Accession Number
85735
Medium
Pen and brown ink, with graphite, on tan laid paper
Dimensions
14.3 × 10.9 cm (5 11/16 × 4 5/16 in.)
Classification
pen and ink drawings
Credit Line
The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection
Background & Context
Background Story
Michelangelo Buonarrotis Family Group: Ozias, King of Judah, Nursed by his Mother is a pen and brown ink drawing with graphite on tan laid paper that depicts the biblical king Ozias being nursed by his mother, a subject from the Old Testament that allowed Michelangelo to explore the relationship between mother and child in the context of dynastic succession and divine authority. The pen and ink medium, with its capacity for both precise Linear definition and tonal washes, allows Michelangelo to model the figures with the sculptural three-dimensionality that distinguishes his approach to the human body in every medium, while the graphite underdrawing visible beneath the ink reveals the working process of an artist who began with rapid sketches and refined them through successive stages of revision. The tan laid paper provides a warm ground that gives the figures a sense of existing in a warm, atmospheric space rather than floating in the void of a blank sheet, and the brown ink creates a unified tonal field that integrates the figures with their setting. The subject of a king being nursed by his mother connects the drawing to the tradition of dynastic imagery in which the legitimacy of royal power is established through the biological relationship between mother and child, a tradition that Michelangelo was well positioned to explore given his service to the Medicis and the papal court of Julius II.
Cultural Impact
Michelangelos pen and ink drawings are foundational works in the history of Western figure drawing, and their influence on the practice of drawing extends through the academic tradition to the present. The Family Group demonstrates his ability to combine biblical narrative with sculptural figure modeling in the pen and ink medium.
Why It Matters
A pen and brown ink drawing with graphite by Michelangelo depicting the biblical king Ozias nursed by his mother, combining sculptural figure modeling with dynastic narrative in the warm tonal field of tan laid paper that reveals his working process of revision.
