Arm Bones
early 1540s
Battista Franco
Battista Franco (Italian, c. 1510–1561)
Drawings
Arm Bones, early 1540s. Battista Franco (Italian, c. 1510–1561). Pen and brown ink with incised lines; sheet: 11.8 x 36.7 cm (4 5/8 x 14 7/16 in.); secondary support: 11.8 x 36.7 cm (4 5/8 x 14 7/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Claude Cassirer 1964.379 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 arm bones, though rendered accurately, are placed into decorative piles. The odd assembly vacillates between scientific study and a symbolic memento mori, or reminder of death.
- Maker/Artist
- Franco, Battista
- Classification
- Drawing
- Formatted Medium
- pen and brown ink with incised lines
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 11.8 x 36.7 cm (4 5/8 x 14 7/16 in.); Secondary Support: 11.8 x 36.7 cm (4 5/8 x 14 7/16 in.)
- Inscribed
- Inscription: VERSO OF SECONDARY SUPPORT, lower left, in graphite: 2.
- Departments
- Drawings
- Accession Number
- 1964.379
- Credit Line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Claude Cassirer
- Exhibitions
- Year in Review (1964), Drawings: Discoveries in the Collection, Master/Apprentice: Imitation and Inspiration in the Renaissance, CMA, Ars Medica (Aug. 3-Dec. 12, 1965).<br>CMA, "Year in Review for 1964" (Dec. 8, 1964-Feb. 17, 1965), cma Bulletin 51 (1964), p. 265 no. 115.
- Rights Statement
- CC0
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