Were he looking confrontationally out from the
painting, Pope Julius II (a warrior pope; "quite an oppressor") would have been overseeing the packing up after the session, with a brief show of work -
As a patron of the arts, commissioning Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling and Raphael to paint the ceilings of his private apartments, what would he have made of these attempts to capture the ambiguity of the painting? Is his averted gaze sad, or is he not deigning to notice the viewer? Is he contemplating his life, or his death? (He died in 1513, a year later.)
We were asked to use line only, and to cover the entire sheet (though the person near me who refused a drawing board and worked in her sketchbook insisted "I always work small") -
Some people did two drawings, switching to biro for the second.
I just about managed one, even though I'd arrived early and done lots of blind drawing, getting to know the face and hands (one tightly clutching the chair, the other loosely clutching a cloth) -
"My guy" is all line, but far from being finished ...
Here's that innovative, ambiguous (and difficult to capture) gaze -
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