Three studies of a right leg
First half of the XVI century.Not on display
In this drawing it is possible to see the traits of a copyist. While the overall effect is elegant, weaknesses are particularly apparent in the modeling of the knee in the study top left. The complex peaks and crevices that define this joint are reduced to a succession of irregular, lobe-like appendages. Ironically, this defect in the draftsmanship hints at the existence of a lost Michelangelo original as the prototype, since precisely the same short of shorthand to define the articulation of the knee is also met with in drawings by Michelangelo. An example is the pen-and-ink study in the Casa Buenarroti, Florence, sometimes thought to be for the legs of Leda in the artist´s famous composition of Leda and the Swan (inv. no. 44F).
As for the position of the foreleg brought back against the thigh, tried twice in the lower half of the page, there is an obvious correspondence with the right leg of the figure on the ground, bottom right of Michelangelo´s Brazen Serpent on the Sistine ceiling. However, the effect there is less elegant and it seems more likely that the originals of these two drawings were made at an early stage in the preparation of the reclining figure of Draw in the New Sacristy in S. Lorenzo, Florence. In the statue as executed, the left rather than the right leg is bent in this way, but the similarity of motif is readily apparent.
Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracc: a century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Virginia, Art Services International, 2008, p.315
