The Epifania Cartoon by Michelangelo (1550-1553) ✎

Last year, I went to an exhibition at the British Museum, and saw the Epifania cartoon by Michelangelo.

I wanted to share this on my blog for some time.

It’s easy to forget that “cartoon” in the Renaissance sense refers to a massive full-scale preparatory drawing rather than a sketch. At 2 meters, the Epifania is one of the few large-scale works on paper by Michelangelo that has survived into our modern age.

It underwent a major conservation:

Tears in the fragile paper have been mended, while discoloured areas have been tended, enabling details of the master’s original vision in black chalk and charcoal to be seen with new clarity.

Sarah Vowles, the British Museum’s curator of Italian and French prints and drawings, told The Telegraph: “Some of the chalk lines are so much crisper than they were before. You can get a sense of the power and the drama of the way that Michelangelo draws these lines. Details of some of the figures - the Christ Child’s toes, for example - are much more visible now than they were before. This is one of our most incredible drawings.”

The drawing was made of 26 sheets that had been glued together. It is a “cartoon”, a term derived from the Italian for a large piece of paper - “cartone” - meaning that it was drawn to the scale of a planned painting, although this one was apparently unexecuted.

It depicts the Virgin Mary, Christ Child and St John the Baptist. The man to her left, whom she gently pushes away (v. strange?), is likely St. Joseph (wiki).

Michelangelo created the cartoon for his friend and biographer, the artist Ascanio Condivi. He then began a painting based on the cartoon, but left it unfinished:

The Condivi version.

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