ABSTRACT
Historians today are left wondering: Why
would Michelangelo destroy years of work
and arguably some of the most beautiful
drawings ever made? Were they not good
enough? Or perhaps Michelangelo felt that
his drawings revealed too much about his
creative process. In his surviving drawings,
bodies bulge with strained muscles caught
in impossible poses and a simple hand or
foot is drawn over and over again until it
becomes anatomically perfect. This creative
process can be very revealing. He once said,
“If you knew how much work went into it,
you wouldn’t call it genius.” Michelangelo
may have wanted to conceal the very thing
that I plan to show you in the following
pages-his drawing process.
