the figure. The tactile surface treatment of the boy's torso and limbs, evocative of living flesh, is an effect probably learned from Roman and Hellenistic sculptures like the nearby Eros Sleeping. The elegant spiral pose of Michelangelo's archer may have come to the artist as he studied bronze statuettes by Bertoldo and ancient sculptors. |