This exhibition catalogue traces the evolution of figure drawing in the Western world, beginning with Michelangelo, and explores its enormous influence on his contemporaries and later generations.

Michelangelo's nude drawings are celebrated for their depiction of the heroic figure. Endowed with exceptional strength, monumentality and intense emotion, his nudes became the benchmark for drawing the human figure for centuries. This book examines the legacy of that ideal through fascinating texts and magnificent reproductions of drawings, prints and sculptures.

In addition to key works by Michelangelo-including sketches for the Sistine Chapel, the unfinished fresco of the Battle of Cascini, and the tomb of Pope Julius II-readers will discover works by Raphael, Dürer, Rembrandt, Rubens, Klimt, and Schiele. Each chapter highlights a significant aspect of Michelangelo's ideal of the human body and examines its influence and adaptation by his contemporaries and later artists.

Topics covered include the depiction of Adam and Eve, the Crucifixion and the Pieta, as well as mythological motifs such as the Labours of Hercules; the way in which Michelangelo's methods were taught in art academies between the 17th and 19th centuries; the emergence of women as artistic subjects; and the decline of the idealised human figure during modernism.

These comparisons provide insight into how artists represented the human body, both as a model of virtue and heroism and as a vehicle for fragility and vice. Taken together, these texts and examples constitute an invaluable resource for students of the human figure and the history of Western art.

Publisher: Prestel