tour 3 of 24
Michelangelo's drawings
The Birth of the Virgin by Domenico Ghirlandaio, a pen and brown ink drawing
Domenico Ghirlandaio (about 1448/9-1494) ran
one of Florence's most successful workshops and was a
hardworking and talented artist. By the time Michelangelo joined
his studio at the age of twelve in 1487, Ghirlandaio was part of
the way through painting an ambitious series of frescoes for the
choir chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella in
Florence.
The frescoes
illustrated the life of the Virgin and St John the Baptist, and the
young Michelangelo almost certainly assisted in their creation.
This study for The Birth of the
Virgin must have been drawn at a very early
stage as the architectural setting was refined in later drawings.
Ghirlandaio's principal aim here appears to have been the
arrangement of the figures. These are shown as spindly bodies with
blank ovals for heads and blobs as hands - a technique strikingly
similar to Michelangelo's in some of his preliminary
compositional
sketches.
Although later in
life Michelangelo claimed to be entirely self-taught,
Ghirlandaio's influence can be seen in his work. Much of
Michelangelo's activity as an apprentice would have centred
on drawing, and he would have benefited from Ghirlandaio's
high standards in this area.