Michelangelo's Cleopatra

The Woman Behind Cleopatra, by William E. Wallace, is an article about Michelangelo’s famous Cleopatra drawing. The article also looks at the drawing on the reverse side that is called grotesque by many; why the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston included it in an exhibition of the masters, and Michelangelo’s relationship with Tommaso de’ Cavalieri. Wallace is a Professor of Art History at Washington University in Saint Louis and the author of the book, Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and His Times (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Given the extensive research Wallace has done in order to author a book about Michelangelo, not to mention his life’s work in Art History, one could call him in expert in the field.

Wallace’s article points out that Tommaso de’ Cavalieri was not only a Roman nobleman, but also friend to, and admirer of Michelangelo. The drawing of Cleopatra by Michelangelo was presented to Cavalieri in 1532; however, the drawing on the reverse side was discovered in 1988 during the removal of a thick backing sheet. It was no surprise that there was a drawing on the reverse side, scholars were already aware of this; however, the drawing on the reverse side was difficult to ascertain until the removal of the backing. The part of this discovery that was confusing; the drawing was not of the quality of other works by Michelangelo.

According to the article it was not unusual for sketches to be on the reverse side of Michelangelo’s drawings. Sometimes Michelangelo demonstrated the art of good drawing on the same sheet that a student had been practicing on. Wallace suggests that Cavalieri is responsible for the drawing on the reverse side of Michelangelo’s Cleopatra. "To demonstrate 'buon disegno', Michelangelo re...

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...face a sense of life, while emphasizing the sadness of the moment; whereas, the snake biting her breast gives a sense of death. Her braided hair is drawn in a way that shows the individual strands of hair, while also showing the lines of the braids. She is looking away from the snake biting her breast, yet her expression seems all aware of what is happening. Michelangelo’s Cleopatra is a great drawing and the fact that there is a drawing on the reverse is just makes it even more intriguing than it already was. It is imperative that conversations such as this one of Michelangelo’s drawing, and the comparison to the drawing on the reverse side continue. Conversations such as these spark an interest, which encourages the research necessary to support a particular point of view. Research is the stepping stone necessary to obtain scholarly gold, known as knowledge!