1545
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Virgin and Child with St. Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Anne (?) is a 1545 by Battista Franco Veneziano, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a busy drawing: Mary holds baby Jesus, while two saints twist around them like dancers. Franco worked right after Michelangelo, and you can feel it. The bodies bend in ways that look almost impossible—like they’re made of rubber. He never copied Michelangelo’s famous ceiling, but he borrowed the same energy and made it his own. If you like these twisting figures, look up *sfumato*—the soft, smoky shading that makes them seem to move.
Battista Franco was one of Michelangelo’s most devoted followers: his biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote that he drew every figure on the master’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. In Franco’s own works, such as this drawing, he made new, inventive compositions that emulated Michelangelo without directly copying or quoting his works. The drawing—possibly a study for painted pottery—shows the Virgin Mary and Christ flanked by Saints Anne and Catherine. The unusual, twisting forms of the saints recall the inventive poses that Michelangelo created for many of the saints on the Last Judgment fresco.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Battista Franco Veneziano (c. 1510 - 1561), baptized Giovanni Battista Franco, was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker in etching active in Rome, Urbino, and Venice in the mid 16th century. He is also known as…
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