Cleveland Museum of Art

Torsos with Rib Cages

Date

early 1540s

Medium

pen and brown ink with incised lines

Culture

Italy, 16th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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 rib cages, though rendered accurately, are placed into decorative piles. The odd assembly vacillates between scientific study and a symbolic memento mori, or reminder of death.

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