Study of a Flayed Torso (verso) (1554): Art, History and Details

Study of a Flayed Torso (verso) (1554) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bartolommeo da Arezzo (Italian, active about 1550–80).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In order to understand the movement of the human form, Michelangelo was known to have studied flayed bodies (cadavers with their skin removed) and in fact made several drawings of them. Bartolommeo da Arezzo—a follower of Michelangelo working a generation after the master—became obsessed with studying corpses, even stealing them from local graveyards. On one side of this sheet (verso), he drew a flayed torso.

Object facts

• Title: Study of a Flayed Torso (verso)
• Date: 1554
• Creator attribution: Bartolommeo da Arezzo (Italian, active about 1550–80)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over traces of black chalk; incised
• Dimensions: Sheet: 40.5 x 27.6 cm (15 15/16 x 10 7/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1975.26.b

Collection credit

L. E. Holden Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Peters, Emily. “Master/Apprentice: Imitation and Inspiration in the Renaissance.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 59, no. 5 (September/October 2019): 8-9.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.