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Drawing Limits: Michelangelo Grows Old
It is frequently recounted that shortly before Michelangelo died, the eighty-eight-year-old artist sat before a fire and burned many drawings. Critical examination reveals various motivations for such a destructive act and elicits suggestions for what Michelangelo might have burned. Mainly because of old age and significant changes in his artistic practice, Michelangelo made far fewer drawings in his final two decades than earlier in his career. Therefore, he may have destroyed less than is usually imagined and nothing that would have impaired the completion of his current projects, most important of which was New Saint Peter’s.